6ft 8in FBI boss who sparked election panic
AT a towering 6ft 8in, FBI chief James Comey makes an irresistible target for Democrats seeking someone to blame for their eleventh hour election nightmare.
Announcing Mr Comey’s appointment as head of America’s domestic intelligence service in 2013, Barack Obama called him a ‘man who stands very tall for justice and the rule of law’.
But conversely the president’s political allies were picking through the record of the 55-yearold yesterday for evidence that he has an axe to grind against Hillary Clinton.
It’s difficult to find much evidence of a partisan past. Although the father-of-five was once a registered Republican, in office he has enjoyed a reputation for being scrupulously evenhanded. His FBI, he recently told Congress, is ‘resolutely apolitical’. The basketball fan insists he is very aware of the bureau’s potential to abuse its considerable power. He keeps on his desk a copy of the FBI request to tap the phone of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
Mr Comey says it is a ‘reminder of the bureau’s capacity to do wrong’.
A high-flying lawyer, he has served both Democrat and Republican administrations.
In 2006, he stood up to George W. Bush’s government when, as acting US Attorney General, he refused to approve the legality of the administration’s controversial policy of allowing agents to tap people’s phones without a warrant.
In 2002, Mr Comey took over an investigation of President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardoning of financier Marc Rich after he fled the US to escape various criminal charges. The decision prompted an outcry as Rich’s wife had donated to Hillary Clinton’s senate campaign though Mr Comey decided not to pursue the case.
The bureau has a notorious history of blackmail and political dirty tricks.
Along with bugging Dr King’s home and office, the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover feared and detested the civil rights leader so much that he had an underling send him an anonymous letter urging him to commit suicide.
President John F. Kennedy knew Hoover had 20-year- old tapes of his sexual liaison with a suspected Nazi agent.
Kennedy agreed with his national security advisor that Hoover had too much power. He said he was a ‘goddamned sewer’, collecting and spreading dirt on politicians and celebrities.