U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Kenneth Wainstein was confirmed to head the Justice Department’s new National Security Division.
President Bush nominated Wainstein to become the first assistant attorney general for national security in March, but his confirmation had been held up by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., because of a dispute over the handling of complaints from FBI agents and military interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay.
Levin said he supported the nomination in the end because Wainstein did not control the documents that the senator seeks.
Wainstein will be replaced in the interim by Jeffrey Taylor, counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Wainstein, 44, told The Examiner that he had no idea his confirmation was coming up and was surprised when he learned about it Thursday night.
As head of this new division, Wainstein will bring together national security, counterterrorism, counter-espionage, and foreign intelligence surveillance litigation under one assistant attorney general.
“We have a lot of work to do,” said Wainstein, who grew up in Old Town Alexandria and whose parents still live in the area. Wainstein is married and has three children.
The reorganization was designed to fight threats to national security with less bureaucratic red tape, the president said in a statement Friday.
“Ken is an effective leader who will play an important role in our efforts to combat terrorism,” President Bush said.
Wainstein is a career federal prosecutor, first serving in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and then in D.C. He served as general counsel and then chief of staff at the FBI between 2002 and 2004.
In 2005, he became U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, where he has oversaw prosecutions ranging the indictment of a jihadist involved in roadside attacks against American forces in Iraq, to the conviction of the violent Vatos Locos gang that had terrorized parts of Washington.
