January 11, 2005 | New Homeland Security Nominee

President Bush has announced that federal appeals court justice, Michael Chertoff, will be his new nominee for the top spot at the Department of Homeland Security.

Chertoff, now a judge on the Third Circuit, previously served in Ashcroft's Justice Department.

Judge Chertoff, 51, is a native of Elizabeth, N.J. He was United States attorney for New Jersey from 1990 to 1994. Early in his career, he was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, who had served on the New Jersey Supreme Court.

In recent years, he has been best known for helping to craft the Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Chertoff, who was head of the Justice Department's criminal division, was a proponent of military tribunals to try prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba after the American-led campaign in Afghanistan.

Mr. Chertoff insisted, in the face of criticism, that the administration's tactics were constitutional as well as prudent. Early in 2002, he said he was adhering to the orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had told him, "I want you to think outside the box, but I don't want you to think outside the Constitution."

Chertoff also served as the head counsel to the Republican investigation into Whitewater.

As I noted when contemplating the possibility of Asa Hutchinson, the Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security, taking over the post, the Whitewater and Lewinsky blow-job investigation came in the 1990s as Al Qaida cells were planning attacks on this country.

I've yet to hear any prominent Republicans express the slightest bit of hindsight-driven remorse that they spent so much of their time in the years prior to barbarity of 9/11, focusing on whether Clinton fully answered their questions about his sex life.

I'm sure in the coming days, we will hear much more about Chertoff's role in drafting the Patriot Act and his involvement in the prosecution of alleged 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Despite Chertoff's legal qualifications, I tend to think, along with Slate's Fred Kaplan, that heading up DHS is different from heading up the Justice Department, and that the best choice would have been a person with experience in leading huge organizations. I don't think I would suggest Jack Welch, however, since the country couldn't afford him.

Finally, lest the memory hole swallow us, the last nominee, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik withdrew his nomination citing an undisclosed problem with having hired an undocumented nanny.

No one in the press or in Congress had said anything about this before he pulled his name, though they were starting to raise questions about his post 9/11 enrichment at Taser, his half-baked efforts to train security personnel in Iraq and the slush fund he controlled while in charge of jails in New York City.

No one has ever stepped forward to confirm the existence of the nanny.

TalkLeft has more on Chertoff and the confirmation process here.

Posted by Ryan Singel at January 11, 2005 08:26 AM

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