Comey Obama’s choice for FBI

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama nominated James Comey to be the new FBI director Friday, tapping a George W. Bushera Justice Department official to lead the agency as it grapples with privacy debates over a host of recently exposed investigative tactics.

Obama praised Comey for demonstrating unyielding integrity in the face of uncertainty. Flanked by Comey and his outgoing FBI director, Robert Mueller, in a sunny White House Rose Garden announcement, Obama said Comey recognizes that in times of crisis, America is judged not only by how many plots are disrupted, but also by its commitment to civil liberties and the ideals espoused in the Constitution.

“Jim understands, deeply in his core, the anguish of victims of crime - what they go through,” Obama said. “He’s made it his life’s work to spare others that pain.

“He’s a rarity in Washington sometimes: He doesn’t care about politics.”

Comey is perhaps best known for a 2004 standoff at the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft over a no-warrant wiretapping program. Comey rushed to the room of his bedridden boss to physically stop White House officials from trying to get an ailing Ashcroft to reauthorize the program.

If confirmed by the Senate, Comey would serve a 10-year term and replace Mueller, who has held the job since the week before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Obama praised Mueller effusively and said he could declare without equivocation that countless Americans are alive today because of Mueller’s efforts. Mueller is set to resign on Sept. 4 after overseeing the bureau’s transformation into one of the country’s chief weapons against terrorism.

“I must be out of my mind to be following Bob Mueller,” Comey said. “I don’t know whether I can fill those shoes, but I know that however I do, I will be truly standing on the shoulders of a giant.”

Comey was a federal prosecutor who served for several years as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before coming to Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks as deputy attorney general. In recent years, he’s been an executive at defense company Lockheed Martin, general counsel to a hedge fund, board member at HSBC Holdings and lecturer on national security law at Columbia Law School.

The White House may hope that Comey’s Republican background and strong credentials will help him through Senate confirmation at a time when some of Obama’s nominees have been facing tough battles. Republicans have said they see no major obstacles to his confirmation, although he is certain to face tough questions about his hedge fund work and his ties to Wall Street as well as how he would handle current, high-profile FBI investigations.

Comey was deputy attorney general in 2005 when he unsuccessfully tried to limit tough interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists. He told then-Attorney General Gonzales that some of the practices were wrong and would damage the department’s reputation.

Some Democrats denounced those methods as torture, particularly the use of waterboarding, which produces the sensation of drowning.

Comey’s defiance won him praise from Democrats. In a statement, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who will oversee Comey’s confirmation hearing, said, “Mr. Comey showed the kind of independence needed to lead the FBI when he stood up to those in the last administration who sought to violate the rule of law.” Leahy called for senators to give Comey “the swift and respectful confirmation he deserves.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Comey’s experience on national security would benefit the FBI. “He’s previously dealt with these matters with integrity and shown a willingness to stand his ground if necessary,” Grassley said in a statement. He added that he wants to question Comey on his work in the hedge fund industry and wonders whether he could improve the Obama administration’s efforts to prosecute Wall Street for its role in the economic downturn.

Concerns over Comey were raised by the American Civil Liberties Union, which doesn’t take positions on nominees but is interested in civil liberties issues. ACLU senior policy counsel Mike German said while Comey stood up to some surveillance, he eventually approved a National Security Agency program along with interrogation techniques that included waterboarding, as well as defended the indefinite detention of Jose Padilla, an American terrorism suspect.

“We want to make sure whoever sits in that chair has a determined interest in protecting the rule of law, particularly since they will be there 10 years, outlasting this president and potentially the next president,” German said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/22/2013

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