Michael Chertoff

Michael Chertoff
2nd United States Secretary of Homeland Security
Incumbent
Assumed office February 15, 2005
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	Tom Ridge
Personal details
Born	(1953-11-28) November 28, 1953 Elizabeth, New Jersey
Political party	Republican

Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) is the current United States Secretary of Homeland Security. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals, as a federal prosecutor, and as assistant U.S. Attorney General. He was nominated to succeed Tom Ridge as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush on January 11, 2005. His nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 15, 2005, in a unanimous 98-0 vote, and Chertoff was sworn into office the same day (although a ceremonial swearing-in presided over by Bush took place on March 3).

Chertoff is the subject of high-profile speculation as a possible successor to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, should Gonzales resign his post in the wake of the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.

Chertoff is Jewish and is married to Meryl Justin. They have two children and live in Potomac, Maryland.

Early history

Chertoff was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff, the former leader of the B'nai Israel Congregation in Elizabeth, and El Al flight attendant Livia Chertoff (née Eisen). His paternal grandfather, Rabbi Paul Chertoff, emigrated from Russia. His grandfather was a noted Talmudic scholar.

Chertoff went to The Pingry School. He later attended Harvard University, where he was a research assistant on John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust, graduating in 1975. He then graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1978, going on to clerk for appellate judge Murray Gurfein for a year before clerking for United States Supreme Court justice William Brennan from 1979 to 1980. He worked in private practice with Latham & Watkins from 1980 to 1983 before being hired as a prosecutor by Rudolph Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, working on Mafia and political corruption-related cases. In the mid 1990s, Chertoff returned to Latham & Watkins for a brief period, founding the firm's office in Newark, New Jersey.

Public service

In September 1986 as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Michael Chertoff together with U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani were instrumental in putting the American (Italian) Mafia on trial. Mafia Don John Gotti had been locked in prison without bail since May 1986, only a few months after he allegedly took control of the Gambino gang following the murder of the previous boss, Paul Castellano. It was the start of the cleanup of that generation of Italian Mafia in New York and Chicago. "Hitting the Mafia", ED MAGNUSON, Sep. 29, 1986 issue of TIME magazine

Chertoff was appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 as United States Attorney for the state in 1990. In 1992 Chertoff put 2nd term Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann in federal prison for over two years on charges of defrauding money from a savings and loan scam. McCann, an Irish born Jersey native, inflamed and insulted the leading prosecutor: "It will become obvious that they were insane to bring this case in the first place. And we are going to send Mr. Chertoff back to preparing wills. Maybe I can find him a job driving a sanitation truck in Jersey City." McCann never was able to run for office again being a convicted felon. Five-Finger Discount: "A Crooked Family History", Helene Stapinski, (c)2002, page 203Jersey City Reporter, "McCann - no holds barred", Ricardo Kaulessar 01/21/2005

Chertoff was asked to stay in his position when the Clinton administration took office in 1993, at the request of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley; he was the only U.S. attorney not replaced. Chertoff stayed with the U.S. Attorney's office until 1994, when he entered private practice, returning to Latham & Watkins as a partner.

Despite his friendly relationship with some Democrats, during the Whitewater scandal investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chertoff was special counsel for the Senate Whitewater Committee studying allegations against the Clintons. When Chertoff faced Senate confirmation in 2003 for a federal judgeship, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a Senator from New York, cast the lone dissenting vote against Chertoff's confirmation. She explained that her vote was in protest of the way junior White House staffers were "very badly treated" by Chertoff's staff during the Whitewater investigation.

Chertoff is the co-author, along with Viet Dinh, of the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law October 26, 2001. As head of the Justice Department's criminal division, he advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the outer limits of legality in coercive interrogation sessions.

In 2000, Chertoff worked as special counsel to the New Jersey State Senate Judiciary Committee, investigating racial profiling in New Jersey. He also did some fundraising for George W. Bush and other Republicans during the 2000 election cycle and advised Bush's presidential campaign on criminal justice issues. From 2001 to 2003, he headed the criminal division of the Department of Justice, leading the prosecution's case against terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui and against accounting firm Arthur Andersen for destroying documents relating to the Enron collapse. His prosecution of Arthur Andersen was controversial, resulting in the collapse of the firm and the loss of employment by its 26,000 employees. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction and the case has not been retried. At the DOJ, he also came under fire as one of the chief architects of the Bush Administration's legal strategies in the War on Terror, particularly regarding the detainment of thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants. Chertoff was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia by Bush on March 5, 2003, and was confirmed by the Senate 88-1 on June 9.

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Michael Chertoff is sworn-in by George W. Bush

In late 2004, after the controversial Bernard Kerik was forced to decline President Bush's offer to replace the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, a lengthy search ensued to find a suitable replacement. Citing his experience with post-9/11 terror legislation, Bush nominated Chertoff to the post in January 2005. He was unanimously approved for the position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security by the Senate on February 15, 2005.

Most recently Chertoff has managed the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina. On the third of September, several days after the initial strike of the hurricane many (including the New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin) indicated severe dissatisfaction with the response from Washington, citing the delay between the general knowledge of the storm's likely impact and any effective federal response. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26 [1]; a week later, New Orleans remained in a state of chaos.

While defending the federal government's response in a September 3, 2005 press conference, Chertoff asserted that no one had ever predicted a disaster of this magnitude; however, warnings had in fact come for years from experts in the private sector as well as government agencies at all levels, including FEMA itself, who had identified a disaster such as this as one of the three most likely catastrophes to strike the US. CNN: [2] Houston Chronicle: [3].

Chertoff was the Bush administration's point man for pushing the comprehensive immigration reform bill, a measure that stalled in the Senate in June 2007. Later, Chertoff promised that he would begin to enforce existing immigration law while still wanting to reward illegal aliens with a path to citizenship for violating American laws. Six years after September 11, 2001, the southern border remains completely out of control and America has been transformed into a bilingual country with massive illegal behavior and 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants.[4]

External links

Official

• Department of Homeland Security biography

Nomination

• President Nominates Michael Chertoff as Secretary of Homeland Security transcript
• Bush names new US security chief
• Homeland Security by the Colors

Hurricane Katrina

• Memo from Chertoff to other federal agencies issued on August 30
• U.S. Aid Effort Criticized in New Orleans

Other news reports

• Michael Chertoff's Profile in BBC

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