For 10 days, former FBI Director James Comey has been on a high-profile media tour to promote “A Higher Loyalty.” With more than 600,000 copies sold in the first week, the book leaves competing “resistance” favorites “What Happened” and “Fire and Fury” in the dust. But behind the aw-shucks, I-was-the-only-honest-man-in-the-room persona, Mr. Comey’s book demonstrates his real higher loyalty is to self-aggrandizement.
Consider two episodes from George W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Comey writes that in 2003 he was drawn into the Valerie Plame investigation when administration officials leaked the identity of “a covert CIA employee,” allegedly as retaliation for a critical op-ed written by Ms. Plame’s husband. Mr. Comey, then deputy attorney general, appointed special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and writes that he stands by the decision to charge Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, with false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Mr. Libby was convicted in 2007.
But vital facts are missing from Mr. Comey’s account. The most important is that no one revealed a covert CIA agent’s name. Though Mr. Comey refers to Ms. Plame seven times as a “covert agent,” she was not. That’s why Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who revealed Ms. Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak, was never indicted.
Mr. Comey also fails to note that the star witness against Mr. Libby, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, recanted her testimony in 2015. She said Mr. Fitzgerald misled her and withheld exculpatory evidence that would have kept her from “unwittingly giving false testimony.” In a rebuke to Messrs. Fitzgerald and Comey, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals cleared Mr. Libby to practice law again in 2016, well before President Trump pardoned him earlier this month.
