Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey’s biography was, after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s memoir on the 2016 United States presidential election, arguably the next piece in the puzzle to explain why, against many expectations, real estate mogul Donald Trump won that race.
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership indeed provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the tumultuous events of that year, culminating in the shock result of Mr. Trump’s win. Yet the entire narrative is so resolutely cloaked in the garb of Mr. Comey’s ostensible commitment to “ethical leadership” that it is left to the reader to parse through the reams of self-praise in the book to identify where the charismatic FBI boss failed in terms of professional conduct.
Email on Hillary
If all you are interested in is the question of why Mr. Comey took that momentous decision to send to the U.S. Congress, on October 28, 2016, less than two weeks before voting day, a letter announcing that the investigation into Ms. Clinton’s use of a private email server was being reopened, then you can skip the first nine of 14 chapters of this book.
This bulky first section is an expansive, preachy account of a man who had innumerable brushes with the highest levels of power within the U.S. government, and frequently decried the lack of ethical leadership, based on the “lasting values” of “integrity and truth-telling,” and on inspiring others through guilt and affection rather than fear.
While, by all accounts, including this one, Mr. Comey enjoyed a successful tenure in his influential position until mid-2015, it was during the following year that his troubles seemed to begin. That was the period when the FBI launched a full-fledged investigation into whether, while using a private email server at her residence in Chappaqua, New York, Ms. Clinton compromised U.S. national security by discussing classified information with her staff and others.
Readers familiar with U.S. political institutions may feel an alarm bell going off when they read, in Chapter 10, that Mr. Comey decided to make a press statement on July 5, 2016, to the effect that the FBI was closing the investigation of Ms. Clinton’s emails after finding no evidence of wrongdoing. In his note to Bureau staff he explained, “I am doing that because I think the confidence of the American people in the FBI is a precious thing, and I want them to understand that we did this investigation in a competent, honest and independent way.”
This remark exposes the deepest flaw in Mr. Comey’s understanding of his role at the Bureau — nowhere is it written that the job of the Director is to protect the institution’s political reputation, that by assuming for himself the mission of rising above bitter, partisan politics, Mr. Comey had any business inserting himself right in the middle of it. His actions on that day, which would be echoed in his fateful actions in October, directly contravene the notion that the role of the FBI is purely to investigate, and it is the prerogative of the Department of Justice, then headed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to fight these ugly political brawls resulting from such investigations.
Political actions
Perhaps the genesis of Mr. Comey’s proclivity to make political interventions while proclaiming his apolitical credentials stemmed from his first tenure in government, serving as Deputy Attorney General at the White House. His telling of the tale of the Central Intelligence Agency successfully outmanoeuvring his efforts to walk back the spy agency’s post-9/11 inmate torture programme speaks of his immense frustration and disappointment, feelings that doubtless led to him quitting the public sector in 2005.
In the end it was perhaps Mr. Comey’s conviction — and it appears to be the genuine belief of a well-intentioned man — that he had responsibility to protect the FBI’s reputation through one of the most negative election campaigns seen in recent decades, that led him to send that letter to the U.S. Congress.
In it he noted that Ms. Clinton’s emails had resurfaced in an unrelated case pertaining to disgraced former New York lawmaker Anthony Weiner, whose ex-wife Huma Abedin was a close aide of Ms. Clinton’s, and that the Bureau needed time to analyse whether there was any further relevant evidence among those emails pertaining to the case that the FBI had closed in July.
While he issued yet another note to Congress days later, announcing that the FBI had after all not found any such evidence, the damage had probably already been done to Ms. Clinton’s campaign, as indeed her communications adviser Jennifer Palmieri noted, after Mr. Comey’s book came out.
The final few chapters of A Higher Loyalty shift gear to outline his clashes with Mr. Trump, the 45th President’s demand that Mr. Comey show “loyalty” to him, and his irreconcilable differences with what he considered Mr. Trump’s dishonest and morally indefensible leadership style.
Yet notwithstanding this 290-page explanation of “What Happened” in 2016, and the fact that a myriad of forces resulted in Mr. Trump’s victory, there is little doubt that Mr. Comey will go down in history as the man who broke the Democratic dream of 2016, of America celebrating its first-ever woman President.
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership ; James Comey, Pan Macmillan, ₹799.
