WASHINGTON–President Barack Obama on Friday will tap Jim Comey to serve as the next FBI Director, an appointment that has been widely anticipated. Comey has several Chicago connections: He is a 1985 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and, while a deputy attorney general during the Bush administration, he appointed former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, then based in Chicago, to head the Valerie Plame leak probe.
U. of C. article about Comey is HERE. With NSA snooping and government surveillance sure to come up in Comey’s confirmation hearing, a reminder of his role, from the U.of C. piece: “As Acting Attorney General when John Ashcroft, ’67, had been felled by a severe illness, Comey refused to renew the certification of the domestic surveillance operations of a national agency and intervened when others tried to persuade the hospitalized Ashcroft to overrule him.”
