Jump to content

Michael Chertoff

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pilotguy (talk | contribs) at 03:29, 15 July 2008 (→Secretary of Homeland Security: quotation farm!!!!!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Michael Chertoff
2nd Secretary of Homeland Security
Incumbent
Assumed office
February 15, 2005
PresidentGeorge W. Bush
Preceded byTom Ridge
Personal details
Born (1953-11-28) November 28, 1953 (age 70)
Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States
Political partyRepublican
SpouseMeryl Chertoff
ChildrenTwo
Alma materHarvard College
Harvard Law School
OccupationAttorney
WebsiteDHS Official
From 1979-1980 he served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.

Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) is the current United States Secretary of Homeland Security, and co-author of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act.

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 United States Secretary 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).

He has been widely criticized by civil liberties groups and human rights organizations for his role in authoring the USA PATRIOT Act, his policies as Secretary of Homeland Security, and his role in advising the Central Intelligence Agency on the use of torture. He has also been criticized for the Department of Homeland Security's inaction following Hurricane Katrina, and in 2008 he raised the ire of environmental groups for suspending environmental oversight of the construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border (Chertoff issued waivers allowing the Department of Homeland Security to ignore a total of 30 laws, including laws protecting the environment, Native American graves, and religious freedom).[1] [2]

Early history and personal life

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, was a noted Talmud scholar.[3] By virtue of his parentage (his mother was an Israeli immigrant), Chertoff holds dual Israeli and American citizenship.[4] However, it is unclear whether Chertoff has ever exercised his Israeli citizenship (for example, through the acquisition of an Israeli passport).

Chertoff went to the Jewish Educational Center in Elizabeth as well as the 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.

Chertoff and his wife Meryl Justin have two children and live in Potomac, Maryland. Prior to his appointment at Homeland Security, Chertoff was a resident of Westfield, New Jersey.[5]

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. Chertoff was appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 as United States Attorney for the state in 1990. Among his most important cases, 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. Chertoff was asked to stay in his position when the Clinton administration took office in 1993, at the request of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley[citation needed]; he was the only U.S. attorney not replaced[citation needed]. 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, Chertoff took an active role in the Whitewater investigation against Bill and Hillary Clinton: he 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[citation needed].

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 use of torture.

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, as the firm was effectively dissolved, resulting in the loss of 26,000 jobs. 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.

Secretary of Homeland Security

File:Chertoffinaug.JPG
Michael Chertoff is sworn-in by George W. Bush

In late 2004, the controversial Bernard Kerik was forced to decline President Bush's offer to replace Tom Ridge, the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security. After a lengthy search to find a suitable replacement, Bush nominated Chertoff to the post in January 2005 citing his experience with post-9/11 terror legislation. He was unanimously approved for the position by the United States Senate on February 15, 2005.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

Chertoff was criticized for his inaction during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although much criticism was directed toward Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown, the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina lay much of the blame on FEMA's parent agency, but also criticized DHS for a lack of preparation on its part as well.[12] While defending the federal government's response to the hurricane in a September 3, 2005 press conference, Chertoff asserted "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." Although New Orleans only experienced Cat 3 hurricane winds and storm surge from Katrina, warnings of the levee's vulnerability to Cat 4 and above hurricanes had 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.[13][14][15]

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.[16]

As of the outset of 2008, Chertoff's summary of the structure, accomplishments and goals of the Department of Homeland Security, were laid out in his 2009 Budget proposal. A searchable transcript of the press conference of February 4, 2008, introducing that proposal, and related documents, have been assembled at http://www.biometricbits.com/DHS-2009-Budget-Docs.pdf.

In a press conference[17] on January 11, 2008, Chertoff announced the rules[18] he issued with regard to the "Real ID" system for national standards relating to proof of identity of persons within or entering or leaving the United States. The press conference statement[19] and the ensuing question period[20] are also available as mp3 sound recordings.

Waivers Issued by Chertoff Allowing DHS to Ignore Laws in Order to Construct Border Fence

In April, 2008 Chertoff was chastised in a lead editorial in the New York Times entitled Michael Chertoff's Insult for waiving the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and other environmental protections in a rush to construct a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border. The Times wrote: "To the long list of things the Bush administration is willing to trash in its rush to appease immigration hard-liners, you can now add dozens of important environmental laws and hundreds of thousands of acres of fragile habitat on the southern border."

A New York Times cover story written by Adam Liptak went on to explain that the list of laws from which Chertoff had excluded the Department of Homeland Security "included laws protecting the environment, endangered species, migratory birds, the bald eagle, antiquities, farms, deserts, forests, Native American graves and religious freedom."[21]

"Securing the nation's borders is so important, Congress says, that Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, must have the power to ignore any laws that stand in the way of building a border fence. Any laws at all," the Times news story explained.

A report issued by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan research division of the Library of Congress, said that the unchecked delegation of powers to Chertoff was unprecedented: "After a review of federal law, primarily through electronic database searches and consultations with various CRS experts, we were unable to locate a waiver provision identical to that of §102 of H.R. 418—i.e., a provision that contains 'notwithstanding language,' provides a secretary of an executive agency the authority to waive all laws such secretary determines necessary, and directs the secretary to waive such laws."[22]

Actions regarding illegal immigration

On September 5, 2007 Chertoff told a House committee that "I certainly wouldn't tolerate interference" by sanctuary cities that would block his "Basic Pilot Program" that requires employers to validate the legal status of their workers. "We're exploring our legal options. I intend to take as vigorous legal action as the law allows to prevent that from happening, prevent that kind of interference." [23]

See also

References

  1. ^ Michael Chertoff's Insult - New York Times
  2. ^ Power to Build Border Fence Is Above U.S. Law - New York Times
  3. ^ Marek, Angie C. "A New Sheriff in Town", U.S. News & World Report, July 10, 2005. Accessed May 16, 2008. "A rabbi's son, he was born in blue-collar Elizabeth, N.J. Worshipers from Elizabeth's former Congregation Bnai Israel remember Chertoff's father, Gershon Chertoff, as a man with a vast collection of books and a keen interest in current events. Michael's grandfather Paul Chertoff, also a rabbi, was a professor of the Talmud, the collected writings that constitute Jewish civil and religious law."
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ PoliticsNJ.com Inside the Beltway, accessed December 20, 2006. "...Michael Chertoff of Westfield was appointed U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security..."
  6. ^ Keeping its head above water: New Orleans faces doomsday scenario Dec 1, 2001
  7. ^ Department of Homeland Security biography February 15, 2005
  8. ^ President Nominates Michael Chertoff as Secretary of Homeland Security transcript January 11, 2005
  9. ^ Bush names new US security chief 11 January, 2005
  10. ^ Homeland Security by the Colors January 13, 2005
  11. ^ Michael Chertoff's Profile in BBC 11 January, 2005
  12. ^ Executive Summary, Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006-2-15, U.S. Government Printing Office, Retrieved 2007-6-11
  13. ^ Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist September 5, 2005
  14. ^ Memo from Chertoff to other federal agencies August 30, 2005
  15. ^ U.S. Aid Effort Criticized in New Orleans September 1, 2005
  16. ^ Chertoff, Bush Look for Next Move on Immigration June 8, 2007
  17. ^ Searchable Text of Real ID Press Conference January 11, 2008
  18. ^ Searchable text of Real ID regulations January 11, 2008
  19. ^ MP3 recording of statement to pressJanuary 11,2008
  20. ^ MP3 recording of Chertoff responses to press questions January 11, 2008
  21. ^ Power to Build Border Fence Is Above U.S. Law - New York Times
  22. ^ http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20080408_CRS_report.pdf
  23. ^ Chertoff Warns Sanctuary Cities on Illegals "NewsMax" September 6, 2007
Template:U.S. Secretary box
Preceded by Presidential Line of Succession
16th in line 		Succeeded by
None
Preceded by United States order of precedence
as of 2007 		Succeeded by

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Chertoff&oldid=225732132"