A Higher Loyalty

June 2018

9 min readAug 6, 2018

Just One Sip — Summary

In A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey recounts some of the most pivotal moments from his career. Inspired to pursue a career in upholding justice from an early age, Comey fulfilled an illustrious career in law prior to his appointment as FBI director for the Obama and Trump administrations. Throughout the book, he lends a distinctly personal perspective on his experiences prosecuting the Mafia, handling the Clinton email investigation, and further high-stakes decisions he has had to make throughout his career. Comey illustrates the challenges of maintaining effective leadership and the considerations taken towards preserving the integrity of the FBI as an impartial figure in a political climate. In the latter portions of the book, Comey’s narrative narrows in scope, strongly focusing on the 2016 presidential election and his subsequent experiences in the Trump administration up until his firing.

Comey’s writing is thoughtful and revealing of a man dedicated to both his career and the integrity of the justice system. Even those that may not agree with the controversial actions he has taken may still find inspiration in his humility and dedication to ethical leadership.

Why I Chose This Book: JT

Of all of the books we’ve read in the past year, we’ve only read one autobiography — Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. In addition to maintaining diversity in our book selections, I chose this book with the hope that its contemporary nature would enable interesting discussion of ethical leadership. I also thought that there would be much to gain from hearing Comey’s perspective on the events leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

Discussion Themes & Questions

What is “truth” as defined by today’s polarized media and political parties? How can we do our part as the electorate to stay educated about important matters while not being swayed by echo chambers or confirmation bias?
Has news become too democratized, given that people hear what they want to hear?
Is there anything we can do as individuals in our own social circles to talk about these social and political issues in an informed fashion?
How does/did today’s technology impact government issues/decisions and how elections operate today (e.g. email servers, encryption, social media presence)?
What will history remember and look back upon when the next generation reads about everything that happened in this past election, especially in regards to issues like the spread of misinformation?
The law in itself is basically just words and interpretations of words, so when it comes to things like precedent (which are inherently subjective), how can we ensure that someone won’t interpret it in the “wrong” way?
The law can only do so much after it happens — the law can’t preemptively make decisions on things that haven’t happened yet. Part of why our legal system is so slow and yet great — it isn’t meant to disturb based on what’s happening now…

Final Thoughts

JT

I started reading this book wary of partisanship and an exclusive focus on the questionable aspects of the Trump administration. Given the abrupt and incendiary nature of Comey’s firing — it’s not unreasonable to expect that he had an axe to grind with the current administration. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of Comey’s writing to be carefully (and for the most part) apolitical. He presents eloquent discourse on ethical leadership, with key anecdotes drawn from various points in his career. For me, the best aspects of A Higher Loyalty were the stories he shared of his early career and his discussion of leadership principles. The book humanizes Comey, oft antagonized by partisan media on both sides of the aisle. For a figure so central to our justice system, Comey admits his own shortcomings and illuminates the many pitfalls leaders face in making high stakes decisions.

Where the book hits its nadir, however, are in the final, more contemporary sections of the book. At the finish, Comey relapses into a justification of the high profile actions he took prior to the 2016 elections. Comey does make key connections to previous points in the book, drawing direct contrast between effective leadership principles and the actions of the Trump campaign/administration. For those who have read Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, Comey’s retelling may come across as a rebuttal to her perspective. It becomes difficult to identify truths and maintain impartiality when reading his personal account of the events.

Overall, I gained a greater appreciation for Comey as a leader and an individual after reading this book. I hope that in future leadership roles, I can channel the same dedication and integrity that Comey displayed.

Sam

Coming into this book, I had a very basic understanding of what happened with Comey and the Clinton email investigation. The general perspective from most of the news that I’ve read is that Comey reopening the investigation near the conclusion of the campaign is a main reason why Clinton lost the election; after reading this book, I’ve developed a more thorough understanding of what really happened and it was interesting to see how Comey justified the decisions he made during this difficult time. The highlight of the A Higher Loyalty for me, however, is Comey’s backstory; he shares there is an incredible depth of human experience in this book. He has stories ranging from smaller, comedic reflections on feeling guilty about lying about playing basketball (the guy is 6’8”) to the intense situation of being held at gunpoint by the Ramsey Rapist. His deeply personal narrative on losing his infant to a treatable infection and how his wife responded to that loss was particularly eye-opening: “Expose a five- and seven-year old to their dying baby brother? Who would do that? A wise woman would, and she gave a gift to our daughters. They got a chance to say good-bye” (45).

Another takeaway from this book is why wording is so crucial, particularly in a political setting. Words (and arguably language in general) are inherently imprecise in communicating an absolute “meaning” because readers must apply their own contexts to extract meaning. Besides the well-known example of using “extremely careless” to describe Clinton’s behavior regarding the emails, Comey had used the term “weed and seed” in a speech referring to a predominantly African American neighborhood with high levels of crime; the intent was that the neighborhoods should be “pulling out the bad guys and working to grow something healthy in the space created by the arrests” (149), but the people within those communities interpreted this as Comey calling the young men in their community “weeds.” These examples also brought up the interesting discussion topic of how to find ‘objective’ news — — particularly in today’s media landscape, where incentives between the reader and publisher are often misaligned and attention is the true currency.

Ophelia

I finished A Higher Loyalty with greater respect for James Comey as a leader. Though Comey became a household name during the 2016 election, the stories he shares from his long career in public service are interesting and quite insightful — here are two standouts from the book:

“Evil has an ordinary face.”

In his book, Comey reflects on prosecuting the La Cosa Nostra Mafia, writing: “I wish I could say I felt something different when I was in the presence of a mass murderer, handing me a cup of espresso in an empty convent. In the movies, some foreboding music might play in the background or the light might dim. But there was none of that. Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta. These killers were people who had crossed an indelible line in human experience by intentionally taking another life. They all constructed their own narrative to explain and justify their killing.”
In the NYT podcast Caliphate, journalist Rukmini Callimachi makes very similar remarks on members of the Islamic State. Tactics used by extremist groups (including the diffusion of responsibility, group killings) are “universal,” but can turn “ordinary individuals into willing executioners.”

Anecdotes from working under 3 different U.S. Presidents

In the book, Comey reflects on working under 3 different presidents: Bush, Obama and Trump. One of my favorite anecdotes from the book takes place on the day he was sworn in as FBI director in 2013:
“My two older girls had brought their serious boyfriends along, and we all joined the president for a commemorative photo of the occasion. Remember what he had learned about our group during the introductions, President Obama smiled for the first photo, and then, gesturing towards the boyfriends, said, “Hey, why don’t we take another without the guys. You know, just in case.” He was playful as he said it, and he did it in a way that no one was offended. But I could tell he was also being thoughtful in a way few leaders are. What if things didn’t work out with one or the other of these guys? Would having them in a picture with the president ruin it for the Comeys forever? So Obama gestured the boyfriends out of the shot, to our great amusement. (I’m happy to report that one of the guys is now our son-in-law and the other soon will be). Though it was a small moment, what struck me about President Obama’s remark is that it displayed a sense of humor, insight and an ability to connect with an audience, which I would come to appreciate in the president even more.”

Though I appreciated Comey’s thoughts on ethical leadership and true listening, I am a bit weary of reading books by politicians or people involved in politics. The lack of candor that comes with being in the public eye trickles into how they write. I thought Hillary Clinton’s book What Happened and Al Franken’s Al Franken, Giant of the Senate were good reads, but both politicians write from a place of justifying their actions. Similarly, Comey argues that given the circumstances surrounding the 2016 election, he made the best decisions possible. Clinton and Comey’s perspectives on the Clinton email investigation are, unsurprisingly, starkly different. I’m glad I read both sides of the story, but the drastic difference between the two begs the question — is there a source out there that can be objective about highly controversial events? How can we ensure the news we are digesting is as unbiased as possible?

Janelle

Overall, I’m not the type of person to get super involved in political events and updates (for better or for worse), so I was a bit unsure about what exactly I was getting myself into when we decided to read this particular book by James Comey. At best, I was expecting to learn more about what it’s like working at the White House, and at worse, I was expecting to be overwhelmed by trash-talk towards whatever party wasn’t on “their” side….

Interestingly, this book turned out to have neither of those two characteristics (minus a few funny anecdotes about some meetings in the Oval Office), and I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did about leadership and what it means to truly serve a greater purpose than your own interests. After finishing the last page, I distinctly remember feeling this huge wave of respect towards James Comey as a leader who — amidst all of the bureaucratic thrash from the new Trump presidency to the Clinton email investigation and to all of the other investigations that arose from serving during 3 different presidential administrations — fought hard to stand his ground and not be swayed by the pressures from extremely opinionated parties, especially when it came to protecting the truth that the American people should (or should not) know.

Given that he literally saw firsthand the leadership styles of 3 U.S. presidents and a plethora of other impressive leaders who represent the core decision-making authorities of our government to date, Comey shed some meaningful light on what it takes to be a powerful yet respected leader. Along with his section on the “White House listen”, there were two quotes from his book that really stuck with me and captured his perspective on leadership:

“Kindness and toughness, confidence and humility — those pairs were the bedrock of great leadership” (17).
“We would teach that great leaders are 1) people of integrity and decency; 2) confident enough to be humble; 3) both kind and tough; 4) transparent; and 5) aware that we all seek meaning in work. We would also teach them that 6) what they say is important, but what they do is far more important, because their people are always watching them” (130).

Since I just passed my one-year-after-graduation mark, these points about kindness, toughness, confidence, and humility hit home for me. As I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my career, I’ve also been asking myself about what kind impact I want to have on my future teammates and projects as a leader. In the future, if I were to face an inkling of the kind of hardships he endured as FBI Director, I hope that I’ll have the mental fortitude to fight for what I believe is right and have the emotional intelligence to be kind yet tough, confident yet humble.