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Senate easily confirms whitewate investigator { February 15 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/politics/15cnd-chertof.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/politics/15cnd-chertof.html
February 15, 2005
Senate Easily Confirms Nominee for Homeland Security
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - Michael Chertoff was confirmed without opposition today as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a vast bureaucracy that came into being after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Judge Chertoff, who has sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since 2003, will replace Tom Ridge, the department's first leader, who recently resigned citing personal reasons. Judge Chertoff's installation will complete the lineup of President Bush's cabinet for his second term.
Judge Chertoff's confirmation, by a vote of 98 to 0, was never in doubt. On Feb. 7, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee endorsed him without a dissenting vote, although one Democratic member, Carl Levin of Michigan, voted "present" to protest what he said was the Department of Justice's lack of candor about harsh questioning of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Mr. Levin unsuccessfully sought access to a 2004 internal F.B.I. document about interrogation practices at Guantánamo, an action that delayed the confirmation vote by a few days. Today, Mr. Levin voted to confirm the nominee.
So did Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, who cast the only vote against him in June 2003, when he was confirmed as a judge on the Third Circuit. She had clashed with him when he was a special counsel to the Senate's Whitewater Committee, which investigated some of the business affairs of Mrs. Clinton and her husband, President Bill Clinton.
Judge Chertoff was head of the Justice Department's criminal division at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and he strongly supported a crackdown that swept hundreds of people into detention afterward. He did not repudiate that approach during his confirmation hearings, but said his directives had not always been carried out appropriately.
The nominee conceded that federal authorities had at times acted in a "wholly unacceptable" way, arresting immigrants on questionable tips, not always providing quick access to lawyers and sometimes engaging in outright abuse. His comments satisfied lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
"I have faith in Judge Chertoff," Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader, said today before the vote. Mr. Reid said he was impressed by the judge's willingness to give up lifetime tenure as a federal judge to take a cabinet post that
The majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, praised the nominee's "long and distinguished career" and predicted that he would be a fine secretary.
Judge Chertoff, 51, was the United States attorney for New Jersey in the early 1990's. Before that, he was an assistant United States attorney, both in New Jersey and in New York. Earlier in his career, he was a clerk on the Supreme Court to Justice William J. Brennan.
President Bush's first choice for a successor to Secretary Ridge, Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, withdrew from consideration amid publicity about legal and ethical issues.
Today's vote marked the fourth time that Judge Chertoff has won Senate confirmation. In addition to the June 2003 confirmation for a seat on the Third Circuit, which covers Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the Virgin Islands, he was confirmed as assistant attorney general and as United States attorney.
The two senators who did not vote today were Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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