By choosing James Comey to head the FBI at a time when his administration is under fire for its civil-rights practices, President Obama has made an ironic choice.
No one doubts the man’s talents. As a US attorney in Virginia, Comey prosecuted the perpetrators of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. In the Southern District of New York, his big wins included the Martha Stewart and Worldcom cases.
A lifelong Republican, Comey became an unlikely hero to liberals over a now-infamous clash at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In the folklore, Comey opposed the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps; in reality, all he wanted was a modification. In fact, not only did Comey sign off on the NSA program, he also agreed with the CIA that waterboarding was not torture.
The Comey appointment comes at a bad time for Obama. His attorney general is taking flak for the Justice Department’s snooping into the comings and goings of reporters. Meanwhile, IRS officials are trying to explain to a skeptical Congress that targeting conservative organizations for unfair tax treatment was not political.
So how priceless that a Democratic president needing to shore up his civil-liberties flank would turn to a Bush administration veteran who signed off on both warrantless wiretaps and waterboarding.