| Jeh Johnson | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 11, 1957 New York City, New York |
| Nationality | USA |
| Occupation | lawyer |
| Known for | Pentagon General Counsel |
Jeh Charles Johnson (born September 11, 1957)[1] is an American civil and criminal trial lawyer, currently serving as General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Johnson is a graduate of Morehouse College and Columbia Law School, and is grandson of noted sociologist and Fisk University president Dr. Charles S. Johnson.
Johnson’s first name (pronounced “Jay”) is taken from a Liberian chief who reportedly saved his grandfather’s life while Dr. Johnson was on a League of Nations mission to Liberia in 1930.[2]
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Johnson served as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1989-1991. From 1998-2001 he was General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force under President Bill Clinton.[3] Prior to his appointment as General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Johnson was a partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and was the first African American to be elected to that firm’s partnership.[4] He was elected a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2004.[3] In June 2008, Johnson was named to The National Law Journal's list of the "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America."[5]
On January 8, 2009, he was named by President Barack Obama to be General Counsel for the Defense Department.[6]
Johnson began his legal career at Paul, Weiss in the mid-1980s. In 1989 he left to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, a position which he held until 1991. While serving as United States Attorney, Johnson prosecuted public corruption cases.
Johnson returned to Paul, Weiss in 1992 and was elected partner at the firm in 1994. In 1998, Johnson was appointed General Counsel of the Air Force by President Bill Clinton after confirmation by the U.S. Senate. As General Counsel, Johnson was the senior legal official in the Air Force and Governor of Wake Island, in the Pacific Ocean.[7] His tenure coincided with Operation Allied Force in 1999. He was awarded the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service for his efforts.[3]
After his service in the Clinton administration, Johnson returned to Paul, Weiss in 2002, where he was an active trial lawyer of large commercial cases.[3]
Johnson was a member of the Executive Committee of the New York City Bar Association. From 2001 to 2004, he served as chairman of the City Bar’s Judiciary Committee, which rates and approves all federal, state and local judges in New York City. In 2007, Johnson was nominated by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination to be Chief Judge of New York[8] though the incumbent, Judith Kaye, was ultimately reappointed by former Governor Eliot Spitzer.
Johnson is active in Democratic Party politics, as a fundraiser and adviser to presidential campaigns. Johnson served as special counsel to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign,[9] and was active in Barack Obama's presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser and as a member of his national finance committee.[10][11]
On January 8, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced Johnson's nomination as Department of Defense General Counsel.[12] On February 9, 2009, he was confirmed by the Senate. [2]
As General Counsel of the Defense Department, Johnson has been a major player in certain key priorities of the Obama Administration. In 2009, Johnson was heavily involved in the reform of military commissions, and testified before Congress numerous times in support of the Military Commissions Act of 2009. [13] In February 2010, the Secretary of Defense appointed Johnson to co-chair a working group, along with Army General Carter Ham, to study the potential impact of a repeal of the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law. In November 2010, following an extensive study, Johnson and General Ham reported that the risk to overall military effectiveness of a repeal would be low. The report was hailed as a thorough and objective analysis. [14] The Washington Post editorial page wrote:
On February 24, 2010, Fox News reported that the legal counsel of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other Guantanamo captives who had faced charges in a Guantanamo military commission had arrived in Guantanamo, only to be told that they would not be allowed to visit their clients without advance permission from Pentagon General Counsel "Jay Johnson" [sic].[16]
In August, 2010, Johnson was part of the public dialogue over the Wikileaks release of classified Pentagon documents known as the Afghan War Diary or The War Logs. “The Department of Defense will not negotiate some ‘minimized’ or ‘sanitized’ version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. government classified documents,” he wrote in a letter to Timothy J. Matusheski, a lawyer representing the online whistle-blowing organization pro bono. The possibility of direct, official contact between the lawyers and/or their organization/client was being discussed, reported The New York Times, one of the media outlets which had earlier published parts of the Diary.[17]
In January 2011, Johnson provoked controversy when, according to a Department of Defense news story, he supposedly asserted in a speech at the Pentagon that deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite King's outspoken opposition to American interventionism during his lifetime.[18] Other public commentary about the speech noted that Johnson never made such a claim in his remarks. [19]
In a February 2011 speech to the New York City Bar Association, Johnson "acknowledged the concerns raised" about the detention of alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning and "stated that he had personally traveled to Quantico to conduct an investigation." Human rights attorney and journalist Scott Horton wrote that "Johnson was remarkably unforthcoming about what he discovered and what conclusions he drew from his visit."[20]
| Government offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sheila C. Cheston |
General Counsel of the Air Force 1998 – 1999 |
Succeeded by Mary L. Walker? |