New Jersey- Golan Cipel, snatched from obscurity and put into state post. In March 2000, Golan Cipel was a 31-year-old former sailor working as a spokesman for the Israeli city of Rishon L’Zion. But his life changed when an ambitious American mayor named Jim McGreevey came to visit with a delegation of New Jersey Jews.

“It was described to me that there was some kind of instant recognition between them,” said David Twersky, then editor of Metro West Jewish News, who spoke with several participants on the mission.

“McGreevey took Golan off to a corner of the room. They spoke for a few minutes, and by the time McGreevey came back to the table, he had offered Golan a job as his liaison to the Jewish community.”

Another source, who actually participated in the mission, did not recall Cipel’s being hired quite so quickly. Nevertheless, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, “Clearly, people were surprised about the appointment.”

Cipel was a published poet and a former spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York. He had little knowledge of New Jersey Jews but he clearly had the governor’s ear.

Soon Cipel was a fast-rising aide to McGreevey – sparking rampant rumors of a relationship between the men. And even when it grew clear that Cipel had become a liability for McGreevey, the governor went to extraordinary lengths to defend his pal.

Cipel came to America in 2001 with a temporary work visa sponsored by developer Charles Kushner, who was McGreevey’s biggest donor, and who is now under indictment for conspiracy and allegedly hiring a hooker to derail a campaign finance probe.

Cipel got a lucrative part-time job with Kushner, and later with the New Jersey Democratic Party.

When McGreevey was elected governor in 2001, he quickly appointed Cipel to a cushy $110,000-a-year homeland security job – even though Cipel was an Israeli citizen who couldn’t sit in on sensitive security briefings.

Like most Israelis, Cipel had served in the military, but he was a paper-pusher in the Israeli Navy.

“He wasn’t a warrior or anything,” said an Israeli source.

Critics denounced McGreevey for treating a vital post-9/11 position like a patronage post. But McGreevey stood by his man, shifting him to an undefined “special counsel” job at the same high salary.

New Jersey newspapers hinted at a closer relationship between the two men, noting they had traveled together, and hounded both men to explain why Cipel was paid $110,000 a year to do nothing.

In 2002, the Star-Ledger of Newark detailed McGreevey’s unusual effort to help Cipel get an apartment near the governor’s Woodbridge home. “McGreevey took time out from his transition plans to accompany Cipel on a last-minute walk-through of the townhouse,” the Star-Ledger reported.

The same article quoted Cipel as saying he “wanted to have a place that was in close proximity to where the governor was because he was a personal adviser on call 24 hours.”

Cipel eventually left the state payroll to work for two public relations firms with close ties to McGreevey. But both let him go – one after just a month – because he did not show up for work enough.