[Infowarrior] - Comey nominated for FBI Director

[Richard Forno]

Obama Says F.B.I. Pick Will Balance Security and Privacy

By PETER BAKER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Published: June 21, 2013 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/us/politics/obama-says-comey-will-strike-balance-on-security-and-privacy-at-fbi.html

WASHINGTON — Under fire for authorizing expansive secret surveillance programs, President Obama selected James B. Comey as his new F.B.I. director on Friday, choosing a lawyer best known for refusing to sign off on a private data collection plan in the Bush administration.

Introducing Mr. Comey in a Rose Garden ceremony, Mr. Obama described him as “a leader who understands how to keep America safe and stay true to our founding ideals no matter what the future may bring.” Alluding to the current debate over National Security Agency programs, Mr. Obama said Mr. Comey understood “this work of striking a balance” between security and privacy.

Mr. Comey, a longtime prosecutor who helped put away gangsters, gunrunners and terrorists before rising to deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush, will replace Robert S. Mueller III if confirmed by the Senate. With a 10-year term under law, Mr. Comey would be in place to outlast this president and possibly even the next one as he steers the bureau into the next phase of its post-Sept. 11 evolution.

Mr. Comey is best known for a dramatic showdown in 2004 when he and Mr. Mueller, among others, refused to reauthorize an expiring N.S.A. surveillance program because they believed that it had exceeded the president’s legal authority and threatened to resign from the Bush administration if it was extended without their agreement. After a Hollywood-style confrontation in the hospital room of an ailing John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, Mr. Bush acquiesced to their concerns, and the program was later revived under a different legal theory.

That episode came to define Mr. Comey’s tenure and clearly helped win him the job from a Democratic president. “He joined Bob in standing up for what he believed was right,” Mr. Obama said. “He was prepared to give up a job he loved rather than be part of something he felt was fundamentally wrong.”

But Mr. Comey also authorized or supported other assertive policies during his tenure in Mr. Bush’s Justice Department, and the prospect of his F.B.I. nomination has drawn criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union and some liberal activists in Mr. Obama’s party.

That record will surely prove to be a focus of his confirmation hearings, as will newly disclosed programs that gather the telephone numbers and other data, though not the contents, of Americans’ telephone calls and the e-mail and other digital information of foreigners located overseas.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will consider the nomination, praised the choice.

“Mr. Comey’s experience on national security issues will be a benefit as the F.B.I. continues to focus on preventing terrorism,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement released before Mr. Obama’s formal announcement. “And he’s previously dealt with these matters with integrity and shown a willingness to stand his ground if necessary.”

Still, Mr. Grassley hinted at possible questions to come during the confirmation process. “I’m still interested in his recent work in the hedge fund industry,” he said. “Perhaps Mr. Comey will turn around the administration’s abysmal efforts to criminally prosecute Wall Street for its part in the economic downturn.”

Mr. Mueller, who took over the F.B.I. just a week before the 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, transformed the bureau from a crime-fighting outfit to a counterterrorism agency. “Countless Americans are alive today and our country is more secure because of the F.B.I.'s outstanding work under he leadership of Bob Mueller,” the president said.

Praising Mr. Mueller as “a giant” who remade the bureau to take on the threats of a new era, Mr. Comey in brief remarks said, “I will do my very best to honor and protect that legacy.”

Mr. Comey first gained significant public notice in the late 1990s for spearheading a program in Richmond, Va., that moved prosecutions of firearm cases from state to federal courts, where defendants faced higher sentences. The program helped reduce the homicide rate in Richmond, which had been plagued by one of the highest rates in the country. The Clinton administration lauded the program, and federal prosecutors across the country copied it.

In 2001, Mr. Ashcroft asked Mr. Comey to take over the government’s prosecution of the 1996 terrorist bombing at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 American service members were killed. Although prosecutors in Washington had failed to make much progress on the case, Mr. Comey and a colleague quickly rebuilt it and within three months indicted 14 men.

That case heightened his profile, and in late 2001 Mr. Bush appointed Mr. Comey to one of the highest-profile roles in the Justice Department: the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. In that role, Mr. Comey oversaw the prosecution of terrorists, Martha Stewart, executives from WorldCom and drug dealers. In 2003, Mr. Bush appointed him to be Mr. Ashcroft’s top deputy in Washington.

After leaving the government in 2005, Mr. Comey worked as the general counsel for Lockheed Martin and later as the general counsel for Bridgewater Associates, a large hedge fund in Connecticut. Since leaving that job this year, Mr. Comey has been a national security fellow at Columbia Law School.

In May, Mr. Comey was interviewed by Mr. Obama in the Oval Office. The president formally offered him the job in a second meeting, which occurred on May 20. After it was publicly revealed in late May that he would be the nominee, the F.B.I. began an extensive background check on him, which was recently completed.

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