James Comey, the Would-Be J. Edgar Hoover
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
18 April 18
The former FBI Director's memoir obsesses about lies, sincerity and
conscience - and offers few tangible answers
The most damning passage in former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A
Higher Loyalty, regards his decision to make public the re-opening of the
Hillary Clinton email investigation:
"It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an
environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my
concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the
re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the
election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls."
Comey portrays the Clinton decision as a binary choice: either speak a truth
that may result in Trump's victory, or conceal key facts from the public
thus making her, as he tabs the ostensible shoo-in Clinton, an "illegitimate
president."
These meanderings might carry more weight if Comey did not have a lengthy
record of "concealing" far more important issues from the American public.
Comey, for instance, comes across as an opponent of torture, and in the book
writes about how his wife Patrice's exhortation - "Don't be the torture guy"
- disturbed his sleep "for many nights." But a close look at Comey's
Bush-era record indicates he signed off on policies that essentially
re-sanctified most forms of "enhanced interrogation."
In the book, Comey says he was held back from doing more because the CIA
didn't tell him everything about its interrogations, leaving him with
nothing to do but silently hope the torture program would "crater" under
Justice Department guidelines:
"Although our internal voices screamed this was terrible stuff and was based
on inflated claims of success, those voices had to stay trapped inside us,"
Comey writes.
So he was able to stay quiet about torture - keeping it "trapped inside" -
but couldn't keep secret the details of an email investigation he himself
doubted would lead anywhere important?
Comey is equally two-faced on the question of surveillance. He describes
himself forcefully opposing the NSA's "Stellar Wind" program, which he says
went "beyond even the legally dubious."
This is how Comey became famous the first time, trying to head off the
program's re-authorization by racing to a convalescing John Ashcroft in the
much-publicized "hospital showdown."
But we later learned, through Edward Snowden's revelations, that Stellar
Wind was just a mild appetizer, and that the NSA massively expanded its
surveillance program during Bush's second term and under President Barack
Obama.
Then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper - described by Comey in
the book as "the leader I most admire in government" - appeared to lie about
the existence of such programs in testimony before Congress, saying the NSA
did "not wittingly" collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of
Americans.
Comey didn't have a problem with that, it seems. And though he professed
otherwise in his confirmation hearings, the reality is that Comey mostly
just climbed the ladder through the wholesale dismantling of civil liberties
that took place during the Bush and Obama years.
Which brings us back to the Clinton investigation.
Comey, at times ostentatiously precise in his recollections, is cagey about
how and when he learned of the new Clinton emails uncovered as part of the
Anthony Weiner dick-pic investigation:
"At some point in early October, someone at FBI headquarters (I think it was
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) mentioned to me that former Congressman
Anthony Weiner had a laptop that might have some connection to the Clinton
email case."
Comey here plunges into a Hamlet-esque dilemma over whether to go public
about the re-opened investigation. He professes to be very concerned about
having told Congress the investigation was closed, but again, Comey had no
problem keeping his mouth shut or even outright obfuscating on demand in
other cases.
For instance, he describes how he acceded to the clearly politicized request
by Attorney General Loretta Lynch that he refer to the Clinton probe as a
"matter" and not an "investigation."
"The FBI doesn't do 'matters,'" Comey writes. "The term means nothing in our
language . It was probably a mistake that I didn't challenge this harder.
But in that moment, I decided that [Lynch's] request was too frivolous to
take issue with."
Then there was another issue:
Comey writes that an investigation into a possible connection between Donald
Trump's campaign and Russian "efforts" to interfere in the election had
commenced in late July of 2016. This was when the Bureau received
information about a Trump campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos, whom
Comey says "had been discussing . obtaining from the Russian government
emails damaging to Hillary Clinton."
It's not exactly an analogous situation, since Trump, himself, was not a
target of the investigation (Comey even says so explicitly later in the
book). But voters would have certainly found this story highly relevant. Why
keep that secret in July but reveal the re-opening of the Clinton probe in
October?
There are multiple ways to interpret these decisions. Few are kind to Comey.
The most likely scenario seems to be that Comey did indeed expect Clinton to
be elected president and was engaging in a tried-and-true FBI power play
against his future boss.
Comey uses similar language in the book to describe concerns he had about
holding Russia-related material over Donald Trump's head. On page 216, he
refers to this tactic as "pulling a J. Edgar Hoover," or dangling a
politically damaging set of facts over a politician in an effort to "gain
leverage."
That line of thinking seems to apply just as well to the incident involving
Clinton.
He claims that part of his reasoning about outing the reopened Clinton probe
had to do with another shocking development - a thing he learned of in
"early 2016":
"At that time, we were alerted to some materials that had come into the
possession of the United States government. They came from a classified
source - the source and content remains classified as I write this," Comey
notes.
"Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly be used by
political opponents to cast serious doubts on [Attorney General Loretta
Lynch's] independence in connection with the Clinton investigation."
Say what? Comey here seemingly throws Lynch under the bus, hinting at a
blockbuster story about improper pre-election connections between the
Clinton campaign and the then-attorney general.
Comey claims he was concerned that after stolen emails began appearing on
the Internet that summer, some of this explosive-but-unverified material
would come out. This in turn would "allow partisans to argue, powerfully,
that the Clinton campaign, through Lynch, had been controlling the FBI's
investigation."
That seems like a big deal.
But Comey doesn't elaborate on what the "unverified" material might have
been. He also goes out of his way to describe how Lynch, with the exception
of the "call it a matter" conversation, stayed out of the email probe. So
who knows what it means? The only thing we know is that Comey claims he had
something that would have looked politically damaging to both Hillary
Clinton and Loretta Lynch.
As with so many things leaked from the intelligence community, it is
impossible to evaluate the importance of this information without knowing
more. Was it true? Untrue? Comey relates this tidbit ostensibly to explain
why he sidestepped Lynch's Justice Department to offer unilateral, "unusual
transparency" on the email case. This seems to indicate he gave weight to
the "classified" story about Lynch. Or did he? It's draining, trying to
parse Comey's moves.
As Comey goes on to explain his tortured interactions with Donald Trump, he
wastes no time in comparing Trump to a mobster. Interestingly, he also
compares his own FBI to "this thing of ours." The obligations of "made"
members in secret societies seem to be another schoolboy fixation of his.
Comey writes in language loaded with leaden, half-clever hints and
double-entendres, speaking out of the side of his mouth in the fashion of a
fortune teller or Alan Greenspan. He tells stories about one thing that he
clearly means for you to absorb as lessons that might apply in other arenas.
For instance, early in the book, he recounts the story of a Sicilian mobster
who explains that made guys are only allowed to lie to each other when
luring each other to death. "Men of honor," the mobster tells him, "may only
lie about the most important things."
Instead of dismissing this as the dumb crooked bullshit that it is - a
carve-out dreamed up by brainless thugs who need excuses to kill each other
- Comey makes the mistake mafia investigators often make, romanticizing
gangster codes:
"The Life of Lies. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete
control. Loyalty oaths. An us-versus-them worldview. Lying about things,
large and small, in service of some warped code of loyalty. These rules and
standards were hallmarks of the mafia, but throughout my career I'd be
surprised at how often I'd find them applied outside of it."
With Trump, Comey paints a portrait of an executive who is disconnected from
reality, self-obsessed to the point of not letting others speak, childishly
ignorant of the law and perhaps also guilty of actual crimes like
obstruction of justice.
But the description of his initial "defensive briefing" with Trump about the
existence of the Steele dossier feels as unconvincing and disingenuous as
his explanation for publicizing the re-opening of the Clinton investigation.
The plan was for Comey to go in alone to tell Trump about the unverified
"pee tape" dossier, only after a gang of outgoing Obama intelligence
appointees left the room.
Part of his motivation in telling Trump about the potential blackmail
material, Comey claims, was that the press was about to blow it open anyway.
"CNN," he writes, "had informed the FBI press office that they were going to
run with it as soon as the next day."
But this feels hollow. The press had been sitting on the Steele material for
weeks, if not months. At least nine organizations (and possibly more than
that, from what I hear) knew of the Steele material dating back to the fall
of 2016, and had elected not to publish news of it, for the very good reason
that it was unverifiable.
Comey is surely aware that the actual impetus for the publication of media
stories about the Steele material began with the FBI's decision to take
possession of the dossier. (This gave Mother Jones an excuse to publish the
first story about it on October 31, 2016.)
The first CNN story to break on the subject was sourced to "multiple U.S.
officials with direct knowledge of the briefings," and led with the news
that documents including potentially "compromising personal and financial
information" had been relayed first to Obama and then to Trump by senior
intelligence officials.
Leaks about these briefings were, for better or worse, what really opened
the lid on the Steele report. The way Comey pretends otherwise about things
like this in the book will make him a totally unreliable narrator for
careful readers of all political persuasions.
Spies and secret police types rarely write good books, because lying is so
central to what they do. There are exceptions - FBI agent and Nixon
"plumber" G. Gordon Liddy was a madman of the highest order, but his memoir
Will is an oddly outstanding autobiography - but political books as a rule
are tiresome, because we want to read the straight dope, not tea leaves.
In that sense, following what Comey is really trying to say at any given
moment is difficult and exhausting. He writes ad nauseum about his struggles
with issues of truth and untruth - hell, the book's subtitle is "Truth,
Lies, and Leadership" - but that seems mostly to be for show, and his
"admissions" seem absurdly meaningless.
For instance, he "confesses" to lying sometimes about having played college
basketball, and admits to a vague bullying incident from his school years.
This is supposed to set the reader up to believe that Comey is an honest
man, keenly interested in matters of conscience and sincerity, who as FBI
Director was just trying to do the right thing while surrounded by scheming
liars and opportunists.
But A Higher Loyalty, itself, feels like a deeply calculating book. We tend
to forget that secret police, whether they want to or not, often end up
wielding ultimate power over the careers of political figures. Since the
death of J. Edgar Hoover, we've mostly just had to trust that our
Spooks-in-Chief haven't misused that power.
Looking back at the 2016 election, we can't be sure James Comey didn't
violate that trust. Comey himself seems unsure, which might be why this
oddly unpleasant book is so focused on adolescent ramblings about "trust"
and "lies."
In denying that he was angling to be a modern Hoover, he more often than not
seems to be confirming it. The possible resurgence of such figures gives us
one more thing to worry about in an era already chock-full of political
dangers.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
