Michael Chertoff - Whitewater man is back

[TomClash]

Hillary’s Nemesis, Mean Mike Chertoff, Is Up for Homeland
by Lizzy Ratner

As political leaders from both sides of the aisle rushed to applaud the Bush administration’s Jan. 11 nomination of attorney Michael Chertoff as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, one powerful Democrat was missing from the cheering squad: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

While New York’s senior Senator, Charles Schumer, took just seven minutes to issue a giddy paean to Mr. Chertoff, Mrs. Clinton waited until midday to issue a decidedly cool, neutral statement. And though she avoided the kind of prickly language that would suggest she still carried a grudge against Mr. Chertoff—who played a leading role in the Whitewater investigations that roiled the Clinton administration for years—she also avoided praising the nominee. Instead, Mrs. Clinton seems to have chosen a third path—call it détente—indicating that while she may never feel warm and fuzzy about Mr. Chertoff, she could certainly work with him.

<snip>
Mrs. Clinton’s statement came at the end of a long day of speculation about how she would respond to the news that the President had tapped one of her arch foes for a top cabinet post. After all, the two have a long history, and Mrs. Clinton knows how to hold a grudge. In 2001, when the Senate voted to confirm Mr. Chertoff as head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, New York’s junior Senator cast the lone dissenting vote. Two years later, when the Senate voted 88 to 1 to approve Mr. Chertoff’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Mrs. Clinton was again the lone dissenter.

<snip>
The bad blood between Mrs. Clinton and the 51-year-old prosecutor stems from the tangled days when he served as chief counsel to Senator Alfonse D’Amato’s Senate Whitewater investigation committee. For more than two years, he chipped zealously away at the investigation that would ultimately metastasize into the Monica Lewinsky affair. Mr. Chertoff personally delved into the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. He also chased—and ultimately uncovered—the missing law-firm billing records that led directly to Mrs. Clinton’s testimony before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury.

<snip>
"During that time when he was on the staff of the committee in the Senate, a number of young people who worked in the White House were, I thought, very badly treated by the Senate staff investigating Whitewater," she told Mr. King. "And a number of those people were put under tremendous pressure—legal bills that they had to run up. And I just didn’t think it was handled appropriately or professionally."

ttp://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage3.asp

[President Jesus]

1. Chertoff's political donations

http://www.newsmeat.com/washington_political_donations/Michael_Chertoff.php