Ex-aide claims abuse, intimidation

The former homeland security aide embroiled in a sex scandal with New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey on Friday charged that McGreevey made “repeated sexual advances,” subjected him to “abuse and intimidation” when he finally rebuffed them, and then tried to pay him off to deep-six harassment allegations.

During a brief late afternoon Manhattan news conference Friday, attorney Alan Lowy read a statement in which the ex-aide, Golan Cipel, also accused McGreevey of trying to “smear” him by suggesting that he was only after money. Cipel, an Israeli, said he felt “vindicated” by McGreevey’s emotional Thursday resignation, in which he acknowledged he was gay.

“While we regret that the governor felt compelled until yesterday to lead a double life, the fact remains that he used his official position to repeatedly victimize my client,” Lowy said. ” … What the future will hold with regard to filing a lawsuit is something only time will tell.”

Cipel, 35, a poet and former sailor in the Israeli armed forces, met McGreevey in Israel in 2001. When McGreevey took office in 2002, he hired Cipel as a $110,000 homeland security aide. Cipel resigned on Aug. 14, 2002.

Democrat McGreevey, 47 and married twice with two daughters, said the affair had made him vulnerable to “threats of disclosure.” Advisers told reporters that Cipel had demanded $5 million to avert a lawsuit.

Lowy disputed that on Friday. He said McGreevey’s representatives “offered a sum of money to make my client go away.”

The new allegations came as political New Jersey collectively held its breath, waiting to see if Cipel would file a lawsuit detailing the affair, while Republicans pressured McGreevey to resign immediately.

McGreevey plans to turn over power to Democratic state Senate President Richard Codey on Nov. 15. Voters would select the next governor in November of next year. But if McGreevey resigns before Sept. 3, then the state will have a special election in November to choose a governor.

In the wake of the scandal, political experts say, Republicans would have a good shot at winning, and Sen. John Kerry might have to devote more resources to the state.

Former Republican Gov. Christie Whitman said McGreevey’s decision to wait “smacks of politics.” State GOP chairman Sen. Peter Kyrillos said, “He cannot govern effectively and should resign immediately.”

Others said the issue was not McGreevey’s sexuality, but instead garden-variety corruption – his expenditure of state money on his lover.

“This was a well-orchestrated move,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for the Republican state committee. “Saying he was a gay American wasn’t the issue that did him in. The real issue is that he kept Cipel on the payroll at a six-figure salary for months. This is corruption and he ought to resign now.”

McGreevey was holed up in the governor’s mansion in Princeton on Friday. One adviser who saw him said he wouldn’t budge until Nov. 15. A spokesman complained that Republicans were “playing politics with an intensely personal decision.”

One source said he had spoken to a lawyer who saw a draft of the legal complaint Cipel may file and told him it had “details so damning” – including a description of Cipel’s efforts to break off the affair – that McGreevey wouldn’t be able to hang on if it were filed.

Political experts said the suit is crucial. “If the charges in the complaint are sufficiently lurid,” said Don Linky, a professor at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute, “the governor may have an incredible amount of trouble staying in office until November.”