A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

by James B. Comey

I didn’t have to speak in this meeting unless called upon, so I let my eyes sweep over the faces that were familiar from TV—the president, Vice President Dick Cheney, FBI Director Bob Mueller, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. In that moment, something hit me: It’s just us. I always thought that in this place there would be somebody better, but it’s just this group of people—including me—trying to figure stuff out. I didn’t mean that as an insult to any of the participants, who were talented people. But we were just people, ordinary people in extraordinary roles in challenging times. I’m not sure what I had expected, but I met the top of the pyramid and it was just us, which was both comforting and a bit frightening. Suddenly Bob Dylan was in my head, singing, “What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.”