Higher Loyalty, by James Comey: on Government Reform


Bill Clinton: OpEd: Obstruction of justice often used for convenient

It took the prosecutor three years of litigation to get to a place where he charged, tried, and convicted Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby of making false statements in a federal investigation, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Republican loyalists howled that he was persecuting Libby because prosecutors could never prove the underlying crime--the intentional leaking of a covert agent's name [Valerie Plame, a CIA operative] with prior knowledge of its illegality. Of course, these were the same Republicans who passionately believed that President Bill Clinton's lies under oath over an affair with an intern simply had to be pursued, because obstruction of justice and perjury strike at the core of our system. Meanwhile, Democrats who six years earlier attacked the case against Bill Clinton as a silly lie about sex, had discovered in the Libby case that they cared deeply about obstruction of justice crimes-- when the instructors were Republicans.
Source: A Higher Loyalty, p. 73, by James Comey Apr 17, 2018

Dick Cheney: OpEd: Obstruction of justice often used for convenient

It took the prosecutor three years of litigation to get to a place where he charged, tried, and convicted Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby of making false statements in a federal investigation, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Republican loyalists howled that he was persecuting Libby because prosecutors could never prove the underlying crime--the intentional leaking of a covert agent's name [Valerie Plame, a CIA operative] with prior knowledge of its illegality. Of course, these were the same Republicans who passionately believed that President Bill Clinton's lies under oath over an affair with an intern simply had to be pursued, because obstruction of justice and perjury strike at the core of our system. Meanwhile, Democrats who six years earlier attacked the case against Bill Clinton as a silly lie about sex, had discovered in the Libby case that they cared deeply about obstruction of justice crimes-- when the instructors were Republicans.
Source: A Higher Loyalty, p. 73, by James Comey Apr 17, 2018

James Comey: Identified top down problem with FBI--leadership

My travels around the country and the world taught me something else: the FBI's leaders weren't good enough. In the private sector, I had learned that the best organizations obsess over leadership talent-- they hunt for it, test it, train it, and make it part of every conversation. They treat leadership talent like money. At the FBI, though, leadership was largely an afterthought. For decades, the organization counted on good people volunteering to be leaders and then putting up with all the family moves and time at Washington headquarters that required. Fortunately, many good people volunteered. But that kind of approach was also a recipe for people becoming leaders to escape a job they weren't doing well or people being promoted by their bosses to get rid of them. I discovered from listening to the employees that we had some great leaders, some crappy leaders, and everything in between that was simply not acceptable for an organization as important as the FBI.
Source: A Higher Loyalty, p.129-30, by James Comey Apr 17, 2018

James Comey: Put formula in place to develop ethical leaders

With broad support across the organization, I was going to drive leadership into every corner and every conversation in the FBI, until we were consistently excellent, across all roles and at all levels. We would teach that great leaders:
  1. people of integrity and decency
  2. confident enough to be humble
  3. both kind and tough;
  4. transparent; and
  5. aware that we all seek meaning in work. We would also teach them that
  6. what they say is important, but what they do is more important, because their people are always watching them. In short, we would demand and develop ethical leaders.
Source: A Higher Loyalty, p.130, by James Comey Apr 17, 2018

  • The above quotations are from Higher Loyalty
    Truth, Lies, and Leadership
    by James Comey    .
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Page last updated: Oct 10, 2018