Michael Chertoff

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Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and co-author of the 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 succeeded Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005.

Since leaving government service, Chertoff has worked as Senior Of Counsel at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling. He also co-founded the Chertoff Group, a risk management and security consulting company, which employs several senior officials from his time as Secretary of Homeland Security as well as Michael Hayden, a former Director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Early life
Chertoff was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff (1915–1996), the former leader of the Congregation B'nai Israel in Elizabeth and Talmud scholar, and Livia Chertoff (née Eisen), El Al flight attendant. Michael's father, Gershon, was the first child of Paul Chertoff from Russia, and Esther Barish, from Romania, according to the 1930 U.S. Census. His paternal grandfather, Rabbi Paul Chertoff (emigrated with his parents from czarist Russia, present day Belarus) was a noted Talmud scholar.

Chertoff went to the Jewish Educational Center in Elizabeth as well as the Pingry School. He later attended Harvard University, where he was a research assistant on John Hart Ely's book Democracy and Distrust, graduating in 1975. He spent one year of this studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. 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.

Public service
In September 1986 as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chertoff together with U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani were instrumental in the crackdown on organized crime in the Mafia Commission Trial.

In 1990, Chertoff was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. Among his most important cases, in 1992 Chertoff put second-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.

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.

Chertoff is the co-author, along with Viet Dinh, of the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law October 26, 2001.

Chertoff also led the prosecution's case against accounting firm Arthur Andersen for destroying documents relating to the Enron collapse. The 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.

When Chertoff faced Senate confirmation in 2003 for nomiation to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia by Bush on March 5, 2003, Hillary Clinton (then a Senator from New York) cast the lone dissenting vote against Chertoff's confirmation. He was confirmed by the Senate 88-1 on June 9. Mrs. Clinton 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. .

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.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina most of the criticism was directed toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but DHS was criticized as well for its lack of preparation.

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.

Chertoff was asked by the Obama administration to stay in his post until 9 a.m. January 21, 2009 (one day after President Obama's inauguration), "to ensure a smooth transition".

Construction of border fence
In April 2008 Chertoff was criticized in a New York Times editorial for waiving the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and other environmental protection legislation to construct a 700 mi fence along the Mexico–United States 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."

According to New York Times columnist Adam Liptak, 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," Liptak wrote.

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."

Actions regarding illegal immigration
In September 2007, Chertoff told a House committee that the DHS would not tolerate interference by sanctuary cities that would block the "Basic Pilot Program", which requires some types of employers to validate the legal status of their workers. He said that the DHS is exploring its legal options and intends to take action to prevent any interference with the law.

In 2008 it became public that the housekeeping company Chertoff had hired to clean his house employed illegal immigrants.

Views on globalization
At the Global Creative Leadership Summit in 2009, Chertoff described globalization as a double-edged sword. Although globalization may help raise the standard of living for people around the world, Chertoff claims that it can also enable terrorists and transnational criminals. “The ocean is no longer a protective device,” Chertoff said.