FOR THE RECORD

Just when it seemed Bernie Kerik's image couldn't sink any lower, a new book suggests that his mission to train the Iraqi police should have earned him the nickname The Baghdad Blowhard.

In "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes that while Justice Department officials in May 2003 recommended that 6,600 foreign advisers be sent to Baghdad to upgrade the local police force, "The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik ... He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset."

When a top State Department official met the former city Police and Correction Commissioner, Mr. Kerik told him, "I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police, because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is."

When the official, Robert Gifford, tried to brief Mr. Kerik on what he was walking into, he quickly realized, "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."

According to Mr. Chandrasekaran, Mr. Kerik quickly granted numerous media interviews in which he downplayed the danger in the Iraqi capital, but "when it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest."

He formed a 100-man police paramilitary unit and frequently joined it on nighttime raids, but he never secured funding for police advisers and did little to train them. All in all, the author makes it sound like Mr. Kerik never learned much about leadership from the guy who literally wrote the book on it, his ex-boss, Rudy Giuliani.

One Justice Department official described Mr. Kerik's performance in Iraq this way, "He was the wrong guy at the wrong time. What we needed was a chief executive-level person ... Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."

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The City University of New York will host an afternoon symposium Sept. 28 analyzing the effects of last year's three-day transit strike on the labor movement and the response it engendered from public unions and progressive groups in the city.

Organized by the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Labor Community and Policy Studies, the keynote address will be given by Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint.

Panel discussions hosted by labor leaders and academic experts will touch upon the future of trade unionism in New York, the lack of a viable coalition of labor unions and progressive groups to support Local 100 during the strike, and the fate of the union's contract - first voted down by a slim majority, later approved overwhelmingly by Local 100 members, and currently in limbo as binding arbitration proceeds.

The opening discussion on the historical significance of the strike will be led by Josh Freeman, executive officer of CUNY's Ph.D. program in history.

It will be followed by a panel talk on "The Strike as a Challenge to the Power Structure," with presentations by Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics; Ron Blackwell, director of corporate affairs at the AFL-CIO, and Juan Gonzalez, a columnist for the Daily News.

A second panel discussion on "The Strike as a Challenge to the Progressive Community" will take place after Mr. Toussaint's address. It will include Frances Fox-Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology; Ed Ott, executive director of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council, and Stanley Aronowitz, Professor of Sociology.

The final panel will focus on "The Strike as a Challenge to the Unions," featuring Steve Fraser from New Labor Forum; Ed Watt, Local 100's secretary treasurer; Samuel Bacharach, Professor and Director of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University; and Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress.

The symposium runs from 1 to 6 p.m. at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.