Posted on 01/11/2005 6:41:46 AM PST by crushelits
Michael Chertnof - New HomeLand Security Secretary per Fox News
Sounds like an excellent choice in spite of your preference for Sheriff Andy or Barney.
Critics who whine about him being a right wing ideologe convince me that he is EXACTLY what is needed there. His enemies are my enemies.
None of the prerequisites you note him lacking are relevent to administering a huge bureaucracy. J. Edgar Hoover was just another lawyer when he was named head of the FBI. I doubt that any experienced lawman could have done as well as he.
I remember some of his questioning and he was like a pit bull. If anybody but Damato had been chairman of that committee, he might have found out something. Damato was a usful idiot for the dems. Instead the entire hearing became a farce and set the stage for all the coverups that followed and lent victim status to the Clintons and their henchmen. IMHO
This is a phenomenal pick. Chertoff is TOP DRAWER. Brilliant, engaging, has worked the press in the past, good conservative credentials, but not an ideologue. Bush could not have made a better pick for this post.
I remember this as clearly as I'm sitting here right now. The following doesn't really convey it, but the Senate hearing went into complete meltdown. Sarbanes and D'Amato were both yelling at Chertoff.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/967rwskg.asp?pg=2
On February 7, 1996, majority counsel Michael Chertoff posed a series of eerily prescient questions to Webster Hubbell in a televised hearing before the Senate Whitewater committee. Chertoff asked Hubbell, who had been brought up from prison in Maryland to testify, about his employment prospects following his release from prison.
"Are you familiar with a group called the Lippo Group?" Chertoff asked. This was the first public inquiry into a matter that would, seven months later, break out into the Clinton campaign-finance scandal. In February 1996, no one outside the financial community knew much about the Indonesian conglomerate run by Mochtar Riady and his son James. And no one outside the
Clinton Arkansas circle knew much about the many, many connections between Lippo and the Clinton crowd--connections apparently based on the flow of Lippo-linked cash into Democratic political operations and rewards for it from the Clinton team in the form of access and influence.
Hubbell responded that an affiliate of the Lippo Group had been a client of his between his resignation from Justice and his guilty plea.
"Did you have other clients?" Chertoff asked.
"Yes," Hubbell replied.
When Democratic senator Paul Sarbanes asked Chertoff what the relevance of all this might be, Chertoff said he was interested in knowing whether the money Hubbell received "may have had an impact on your degree of cooperation with the independent counsel or with us." (At Hubbell's sentencing after his plea agreement, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr had asked for no leniency--a clear signal that Starr didn't believe Hubbell was cooperating fully with his investigation.)
Hubbell protested vigorously, and committee chairman Alfonse D'Amato ruled that any further questions along these lines would be addressed in private depositions.
Do you remember he was smirking when he asked Hubbell the questions?
As the above-referenced Weekly Standard says, he didn't know what exectly it was, but Chertoff knew he was on to something.
Time will tell of course, but I believe he's an excellent choice.
I think so. :-)
My memory is rather fuzzy but I do remember that. And I was really frustrated when Damato called a halt to it. My husband and I both at the same time said, "The fix is in." That particular incident set the stage for all hearings after that, don't you think?
Are you series? What's your point?
I hope so. She will be having bad dreams for a while.
This guy does know where alllllll the liberals bury their skeletons, who is who and what is what.
I can't imagine what Richard Ben-Veniste and the wall builder Gorelick must be thinking.
Wouldn't the fact that they produced fraudulent documents to obtain legal entry to this country, be considered illegal entry, therefore illegal aliens??
Just got home; thanks for the ping on this guy. Looks like a good pick.
I wonder if Bill will have time to "counsel" Hillary.
My point is simply that the immigration status of the 9/11 hijackers had nothing to do with the homeland security of this country.
Sorry, the initial posts made it sound like he was still holding a post in the AG's office. Apologize for my confusion.
What is your definition of fraudulent documents? I stand by my point - not one of the hijackers originally entered this country illegally.
Still. Quite a stretch to go from a cop to a Harvard Law Review Editor. What a change in philosophy.
That alone is a scary thing but since I don't know him I will yield to the jubilation of FReepers more informed about his qualities....for now.
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