As Always, Expect More of the Same

James Comey, Jr., who served as U.S. Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration, after having served as one of Bush's U.S. Attorneys, has been nominated by Obama to become the next Director of the FBI. He will, in theory, serve ten years if confirmed by the U.S. Senate and will be the first FBI Director appointed after 9/11.

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Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative office, Laura Murphy, cautions that "Comey...also approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration during his time as deputy attorney general. Those included torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention."

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During the three-hour Senate [confirmation hearing this week], Comey admitted to having given his approval, during his time as Deputy AG in the Bush Administration, for programs that he felt included torture. Waterboarding, he said on Tuesday, "is torture".

When asked again by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT), "Do you agree that waterboarding is torture and is illegal?," Comey answered directly: "Yes."

Would Comey, as Director of the FBI, investigate and prosecute those who carried out such illegal policies while he reportedly authorized some of them during his years serving in the Bush Administration? It's unclear that anybody asked Comey that question, or that he volunteered as much.

  Brad Friedman

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest no one did or is going to ask him that question.  And further out to say that if they did, his answer would be no.  Don't worry about me.  It's a very long limb.

"Do you believe the bulk collection of metadata for domestic telephone or emails is appropriate," asked Leahy, "even when the majority of individuals with whom the calls or emails are associated are law-abiding Americans?"

"Senator, I'm not familiar with the details of the current programs," Comey responded. "Obviously, I haven't been cleared for anything like that and I've been out of government for eight years. I do know, as a general matter, that the collection of metadata and analysis of metadata is a valuable tool in counter-terrorism."