Just Finished Reading: A Higher Loyalty – Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey (FP: 2018)

The present incumbent of the White House, despite his MANY faults has been very good for three things – First: He’s made US politics unmissable on TV, Second: He’s putting a LOT of lawyers kids through College and Third: He’s created a whole publishing industry on his own which is much appreciated by authors and publishing houses across the globe. But in spite of being honestly entranced by the car crash Presidency of Donald Trump (which is much more ‘entertaining’ than our own train wreck politics of Brexit – especially from thousands of miles away) I had decided long ago that I wouldn’t read any books about it – yet. Despite the publication of (most of) the Mueller Report, which I have downloaded but haven’t read yet, there’s still much we don’t know about everything that’s been going on in the last few years so any book about Trump is necessarily going to be incomplete or just wrong – at least in places. I certainly had (and have) no intention or reading any of the existing or future ‘kiss and tell’ narratives that seem to come out on a regular basis. But, as with many things in my life, I do make exceptions. This was one of them.

Now I know of Comey (as a Trump watcher how could I not) but I knew almost nothing about him prior to his firing as Head of the FBI by Trump not long into his tenure at the White House. This book fills in a lot more of that background. This is very much a biography of Comey rather than about Trump per se. Comey goes back to his childhood experiences, his time in College and his decision to follow a career in Law. There’s also some very personal and very emotional insights into his life as a husband and father and of losing a child. It all goes to the character of the man himself, of who he is and why he went down the route he did and the decisions he made. Throughout the book Comey focuses on Leadership – both good and bad – from grocery store owners to Mafia bosses (with whom he interacted regularly during his time in New York as an attorney with SDNY). What was obvious to me though was that, at least for the first half of the narrative, Comey was looking back over his life and looking at both incidents and people through the filter provided by his experiences with Trump. More than once he made parallels between his experiences with the Mob and with Trump’s White House and most especially with his experience of being asked to provide personal loyalty to the President.

The second half of the book was more contemporary and somewhat less personally biographical. Not surprisingly a good chunk of it related to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and especially the re-opening of the investigation just prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Also, not surprisingly, Comey goes into great detail and makes a great effort to defend himself against accusations of giving the election to Trump. I disagree with this assessment for several reasons. For one it is clear that Clinton sent a significant number highly classified e-mail over a non-secure network. She might have done so in ignorance (which is no real excuse) and may well have done so unintentionally. They may not have resulted in a security breach but still the e-mails were sent. So the question remains who was ultimately responsible and what happened about it. It seems that the answer was no one and nothing. I honestly found this shocking. If that had happened over here, no matter who sent them, heads would roll and the high level Minister would at least be sacked if not jailed. Second, I don’t honestly think the initial investigation nor its subsequent re-opening affected the 2016 election that much. Sure Clinton was expected to win and no one really thought Trump had a chance but in this case (not really a shocker there) the pundits were wrong. I think Trump won for two reasons: the major reason was that people all across the world (and not just in the US) are sick and tired of ‘Business as Usual’. There are groups of significant numbers of people who feel themselves to have been ignored and side-lined (mostly because they have been) by mainstream politicians who took the opportunity to get their own back in the 2016 Presidential election and here in the Brexit Vote. Both events are symptoms of a deeper problem that has yet to be addressed. In the US Trump offered them (admittedly false) hope. Clinton (as perceived) did not. The other ‘elephant’ in the room is, I think (as my perception from someone who only ‘followed’ the election from far away) the Bernie question. The animosity between Clinton and Bernie supporters was real. So when Bernie lost the nomination I’m guessing that at least some of his supporters just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the Democratic candidate so stayed at home. Despite winning the popular vote those stay at homes probably had enough of an impact (in conjunction with the much larger change factor) to ensure a Trump victory. Comey’s investigation of Hillary’s e-mail (I think) probably had a very minor impact blown out of proportion by the understandable size of the Democratic disappointment.

The final section of the book covered Comey’s shortened tenure as FBI Director first under Obama and then Trump. The contrasting styles between the two presidents could not have been starker and Comey brings this very much to the fore. When he was fired in May 2017 Comey was attending (or just about to attend) a recruitment event in LA. Fired with ‘immediate effect’ he first found out his new status as a private citizen when he saw it on a newscast being shown in the LA FBI building. At first he thought it was an elaborate joke. It wasn’t. Normally accompanied by armed guards and driven around in an armoured Suburban he was fully expecting to be dumped out on the street with no clear idea on how to get home to Washington. That, if nothing else, shows the kind of President he was expected to serve with loyalty.

From the perspective of someone lucky enough not to have ‘skin in the game’ this was an interesting a valuable insight not only into the Trump presidency but to US politics in general. I thought it very well written, rational and reasonable. Comey certainly explained his actions and thoughts well enough to understand them and agree with most if not all of them as something that I would have done in his place. After reading this I definitely feel the need for more insight and more analysis of the situation in the US and the wider western world. I’ll be looking to pick that up in the coming months (plans are already ‘a foot’). I shall definitely be picking up more books by ex-FBI and ex-Intelligence chiefs as they come out in paperback. I shall also be waiting to snap up the much needed later assessment (post 2020) of what exactly happened here and how it all fell apart in the end – presumably with a substantial index of who committed what crimes when and how long they expect to spend in prison because of it. Now that’ll be a book worth waiting for! Highly recommended for anyone interested in what’s really happening out there. (R6)