New York - Former Harper Collins publisher Judith Regan has sued the company's owners News Corp for 100 million dollars, claiming her firing was the result of a smear campaign designed to protect presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Regan, a celebrity publisher with a string of bestsellers was fired from HarperCollins in December 2006 after she backed OJ Simpson's controversial book, "If I Did It," in which the former football great described how he could have killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The book, and an accompanying TV show on the Fox Network was cancelled after a public outcry.
In her lawsuit Regan claimed that the furor over the book was just a pretext for her firing and that she was made the target of a "deliberate smear campaign" to protect presidential candidate and former New York mayor Giuliani.
Regan, 54, alleged that she was asked by company officials to lie to federal investigators about her affair with former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, once a close Giuliani adviser who has since run into trouble with the law. Regan said she confided to company executives as early as 2001 that she had been having an affair with Kerik, whose memoir, "The Lost Son," she published shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
After President Bush nominated Kerik for Homeland Security secretary in 2004, Regan alleges in her suit, one executive "advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik."
The company then launched a campaign to discredit her, because it feared that she might disclose information that would be politically hurtful to Giuliani, the suit said. Kerik subsequently withdrew his name from consideration amid a cloud of legal questions over his past behavior and fitness for office. He was indicted last week on federal charges, including tax fraud.
News Corp dismissed Regan's lawsuit as "preposterous."
