Comey: I wrote about 3 presidents, 2 of whom illustrated 'ethical leadership'

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill



BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 04/15/18 01:27 PM EDT

Former FBI director James Comey said Sunday that he wrote about three presidents in his new book, adding that two of them illustrated "ethical leadership."

Link to tweet

Comey did not identify the presidents he described. His book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," will be released this month. Excerpts of it surfaced last week.

Comey compared Trump to a mob boss in the memoir, writing that Trump sought loyalty “like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony,” a reference to the infamous mob boss.

The former FBI director also writes that the president asked Comey to probe an alleged tape detailing one of the most salacious parts of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/383249-comey-i-wrote-about-3-presidents-2-of-which-illustrated-ethical

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Didnt he have to stand up to Bush and his criminals over the Ashcroft thing or am I

remembering incorrectly?

[FreepFryer]

2. Youre correct.

In March 2004, President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying efforts were temporarily suspended after then-acting Attorney General James Comey refused to sign on to an extension of the program “amid concerns about its legality and oversight.”

Today, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey detailed the extraordinary and potentially illegal efforts made by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card — then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively — to attempt to force John Ashcroft to overrule Comey, despite the fact that Ashcroft was debilitated in a hospital with pancreatitis.

https://thinkprogress.org/comey-breaks-silence-white-house-tried-to-force-incapacitated-ashcroft-to-back-spying-program-66fb293ac29/

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. Compared to trump Al Capone had some ethical days, but Bush was not ethical

[FreepFryer]

4. I think Bush had ethics, a Bushism rooted in self-interested American exceptionalism...

...and an aristocratic identification with and resultant entitlement to, state power.

Trump, truly, has no ethics - his inhabitation of the office is a vehicle, not an identification.

[Eliot Rosewater]

5. ONe could waste an entire Sunday listing the crimes and horrible actions of the W admin

yet it would take me all but 2 seconds to do the same on Obama.

Obama has one thing ONLY that I can recall and that was the use of drones. There might be more but compared to any other president EVER I think he was the most ethical.

[FreepFryer]

6. President Obama also famously/sadly was unable or unwilling to disarm the surveillance state.

Leaving that loaded gun on the table.

[ucrdem]

13. There were FISA and NSA reforms all through his two terms

starting in 2009. That's why there were compliance docs for Fast Eddie to swipe and flash around. The entire Snowald narrative was a crock of fake news but good luck trying to explain that to the FB faithful.

[FreepFryer]

15. i consider President Obamas accomplishments insufficient in this area.

Eg

New rules issued by the Obama administration under Executive Order 12333 will let the NSA—which collects information under that authority with little oversight, transparency, or concern for privacy—share the raw streams of communications it intercepts directly with agencies including the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to a report today by the New York Times.

That’s a huge and troubling shift in the way those intelligence agencies receive information collected by the NSA. Domestic agencies like the FBI are subject to more privacy protections, including warrant requirements. Previously, the NSA shared data with these agencies only after it had screened the data, filtering out unnecessary personal information, including about innocent people whose communications were swept up the NSA’s massive surveillance operations.

As the New York Times put it, with the new rules, the government claims to be “reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.”

Under the new, relaxed rules, there are still conditions that need to be met before the NSA will grant domestic intelligence analysts access to the raw streams of data it collects. And analysts can only search that raw data for information about Americans for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, not domestic criminal cases.

However—and this is especially troubling—“if analysts stumble across evidence that an American has committed any crime, they will send it to the Justice Department,” the Times wrote. So information that was collected without a warrant—or indeed any involvement by a court at all—for foreign intelligence purposes with little to no privacy protections, can be accessed raw and unfiltered by domestic law enforcement agencies to prosecute Americans with no involvement in threats to national security.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance-powers-his-way-out

[ucrdem]

19. Probably because you're completely unaware of them.

Most are, probably because FB/Cambridge Analytica/"the russians" didn't find it profitable to weaponize them LOL. Anyway here's what EFF had to say about Obama's efforts in this area in Sept 2009:

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

LEGISLATIVE ANALYSIS BY KEVIN BANKSTON
SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

On December 31, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that broadly expanded government surveillance authority in the wake of 9/11 are set to expire.1 The Obama Administration made clear in a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy that although the Justice Department supports reauthorization of those provisions, it is also open to discussing modifications to the law “to provide additional protection for the privacy of law abiding Americans.”

Today, Senators Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin — along with eight other Senators — have taken the Administration up on its offer by introducing the JUSTICE Act, which would rein in the worst excesses of PATRIOT and last year’s FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The announcement of the bill’s introduction, along with a fact sheet outlining the bill's details, is here; the text of the JUSTICE Act is here (the “JUSTICE”, if you’re wondering, stands for Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts”).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/eff-supports-justice

What became of this particular effort I don't know but before Ted Kennedy passed away they got a lot of reforms through including senate confirmation of the DIA. Good luck finding hide nor hair of any of it on Google, though. Weird, or maybe not.

[FreepFryer]

21. You seem awfully convinced of the ignorance of others. (n/t)

[FreepFryer]

22. Also when thinking in terms of what President Obama accomplished in this area,

I think my EFF artciel from 2017 might serve the function of a retrospective on the Obama administration’s accomplishments better than yours, from 2009.

Just sayin’.

[questionseverything]

14. this is what gets me

since the nsa gathers everything...how the heck does the fbi,cia,nsa let a criminal like trump run for the highest office in the land?

I am not saying the gathering is legal but if there was ever a need for it...trump pretty much personifies that need

[FreepFryer]

17. Exactly. Trump is the best argument AGAINST deep state conspiracy imaginable (n/t)

[NastyRiffraff]

12. Plus, Mueller was involved!

From the link above:

So I hung up the phone, immediately called my chief of staff, told him to get as many of my people as possible to the hospital immediately. I hung up, called Director Mueller and — with whom I’d been discussing this particular matter and had been a great help to me over that week — and told him what was happening. He said, I’ll meet you at the hospital right now.
(snip)
I went out in the hallway. Spoke to Director Mueller by phone. He was on his way. I handed the phone to the head of the security detail and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room.

Actually, the whole thing is worth reading. It reads like a Tom Clancy novel.

[ucrdem]

8. Basically a power struggle with Gonzalez

who he seems to have despised, I strongly suspect for the obvious reason. And if Comey thinks Bushler illustrates the values at the heart of ethical leadership he's a bigger jerk than I realized.

[Lil Missy]

9. I doubt jr. even knew what President Cheney was doing. n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

10. I think this is why Comey was selected

by Obama for Director after Obama could not extend Mueller's term any further (Mueller's 10 year term was up in 2011 and Obama was able to get Congress to pass a special extension for an additional 2 years).

[pecosbob]

7. Too bad you couldn't have done the same during the election

If you hadn't torpedoed Clinton we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[Eliot Rosewater]

11. And that bullshit excuse he gives that if he doesnt do it she would be a weak president.

Jesus man, just admit you hate the Clinton's and be done with it.

[lunamagica]

16. He's been after them since the Whitewater days

[questionseverything]

18. i think he truely didn't want to give the neo cons ammo to use against her but

we have got to stop worrying about what repubs might say

[sandensea]

20. ONE, I would say.