A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

by James B. Comey

We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country, with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized, and unethical behavior is ignored, excused, or rewarded.

Some of mine, as you’ll discover in this book, are that I can be stubborn, prideful, overconfident, and driven by ego. I’ve struggled with those my whole life.

Those leaders who never think they are wrong, who never question their judgments or perspectives, are a danger to the organizations and people they lead.

Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta.

We all have a tendency to surrender our moral authority to “the group,” to still our own voices and assume that the group will handle whatever difficult issue we face. We imagine that the group is making thoughtful decisions, and if the crowd is moving in a certain direction, we follow, as if the group is some moral entity larger than ourselves.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

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.

It’s not rocket science, I said; the talent is out there. They just don’t know what they are missing. So we made it our passion to show them, and in just three years, the numbers started to change in a material way.

Getting problems, pain, hopes, and doubts out on the table so we can talk honestly about them and work to improve is the best way to lead. By acknowledging our issues, we have the best chance of resolving them in a healthy way. Buried pain never gets better with age. And by remembering and being open and truthful about our mistakes, we reduce the chance we will repeat them.

Speaking uphill takes courage. It takes overcoming a universal human affliction—the impostor complex. All of us labor, to one degree or another, under the belief that if other people really knew us, if they knew us the way we know ourselves, they would think less of us. That’s the impostor complex—the fear that by showing ourselves we will be exposed as the flawed person we are. If you don’t have this, in some measure, you are an incredible jerk and should stop reading immediately.

“It is a great question,” I said, “but not for a moment can I consider it. Because down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent force in American life. If we start making decisions based on whose political fortunes will be affected, we are lost.”

All of us struggle to realize something Patrice spent years telling me, as I took on one position or another: “It’s not about you, dear.”

That tempts all of us to believe everything we think, everything we hear, everything we see, is all about us. I think we all do this.

But a leader constantly has to train him- or herself to think otherwise. This is an important insight for a leader, in two respects. First, it allows you to relax a bit, secure in the knowledge that you aren’t that important. Second, knowing people aren’t always focused on you should drive you to try to imagine what they are focused on. I see this as the heart of emotional intelligence, the ability to imagine the feelings and perspective of another “me.”

Ethical leaders never ask for loyalty.

Ethical leaders care deeply about those they lead, and offer them honesty and decency, commitment and their own sacrifice.

Ethical leaders know their own talent but fear their own limitations—to understand and reason, to see the world as it...

“The first part of your answer was fine, Mr. President,” I said, as he took a breath and looked at me with a blank expression. “But not the second part. We aren’t the kind of killers that Putin is.”

Although I had made no reference or suggestion about going after members of the media, the president said something about how we once put reporters in jail and that made them talk. This was a reference to the Scooter Libby investigation, when New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent nearly three months in jail in 2005 for contempt of court in refusing to comply with a court order for information about her conversations with Libby. He then urged me to talk to Attorney General Sessions about ways to be more aggressive in making cases against leakers of classified information. I told him I would convey that message.

I think that’s what it means to love your country. We need our presidents to succeed.

Without all those things—without kindness to leaven toughness, without a balance of confidence and humility, without empathy, and without respect for truth—there is little chance President Trump can attract and keep the kind of people around him that every president needs to make wise decisions. That makes me sad for him, but it makes me worry for our country.

Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington—to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or a different immigration policy.

The next president, no matter the party, will surely emphasize values—truth, integrity, respect, and tolerance—in ways an American leader hasn’t needed to for more than forty years. The fire will make something good grow.