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Bush names judge as homeland security secretary { January 12 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/politics/12home.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/politics/12home.html
January 12, 2005
THE OVERVIEW
Bush Names Judge as Homeland Security Secretary
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - President Bush on Tuesday nominated Michael Chertoff, a federal appeals judge and former prosecutor who helped oversee the Justice Department's antiterrorism efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks, to succeed Tom Ridge as homeland security secretary.
Mr. Bush made the announcement a month and a day after his original choice to succeed Mr. Ridge, Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, withdrew his nomination amid legal and ethical questions.
In Judge Chertoff, Mr. Bush chose another veteran of law enforcement in the New York region who, as the president pointedly noted, has been confirmed three times by the Senate to previous posts, the last in 2003.
"When Mike is confirmed by the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security will be led by a practical organizer, a skilled manager and a brilliant thinker," Mr. Bush said.
He praised Judge Chertoff as having an "impressive record of cutting through red tape and moving organizations into action."
In brief remarks, Judge Chertoff recalled helping respond to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as head of the criminal division at the Justice Department and said that if confirmed, "I will be proud to stand again with the men and women who form our front line against terror."
Judge Chertoff has a well-documented if at times controversial record on issues related to fighting terrorism. As the Justice Department, he favored aggressive steps like holding Muslim immigrants for questioning and passage of the USA Patriot Act to give the government more antiterrorism tools.
In 2003, he argued before an appeals court that a terror suspect who faced a federal trial, Zacarias Moussaoui, was not entitled to question an operative of Al Qaeda who was held overseas as an enemy combatant.
Mr. Moussaoui's case, which has stalled, and the collapse of a terrorism case in Detroit amid accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, are among the few missteps in a record that includes the successful prosecutions of John Walker Lindh, an American captured in Afghanistan, and accused Qaeda sympathizers in Lackawanna, N.Y.
Since leaving the Justice Department, Judge Chertoff has questioned the administration's policy of holding enemy combatants indefinitely without charge or trial.
"We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of determining when, why and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy combatant, and what judicial review should be available," he wrote in The Weekly Standard in December 2003.
Judge Chertoff was the administration's leading prosecutor on corporate fraud, leading the case in the Enron scandal that led to the collapse of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm. At one point, the White House considered appointing him to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.
At the Homeland Security Department, Judge Chertoff will confront a sprawling bureaucracy created out of 22 agencies to protect against another terrorist strike. Mr. Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania who informed Mr. Bush after the election that he intended to step down, was widely credited with getting the department up and running. There has been no terrorist attack on his watch.
But many Democrats and some Republicans faulted Mr. Ridge as not doing enough to fight for bigger budgets or to improve security at nuclear and chemical plants and ports.
Judge Chertoff's nomination is sure to draw intense scrutiny from the New York Congressional delegation, given New York City's status as a primary terrorism target and the region's efforts to assure that it receives what it considers its fair share of money to improve security.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that in a conversation on Tuesday Judge Chertoff acknowledged the need to make the full financing and improved coordination of security issues "a very high priority."
The nomination was generally well received on Capitol Hill, where members of both parties predicted that he would be confirmed.
A former federal prosecutor in New York and New Jersey, Judge Chertoff was confirmed in 2003 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, 88 to 1.
The lone vote against him was by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who had tangled with him while he was special counsel to the Senate panel that investigated the Whitewater affair in Bill Clinton's presidency. In a statement, Mrs. Clinton said she would give the nomination "careful consideration."
The son of a New Jersey rabbi, Judge Chertoff has earned a reputation as a tough-minded prosecutor with a razor-sharp legal mind. He led the prosecution of Sol Wachtler, who was chief justice of New York, for harassing a former lover and threatening to kidnap her daughter.
His tactics have sometimes drawn criticism, particularly when he became a chief architect of the legal response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the collapse of Mr. Kerik's nomination, Judge Chertoff represents a safe choice because he is such a known quantity here.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the White House had originally been under the impression that Judge Chertoff would be unwilling to give up his seat on the federal bench, which has lifetime tenure. But Mr. McClellan said that when the White House contacted Judge Chertoff, he signaled he would be interested in the domestic security post.
Mr. Bush met Judge Chertoff on Saturday morning at the White House to discuss the post, Mr. McClellan said. The White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., then spoke with Judge Chertoff. On Sunday morning, the president called Judge Chertoff to offer the post, Mr. McClellan said.
As a federal prosecutor in New Jersey, Judge Chertoff oversaw organized crime prosecutions but was perhaps best known for his case against "Crazy Eddie" Antar, an appliance dealer whose photo later hung on his wall at the Justice Department.
At the department, Judge Chertoff was responsible for essentially reshaping its mission after Sept. 11, adopting a much more aggressive policy intended to prevent attacks rather than simply prosecuting them after they were carried out.
He helped lead the push to expand surveillance under the Patriot Act. That law and the broader push to increase government power to fight terrorists, drew criticism that the administration was sacrificing civil liberties. Judge Chertoff was among those often cited by critics for having pushed the pendulum too far. In the administration, he won high marks.
"Mike was a true agent of change after 9/11, and he took us into a mindset of prevention," said Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice Department official who also worked with Judge Chertoff on the Whitewater case. "He can do the same thing with homeland security, develop a vision and a consensus and build toward that, moving from disparate components with different interests into a common mission. That will be his first order of business, not to consolidate but to coordinate."
If confirmed, Judge Chertoff faces the task of easing the growing pains of an agency that answers to many masters. More than 80 Congressional panels claim oversight. Internal audits have pointed to failings in areas like developing a watch list and ensuring cost-effective contracts.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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