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A Higher Loyalty summary

Name: A Higher Loyalty
Rating: 4 (29 reviews)
Author: James Comey

James Comey

Truth, Lies and Leadership

4 (29 ratings)

28 mins

Topics

US Politics Biographies US Presidents Autobiographies Political Figures Memoirs

Table of Contents

A Higher Loyalty
Summary of 11 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 11

What’s in it for me? Take a look at the fascinating life of James Comey.

James Comey has been in the news a lot since the turbulent election year of 2016, but his long career in law enforcement began far earlier. These blinks tell the story from Comey’s perspective.

From trying to help Rudy Giuliani’s crusade against the city’s mobsters in the 1980s to prosecuting the insider trading case against Martha Stewart back in 2001, Comey explains how he has worked with a number of leaders and learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

He also tells of the numerous difficulties life has thrown his way; from being bullied at school to facing down the barrel of a gunman who broke into his home. Events like these have shown him how important it is to be strong and confident, but also how meaningless it can all be if you don’t retain your humility and sense of humor.

As someone who’s worked with the presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Comey has seen a lot and has plenty of stories to tell. In the blinks that follow, we’ll look at some highlights, as well as some of the lowlights, of his life and career.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how a life-threatening situation led to a career in law;
the six traits Comey believes all good leaders should have; and
how a dinner with Donald Trump reminded Comey of a mob initiation.

Formative events in James Comey’s childhood include being bullied and having a great boss.

James Comey was born in 1960, in Yonkers, New York, where his family had lived for generations. His grandfather was once the chief of the Yonkers Police Department; so you could say Comey has law enforcement in his genes.

But when his family moved from Yonkers to nearby Allendale, New Jersey, Comey went from being a popular kid to being the target of cruel bullies.

The move happened when Comey was in the fifth grade. He was the scrawny new kid at school with a bad haircut, ill-fitting clothes and a habit of talking too much. To save money, Comey’s mom would patch up old clothes and give her son haircuts – putting a bullseye on him for the school bullies.

Despite being repeatedly punched, slammed into lockers and treated to wedgies, being bullied taught Comey some formative lessons.

For starters, it made him very attentive at reading people. If you’ve ever been bullied, you probably know how to pick up on the signs of aggression that bullies give off. But perhaps more importantly, being bullied instilled a lifelong desire to help the defenseless.

Also helping to shape Comey was a man by the name of Harry Howell; owner of the local grocery store that Comey worked at when he was in school. Howell taught Comey some important lessons about being an effective leader.

He showed Comey that you could be powerful yet compassionate and understanding at the same time. Howell was a tough boss with very high standards, and he took pride in having an immaculately clean and organized store.

While Howell was often demanding, he also knew when to show mercy. One day, while the store was closed, Comey had overstacked the milk crates, causing them to tip over, creating a river of milk down one of the aisles.

Comey was mortified, mopping it up as fast he could. But when Howell appeared, he didn’t angrily berate Comey. He simply asked, “Did you learn a lesson here?” Comey certainly had. “Good. Clean it up,” Howell replied. This mercy motivated him to work harder than any punishment would have.

After some life-changing events, Comey learned the importance of humility as a New York lawyer.

When James Comey was sixteen-years-old, a remarkable, life-changing incident occurred: A gunman broke into his house, holding Comey and his younger brother Pete at gunpoint while he stole whatever money he could find. More than once during the incident, Comey thought his life was about to end, but he and his brother survived the incident without physical harm.

The man was likely the Ramsey Rapist, who terrorized parts of New Jersey throughout the summer of 1977 but was never caught. For Comey, the event made him think seriously about what matters most in life and how he could have a career with real value and purpose – one in which he could help people directly.

In prosecuting mobsters and moving to Virginia, Comey learned more lessons in leadership and life.

One of the fascinating things about investigating mobsters is that you learn the secrets of their tight-knit organization.

What Comey found out from his prosecution of New York mobsters – particularly the Sicilians who run the organization known as the Cosa Nostra – is that they operate under a delusional, fear-based leadership.

Prosecuting Martha Stewart was necessary under a fair and ethical system of justice.

One of the criticisms leveled at Comey is that he seeks the spotlight, but in his view, he’s always focused on doing the right thing on a case-by-case basis – it just so happens that this has led him to high-profile cases.

One of the biggest cases, from a media standpoint, came in 2001 when Martha Stewart broke the law by selling stock based on insider information.

As an attorney at the Department of Justice, Comey fought for lawful practices in government surveillance.

In 2003, Comey made the move to Washington after he was given the opportunity to join the Department of Justice as Deputy Attorney General. It was a pretty big leap, as it put him second only to the Attorney General himself, John Ashcroft.

Comey’s time at the Department of Justice (DOJ), however, was rather contentious, due in part to the issue of government surveillance.

Comey fought the White House on their torture policies as well.

Comey may have won his fight against the Stellar Wind program, but it was only one of the challenges he’d face in his few years at the Department of Justice.

At the same time, while the DOJ was trying to rein in the NSA, there was another contentious issue on the table: torture.

As director of the FBI, Comey sought to be a great leader of a more ethical, effective and diverse organization.

After his experiences in the Department of Justice, Comey spent some time in the private sector, working as a lawyer for defense contractor Lockheed Martin and the Bridgewater investment firm. Both jobs made it a lot easier to put his five kids through school: while public service can be rewarding in many ways, it often doesn’t pay too well.

Comey was teaching at Columbia Law School in the summer of 2013 when he received an unexpected phone call from Attorney General Eric Holder. He told Comey that President Obama was interested in him becoming the next director of the FBI.

In the wake of a violent 2015, Comey was moved by President Obama’s understanding and effective leadership.

Shortly before September 4, 2013, when he was sworn in as director of the FBI, Comey was invited to the White House to have an open and friendly chat with President Obama. In Obama’s words, this was something they wouldn’t be able to do after September 4th, since it was bad form for the director and the president to appear as close friends.

During the meeting, and the few strictly professional meetings they would have in the final years of Obama’s presidency, Comey was impressed by how intelligent and effective a leader he was.

During the 2016 election, Comey had to make a difficult choice in the Clinton investigation.

While 2015 had its fair share of challenges, the 2016 election year was unlike anything Comey could have expected.

Much of the chaos of 2016 actually began in 2015, when it came to the FBI’s attention that Hillary Rodham Clinton, while serving as Secretary of State, had exchanged emails about classified material while using her own email account and server.

In working with President Trump, Comey saw many similarities to a mafia boss.

The FBI didn’t expect the results of their investigation into the new emails to be finished by Election Day, but thanks to some helpful software, they were able to get through the thousands of emails and confirm that their original conclusion was still true – that there was no need for prosecution.

That announcement came on November 6, 2016, two days before the election that Hillary Clinton would end up losing to Donald Trump.

Comey didn’t expect to be fired, but he’s hopeful that justice will prevail.

As you might expect, given his ethical concerns and distaste for bullies, Comey did not pledge his loyalty to Trump. What he did do was make memos after every time Trump asked to talk to him privately. Such meetings were something that every president and FBI director since the days of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover have regarded as inappropriate.

Still, Comey had hoped to see out his ten-year term as head of the FBI and was in California helping to promote his diversity recruitment drives when he received the surprise news of his firing.

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What is A Higher Loyalty about?

A Higher Loyalty (2018) is the revealing account of James Comey’s history as a respected public servant across multiple presidential administrations. Comey guides readers through many years of experience, including his fight against unlawful torture and surveillance policies during the second Bush administration, and his experience with the Trump presidency.

Best quote from A Higher Loyalty

Put that way, the choice between a really bad option and a catastrophic option was not that hard a call. We had to tell Congress…

—James Comey

Who should read A Higher Loyalty?

News and political junkies
Students of law and ethics
Readers eager for a peek at Washington’s inner workings

About the Author

James Comey has decades of experience in law enforcement and leadership. His public service record extends from an Assistant United States Attorney in New York and Pennsylvania, the Deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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