Even bad guys like new top Justice official

By Shannon McCaffrey
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	James Comey
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Comey, confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday as the deputy attorney general, takes the reins at a Justice Department under fire for its anti-terrorism tactics and facing questions about its investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's name.

As deputy, Comey will have day-to-day control over the Justice Department and its vast empire of lawyers.

"He'll have his hands full," said Eric Holder, deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration. "There's a political component to this job unlike anything he's come up against yet."

Comey's role may be especially important because Attorney General John Ashcroft has been a lightning rod for a number of the administration's more controversial post-Sept. 11 initiatives.

Comey, 42, arrives with a reputation as tough but fair.

Those who know him paint a portrait of a man who's a hard-charging Elliot Ness-type and an affable 6-foot-8 prankster with a formidable jump shot, on occasional display against Ashcroft at the FBI gym.

Comey also is known as a deeply committed family man and father of five, ages 3 through 15.

Stewart's lawyer Robert Morvillo describes him as "the kind of guy you'd like to get a beer with at the end of the day."

Lawyer Bruce Cutler, who went head to head with Comey in the Gambino organized-crime trial in New York, said, "He's a smart, classy guy, not a zealot like Ashcroft."

Unlike Ashcroft, who was a Republican governor, U.S. senator and presidential hopeful, Comey also isn't overtly political.

That could help blunt criticism from some Democrats that Ashcroft's close ties to the White House prevent the Justice Department from aggressively investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the name of a covert CIA officer in an act of apparent political retaliation.

Comey has received rave reviews from Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Justice's toughest critic on the CIA matter.

Comey declined to be interviewed, but he outlined his views at his confirmation hearing.

"I don't care about politics. I don't care about expediency. I care about doing the right thing," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not everyone is impressed.

Christopher Dunn, legal counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Comey had been "a willing warrior of Ashcroft's assault on civil liberties" as U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

And Comey has been criticized for not pursuing insider-trading charges against Stewart. Some accused him of targeting Stewart to boost his profile.

Not so, said Comey's close friend Patrick Fitzgerald, who's the U.S. attorney in Chicago.

He recalled recently that Comey quietly slipped out of court during the Gambino case one afternoon to accept the "prosecutor of the year" award from the New York City Bar Association. The award earned Comey a memorable fan letter.

"You're a class act," read the note slipped to him from the defense table the next day. "No one deserves that award more than you."

The author was a mob hit man Comey was prosecuting.

"Jim exudes integrity. Even a hit man noticed it," Fitzgerald said.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company