Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.
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When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection "sporadically" before December 2000 - the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail.
Then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said in January 2001 the NYPD assigned Nathan round-the-clock protection the month before because of an unspecified threat against her on a streetcorner near her home. He insisted at a news conference she had no guards until then.
Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.
They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm - as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend - that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor's girlfriend in May 2000.
That would make the threat justification all the more puzzling, because she wasn't a public figure.
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The law enforcement source said that Nathan eventually had as many as seven detectives assigned to her, and that like any protected person, they took her wherever she wanted to go.
"Whether it was to take her shopping or business - you can't say 'We are not going there,'" the source said. "[If you did] you'd be walking a foot post in the seven-five [Brooklyn's 75th Precinct] somewhere."
