When news broke this month that the federal government was investigating a lease deal involving U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey political world was instantly abuzz.

It has been two years since McGreevey, under threat of being exposed by a former aide, said he'd had an adulterous affair with a man and announced he would quit his job.

Those close to him say he has channeled the drive that helped him win one of the nation's most powerful governorships into educational and antipoverty advocacy work.

There is talk he will be featured on a show, hosted by Joan Rivers, that has been billed as a gay version of The View. And on Tuesday, he will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show to launch a monthlong publicity tour for his coming-out memoir, The Confession, which will hit stores the same day.

It describes in intimate and sometimes steamy detail McGreevey's struggle with homosexuality as he rose through the political ranks, and his account of the affair that led to his world's crashing down around him.

The book has been billed as a tale of struggle and redemption, but its author has already had trouble drumming up sympathy. As excerpts leaked out in the last week, describing "boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine" trysting while his wife recovered from childbirth, politicians and taxpayers denounced McGreevey, using words such as pathetic and disgraceful.

That McGreevey stands to profit from his book is especially irksome to some, who say his tale of transformation threatens to eclipse the more important story of a bad politician who surrounded himself with bad people.

McGreevey's old mentor, former state Senate President John A. Lynch, pleaded guilty Friday to corruption and faces jail. Other McGreevey figures are already serving time.

In the end, McGreevey has said, it was a blackmail threat by Golan Cipel, whom he has called his then-lover and whom he rewarded with a state job, that ended his career.

"I think Jim McGreevey is a dramatically changed human being," said Steven Goldstein, chair of the gay-rights group Garden State Equality. "I think he has developed an extraordinary amount of insight as well as contrition... . He wants to live his life with authenticity."

After leaving office in November 2004, friends said, McGreevey set out in new directions. That winter, he traveled to McDowell County, W.Va., with David Mixner, a gay activist and political fund-raiser, to write a series of lengthy articles on poverty in Appalachia.

A lawyer by profession, he then joined the law firm of State Sen. Ray Lesniak, a close friend an political mentor, but he soon left after he was criticized for working with the developers his administration had selected to build a $1.3 billion project in North Jersey.

More recently, he has worked with Kean University and traveled to China to help establish a campus there. Lesniak said McGreevey was also doing consulting work for other education and antipoverty groups.

McGreevey also has embraced the gay community. Goldstein, who was critical of McGreevey's record on gay rights when he was a closeted governor, said McGreevey had made "a 180 turn" since then.

Goldstein credits the change in large part to Mark O'Donnell, the 42-year-old Australian financial adviser McGreevey now considers his life partner.

O'Donnell told the New York Daily News this year that the two had met at a cocktail party last September, and that he initially had no idea who the former governor was. But they developed what O'Donnell described as a "healthy, loving, committed relationship."

The couple made their first public appearance together in November at a celebrity-packed event hosted by the gay magazine Out, and this summer they moved into a $1.3 million home in Plainfield, Union County. The three-story, 17-room, ivy-clad house sits amid towering trees on a quiet street with a sign cautioning drivers to beware of children playing.

Goldstein described McGreevey and O'Donnell, who he said came to traditional Jewish Sabbath dinners at his house, as "one of the most deeply in love couples I've been around. They're the kind of couple you'd be thrilled to have move in next door to you."

Lesniak said family, old and new, was an important part of McGreevey's life. He said McGreevey visited a few times a year with his older daughter, Morag, who lives with his first wife in British Columbia.

McGreevey also "treasures his time" with his 4-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, who lives nearby with her mother, Dina Matos McGreevey, the executive director of the charity and fund-raising arm of Columbus Hospital in Newark, Lesniak said.

It was while Matos McGreevey was in the hospital recovering from giving birth to Jacqueline, McGreevey wrote in his book, that he first had sex with Cipel.

Even McGreevey's father, a staunch Roman Catholic and Marine, who stood frowning in the background as McGreevey told the world he is gay, appears to have accepted his son's new life.

"You hear horror stories about parents' disowning children when they hear they're gay," Lesniak said. "It's been very heartwarming to see both of his parents be so supportive."

Meanwhile, others who once played a central role in McGreevey's life have faded away, notably Cipel - whom McGreevey describes as the first man he ever truly loved.

So taken was McGreevey with Cipel, an Israeli national, that he put him on the state payroll as a homeland security adviser even though Cipel had no experience. In the end, McGreevey wrote in his book, Cipel threatened to "out" him unless the governor paid him millions.

Cipel, who has denied ever having an affair with the governor and has instead contended that McGreevey sexually harassed him, returned to Israel shortly after McGreevey's August 2004 resignation. His civil attorney, Allen Lowy, said this week that Cipel had not seen the book, and he refused to say where Cipel was living or what he was doing.

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