WASHINGTON, Dec 14: New revelations show that Bernard Kerik, a former New York street cop President Bush wanted to head the Department of Homeland Security, led a dual life.

On the surface, he was New York City's police commissioner who won nation wide admiration for maintaining law and order during and after the 9/11 tragedy. But he also has been accused of benefiting from big stock-option windfalls, of having connections with people suspected of doing business with the mob and, of having simultaneous extramarital affairs with two women.

The revelations have raised new questions about the White House vetting process which failed to discover such serious allegations about a man Mr Bush chose to head his nation's security. White House officials, however, say that they knew in advance about some of these allegations but had concluded that they were not disqualifying.

Investigators conducting a background check on Mr Kerik last week uncovered that the former nominee had been married to a woman he had apparently kept a secret for the past 20 years, news reports said. He did not acknowledge the marriage in his autobiography, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice."

Mr Kerik has also been accused of having overlapping affairs with Judith Regan, the publisher of his recent memoir, and a city corrections officer. He used the same New York City apartment for liaisons with both the women during his 18-month tenure as head of the nation's largest police department, ending in 2001, US newspapers reported.

Commenting on these allegations, Mr Kerik said he wanted to apologize "to anybody who's been brought into this unnecessarily" including Ms Regan and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a close friend and business associate who had promoted the former street cop's Cabinet candidacy.

Mr Giuliani earlier refused to discuss allegations about Kerik's personal life, saying Mr Kerik would "have to answer for himself". Democrats and Republicans alike predicted that Mr Giuliani, who had pushed Kerik's candidacy with members of the Bush administration, would take the greatest political heat for the failed nomination.

In 2002, Mr Kerik was ordered to pay a conflict-of-interest fine for using three police officers to do research about his mother for his book. Other recent reports claim that around the time of the alleged affairs, he accepted unreported gifts of thousands of dollars in cash and other items from associates at a New Jersey construction company while serving under Mr Giuliani, first as corrections chief, then as police commissioner.

Authorities suspect the company, Interstate Industrial Corp., has ties to organized crime.