Rich on Regan: Could Be Rudy's Linda Tripp

New York Times pasha Frank Rich wades into the Judith Regan/News Corp. morass today, with a column about how Regan's knowledge about Bernie Kerik could derail Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

No fan of the former mayor, Rich seems to view the fallen publisher's lawsuit as a form of justifiable blackmail:

She knows a lot about Mr. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani and the Murdoch empire. And she could talk.... Few know more about Rudy than his perennial boon companion, Mr. Kerik. Perhaps during his romance with Ms. Regan he talked only of the finer points of memoir writing or about his theories of crime prevention or about his ideas for training the police in the Muslim world (an assignment he later received in Iraq and botched). But it is also plausible that this couple discussed everything Mr. Kerik witnessed at Mr. Giuliani's side before, during and after 9/11.

Compared to anything in Hillary Clinton's biography, says Rich, Giuliani's background "is relatively virgin territory. And with the filing of a lawsuit by a vengeful eyewitness who was fired from her job, it may just have gained its own reincarnation of Linda Tripp."