Reply #9: Worked under Rudy

[Mabus]

Serving under U.S. Attorney Giuliani in the 1980s, Chertoff prosecuted the former boss of the Genovese crime family. He also put the founder of Crazy Eddie electronics behind bars for stock fraud. http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/35510p-33570c.html

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Attorney General John Ashcroft, 60, is the Justice Department's public face, the former politician who relishes the spotlight. Next in line is Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. But Chertoff, 48, a former U.S. attorney and defense lawyer who oversees the department's Criminal Division, is the legal strategist who has quietly played a key role in decisions to:

* Increase FBI agents' authority to conduct domestic surveillance, changing a decades-old approach that limited investigations of political and religious groups.
* Use immigration regulations and "material witness" warrants to secretly lock up hundreds of Middle Easterners. Before Sept. 11, such warrants were used largely to ensure that witnesses would appear in court.
* Interview thousands of Middle Eastern men who entered the USA before and after the attacks. Arab-American groups say the strategy amounted to a roundup of new immigrants singled out because of their ethnicity.
* Launch the case against Moussaoui despite the FBI's concern that agents hadn't found a direct link between him and any of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. In court, Moussaoui has acknowledged being a member of the al-Qaeda terrorist network but has said he was not involved in the attacks.
* Prosecute Moussaoui and American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh here, in a pro-government court district near Washington, rather than in New York, where the nation's biggest terrorism trials had been held. Chertoff was a key player in talks with Lindh's attorneys last month when Lindh pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and agreed to serve 20 years in prison.

Ashcroft has been a frequent target of civil libertarians who say the Bush administration is using the war on terrorism to stifle individual rights. But Chertoff's role hasn't gone unnoticed.

"Chertoff has bought into a very simplistic rationale for an egregious assault on civil liberties," says Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national office in Washington, D.C. "He's not as flashy or prone to hyperbole as Ashcroft, but he still embraces a very scary 'damn the Bill of Rights' attitude." http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-13-chertoff_x.htm