In nominating Jim Comey to be the next FBI director on Friday, President Barack Obama said the former Justice Department official will help strike a balance between the need for information on terrorist plots and respecting Americans' privacy.
The need for such balance has been brought to the fore recently with the disclosure that the US government has conducted vast surveillance of Americans' phone and internet data in its search for foreign terrorism plots. Obama used the example of a tumultuous episode from Comey's past to promote the Republican.
Comey had famously refused to certify the legal aspects of National Security Agency domestic surveillance during a 2004 stint as acting attorney general while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalised with pancreatitis.
The refusal prompted two senior White House officials - counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card - to try to persuade Ashcroft to sign the certification. Comey, who was in the room, said Ashcroft refused. "He was prepared to give up a job he loved rather than be part of something he felt was fundamentally wrong," Obama said in a Rose Garden ceremony to announce Comey's nomination to replace FBI Director Robert Mueller.
