Chertoff, Michael (1953– )

US lawyer and Republican politician, secretary of homeland security from 2005. An experienced lawyer, he headed the US Department of Justice's criminal division 2001–03, where he prosecuted the accounting firm Arthur Anderson for destroying documents relating to the collapse of Enron. This action, in turn, caused Anderson's collapse.

An architect of the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ legal strategy, in February 2005 he replaced Tom Ridge as homeland security secretary. His department was criticized for its slow response to the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August 2005.

Born in New Jersey, the son of a Rabbi, he studied at Harvard University and Harvard Law School. In 1979–80 he was clerk to US Supreme Court justice William Brennan and in the 1980s was a prosecutor on Mafia and political corruption cases in New York, working for then US Attorney Rudolph Giuliani. President George H W Bush appointed him US Attorney for New Jersey in 1990, where he remained before returning to private practice in 1994.