MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
How Obama's pick to lead the FBI tried to put the brakes on the NSA's surveillance dragnet.
By Marc Ambinder, Foreign Policy, June 18, 2013
[....] Comey, who is said to be President Obama's choice to be the next director of the FBI, has never publicly disclosed exactly what he refused to sanction when he was briefly acting attorney general during Ashcroft's hospital stay, but people briefed on the program who have spoken to Comey say it was the legal rationale giving the NSA quick access to un-sifted telecom and service provider-collected metadata that "drove him bonkers," not the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. There was just no way, Comey thought, to justify an effort that simply turned over such a large amount of data on American citizens to one of America's foreign-intelligence agencies. It contravened a number of laws with which he, as a former federal prosecutor of terrorism cases, was intimately familiar [.....]
Comments
Comey is a former law school classmate of mine. I have a lot of respect for him and hope he gets the nod here. Having worked for a hedge fund in Connecticut the past couple of years, he no doubt learned a great deal that would--if he is so inclined--give him some excellent intuitions and perhaps even leads for where he might find major illegality in that industry.
My impression of him is that he is someone whose first, second and third loves are being a prosecutor. He also has a large family so two years' income working for that hedge fund might just have taken care of the college funds and leave him feeling at liberty to go after some really high-profile and powerful bad actors without having to worry quite so much about pesky current and projected future household finance issues.
by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 06/18/2013 - 3:39pm