Michael Chertoff Totally Explained

Everything about Michael Chertoff totally explained

Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) 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 as well as for his policies as Secretary of Homeland Security. 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).

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.
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.

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 2^nd 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; 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, 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.
   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 hasn't 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

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.
   Chertoff was criticized for his inaction during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although much criticism was directed toward Federal Emergency Management Agency 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. 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.
   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.
   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 on January 11, 2008, Chertoff announced the rules 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 and the ensuing question period 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." "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—for example, 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."

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."

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