引言

选择特朗普只能说明美帝进入了它自身体制极力避免的阶段: 多数人的暴政——美国历届总统一向标榜民主, 但建国者想要的只是一个"No King"的精英专治体制

正文

In his absorbing new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey calls the Trump presidency a “forest fire” that is doing serious damage to the country’s norms and traditions.

联邦调查局前局长詹姆斯·科米引人入胜的新书《更高忠诚度》将特朗普当总统称作一场“森林大火”，把国家的规则和传统烧个精光。

“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey writes. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

“本届总统全无道德，也不尊重事实和制度价值，”科米写道。“他的领导力不过是做买卖，以自我为中心，只要对他个人的忠诚。”

Decades before he led the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Comey was a career prosecutor who helped dismantle the Gambino crime family; and he doesn’t hesitate in these pages to draw a direct analogy between the Mafia bosses he helped pack off to prison years ago and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

科米领导联邦调查局调查特朗普大选阵营成员是否与俄国合谋影响2016年选举，而几十年前，他是一名职业检察官，参与搞垮了甘比诺犯罪家族，他在书中毫不迟疑地把几十年前被他送进牢狱的黑手党大佬与目前椭圆办公室的主人类比。

A February 2017 meeting in the White House with Trump and then chief of staff Reince Priebus left Comey recalling his days as a federal prosecutor facing off against the Mob: “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.” 

2017年2月在白宫谒见特朗普和当时的幕僚长雷恩斯·普利巴斯，这让科米回想起他做联邦检察官时直面暴徒的岁月：“那是个点头哈腰的圈子，老板一言九鼎，下属宣誓效忠，有着非敌即友的世界观。大大小小的事都撒谎，全都尊崇某种忠诚律令，把组织置于道德和真相之上。”

An earlier visit to Trump Tower in January made Comey think about the New York Mafia social clubs he knew as a Manhattan prosecutor in the 1980s and 1990s — “The Ravenite. The Palma Boys. Café Giardino.”

此前1月的特朗普大厦之行让科米想到他上世纪八九十年代在曼哈顿做检察官时的纽约黑手党社交俱乐部。“拉维奈特俱乐部。帕尔马男孩俱乐部。吉拉德诺咖啡馆。”

The central themes that Comey returns to throughout this impassioned book are the toxic consequences of lying; and the corrosive effects of choosing loyalty to an individual over truth and the rule of law. Dishonesty, he writes, was central “to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic,” and so, too, were bullying, peer pressure and groupthink — repellent traits shared by Trump and company, he suggests, and now infecting our culture.

在充满激情的新书中，科米的中心思想是撒谎的恶劣后果及选择效忠某个人而非真相和法治带来的腐蚀。他写道，不诚实是“大西洋两岸所有有组织犯罪集团”的核心，同样也是欺凌弱者、同辈压力和集体决议的核心，这些令人反感的特质正是特朗普一伙人所共有的，他认为，这污染了我们的文化。

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

“我们国家正经历历史上的危险时刻，”科米写道。“这种政治环境中，基本事实会有人反驳，基本真相回有人质疑，说谎稀松平常，失德行为不但没人管，还挺有理，甚至还得到奖励。”

“A Higher Loyalty” is the first big memoir by a key player in the alarming melodrama that is the Trump administration. Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017, has worked in three administrations, and his book underscores just how outside presidential norms Trump’s behavior has been — how ignorant he is about his basic duties as president, and how willfully he has flouted the checks and balances that safeguard our democracy, including the essential independence of the judiciary and law enforcement. 

特朗普政府搞了一出令人大跌眼镜的闹剧，而《更高忠诚度》正是其中某位重要演员的第一部大部头回忆录。2017年5月9日被特朗普炒鱿鱼的科米曾为三届政府供职，书中浓墨重笔地讲述特朗普的行为如何违反了当总统的规矩，他如何对做总统的基本义务一无所知，如何随心所欲地蔑视看护民主的制衡制度，包括司法和执法独立。

Comey’s book fleshes out the testimony he gave before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017 with considerable emotional detail, and it showcases its author’s gift for narrative — a skill he clearly honed during his days as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

科米的新书绘声绘色地形容了他2017年6月在参议院情报委员会作证时的大量细节，显示作者具有讲故事的天赋，显然他在纽约南区做美国联邦检察官的岁月磨炼了这一技能。

The volume offers little in the way of hard news revelations about investigations by the F.B.I. or the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III (not unexpectedly, given that such investigations are ongoing and involve classified material), and it lacks the rigorous legal analysis that made Jack Goldsmith’s 2007 book “The Terror Presidency” so incisive about larger dynamics within the Bush administration.

书里几乎没有透露什么有关联调局或独立检察官罗伯特·穆勒调查的硬货，这并不令人吃惊，毕竟调查还在进行中，涉及秘密，作品也不同杰克·哥德史密斯2007年作品《恐怖总统》中那种严格的法律分析，《恐怖总统》深刻剖析了小布什政府内部的大格局。

What “A Higher Loyalty” does give readers are some near-cinematic accounts of what Comey was thinking when, as he’s previously said, Trump demanded loyalty from him during a one-on-one dinner at the White House; when Trump pressured him to let go of the investigation into his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn; and when the president asked what Comey could do to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation.

《更高忠诚度》告诉读者的是一种近乎纪录片式的白描，正如他此前所言，特朗普在白宫晚宴上要求他效忠时，他怎么想；特朗普向他施压，要求放前国家安全顾问迈克尔·弗林一马时，他怎么想；当总统让科米不要“纠缠”俄国调查时，他怎么想。

There are some methodical explanations in these pages of the reasoning behind the momentous decisions Comey made regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign — explanations that attest to his nonpartisan and well-intentioned efforts to protect the independence of the F.B.I., but that will leave at least some readers still questioning the judgment calls he made, including the different approaches he took in handling the bureau’s investigation into Clinton (which was made public) and its investigation into the Trump campaign (which was handled with traditional F.B.I. secrecy).

科米2016年大选期间对希拉里·克林顿邮件调查做出关键决定，书中对背后的道理有些系统性解释，这些解释旨在证明他没有党派立场，本意出于保护联调局的独立，但至少有部分读者还会质疑他的判断，包括处理联调局调查克林顿（已经公开）和调查特朗普阵营（按传统由联调局秘密进行）的不同方法。

“A Higher Loyalty” also provides sharp sketches of key players in three presidential administrations. Comey draws a scathing portrait of Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal adviser David S. Addington, who spearheaded the arguments of many hard-liners in the George W. Bush White House; Comey describes their point of view: “The war on terrorism justified stretching, if not breaking, the written law.” He depicts Bush national security adviser and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as uninterested in having a detailed policy discussion of interrogation policy and the question of torture. 

《更高忠诚度》还对三届政府中的核心角色进行了精准的速写。科米对副总统迪克·切尼的法律顾问戴维·阿丁顿很不客气，阿丁顿支持小布什政府中许多强硬派论断。科米这样说：“对恐怖主义的战争让成文法得以变通，即便说不算是违反。”他说布什国家安全顾问和后来的国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯对刑讯政策和酷刑问题等具体政策讨论毫不关心。

He takes Barack Obama’s attorney general Loretta Lynch to task for asking him to refer to the Clinton email case as a “matter,” not an “investigation.” (Comey tartly notes that “the F.B.I. didn’t do ‘matters.’”) 

他认为贝拉克·奥巴马的司法部长洛丽塔·林奇要对克林顿邮件案负责，因为林奇让他把案件称做“事件”而非“调查”。（科米尖刻地说“联调局不做‘事件’。”）

And he compares Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to Alberto R. Gonzales, who served in the same position under Bush, writing that both were “overwhelmed and overmatched by the job,” but “Sessions lacked the kindness Gonzales radiated.”

他把特朗普的司法部长杰夫·塞申斯比作布什政府的司法部长阿尔伯托·冈萨雷斯，说两人都“庸庸碌碌，难堪其任”，可“塞申斯没有冈萨雷斯善良”。

Comey is what Saul Bellow called a “first-class noticer.” He notices, for instance, “the soft white pouches under” Trump’s “expressionless blue eyes”; coyly observes that the president’s hands are smaller than his own “but did not seem unusually so”; and points out that he never saw Trump laugh — a sign, Comey suspects, of his “deep insecurity, his inability to be vulnerable or to risk himself by appreciating the humor of others, which, on reflection, is really very sad in a leader, and a little scary in a president.”

科米是索尔·贝娄所说的“一流观察者”。例如，他观察到特朗普“没有表情的蓝色眼眸”之下“软塌塌的白色眼袋”，他意味深长地观察到总统的双手比他自己的小，“但看起来小得也不明显”，他指出自己从没看过特朗普笑，科米怀疑，这表现出他“深深的不安全感，无法暴露自己的弱点，也不敢涉险去欣赏别人的幽默，回想起来，这对一个领导人而言真是糟糕，可对一个总统而言，真是令人不寒而栗。”

During his Senate testimony last June, Comey was boy-scout polite (“Lordy, I hope there are tapes”) and somewhat elliptical in explaining why he decided to write detailed memos after each of his encounters with Trump (something he did not do with Presidents Obama or Bush), talking gingerly about “the nature of the person I was interacting with.” 

去年六月在参议院作证期间，科米彬彬有礼（先生们，我希望有录音），解释为什么要每次会见特朗普后都详细记录时却语焉不详（他同奥巴马或布什就不这样），他小心翼翼地谈及“我接触的这个人的性格”。

Here, however, Comey is blunt about what he thinks of the president, comparing Trump’s demand for loyalty over dinner to “Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony — with Trump, in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man.’”

可在书中，科米直言不讳地谈到自己对总统的看法，将特朗普在晚宴上要求效忠比作“公牛萨米的科萨·诺斯特拉入伙仪式，作为家族大佬的特朗普问我是否要做一名黑手党员。”

Throughout his tenure in the Bush and Obama administrations (he served as deputy attorney general under Bush, and was selected to lead the F.B.I. by Obama in 2013), Comey was known for his fierce, go-it-alone independence, and Trump’s behavior catalyzed his worst fears — that the president symbolically wanted the leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to come “forward and kiss the great man’s ring.”

在小布什和奥巴马政府任职期间（在小布什政府任司法副部长，2013年奥巴马当总统是被选为联调局局长），科米以强硬和独来独往著称，特朗普的行为激发了他最深刻的恐惧，总统在象征意义上想让执法部门和国家安全机构的领导人前来“亲吻强人的权力戒指”。

Comey was feeling unnerved from the moment he met Trump. In his recent book “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff wrote that Trump “invariably thought people found him irresistible,” and felt sure, early on, that “he could woo and flatter the F.B.I. director into positive feeling for him, if not outright submission” (in what the reader takes as yet another instance of the president’s inability to process reality or step beyond his own narcissistic delusions).

科米一见到特朗普就觉得不自在。在《火与怒》一书中，迈克尔·沃尔夫写道，特朗普“无一例外地认为人们觉得他的魅力不可抗拒”，从一开始就认为这理所当然，“他会赢得联调局局长的心，就算没法让他绝对服从”，（读者从中再次得出总统不能面对真相或走出自恋的幻觉。）

After he failed to get that submission and the Russia cloud continued to hover, Trump fired Comey; the following day he told Russian officials during a meeting in the Oval Office that firing the F.B.I. director — whom he called “a real nut job” — relieved “great pressure” on him. A week later, the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

特朗普没能获得那种服从，俄国的浑水依然在打转，于是他解雇了科米。第二天，他在椭圆办公室里对俄国官员说，解雇联邦调查局局长让他“松了一口气”，他说科米是个“大蠢货”。一周后，司法部任命穆勒担任独立检察官，调查特朗普大选与俄国之间的关系。

During Comey’s testimony, one senator observed that the often contradictory accounts that the president and former F.B.I. director gave of their one-on-one interactions came down to “Who should we believe?” As a prosecutor, Comey replied, he used to tell juries trying to evaluate a witness that “you can’t cherry-pick” — “You can’t say, ‘I like these things he said, but on this, he’s a dirty, rotten liar.’ You got to take it all together.”

科米作证期间，一个参议员注意到总统和联调局前局长对单独会面情形有着相互矛盾的说辞，“我们到底该相信谁？”作为一名检察官，科米回答道，他过去常常对法官说，评价一个证人时“你不能分两面看”，“你不能说，我喜欢他说的话，但他是个烂仔骗子。你必须全盘认定。”

Put the two men’s records, their reputations, even their respective books, side by side, and it’s hard to imagine two more polar opposites than Trump and Comey: They are as antipodean as the untethered, sybaritic Al Capone and the square, diligent G-man Eliot Ness in Brian De Palma’s 1987 movie “The Untouchables”; or the vengeful outlaw Frank Miller and Gary Cooper’s stoic, duty-driven marshal Will Kane in Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 classic “High Noon.”

把两个人的说法、他们的名誉和各自的作品放在一起，很难想象有特朗普和科米如此天差地别的人。他们俩刚好相反，就像1987年布莱恩·德·帕尔玛导演的影片《铁面无私》中放纵无羁的阿尔·卡彭和正直勤劳的爱略特·尼斯，抑或1952年弗雷德·金尼曼导演的《正午时分》中睚眦必报的罪犯弗兰克·米勒和贾利·古柏饰演的古板、负责的警察局长威尔·凯恩。

One is an avatar of chaos with autocratic instincts and a resentment of the so-called “deep state” who has waged an assault on the institutions that uphold the Constitution.

一个是混乱的化身，刚愎自用，憎恨“体制”，对支撑宪法的国家制度发起攻击。

The other is a straight-arrow bureaucrat, an apostle of order and the rule of law, whose reputation as a defender of the Constitution was indelibly shaped by his decision, one night in 2004, to rush to the hospital room of his boss, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, to prevent Bush White House officials from persuading the ailing Ashcroft to reauthorize an N.S.A. surveillance program that members of the Justice Department believed violated the law.

另一个是规矩正直的官员，秩序和法治的信徒，其一言一行都以宪法捍卫者为名，以至于2004年的一天晚上，他跑到老板、司法部长约翰·阿什克罗夫特的病房，阻截想要劝说生病的阿什克罗夫特再次批准国安局监控项目的小布什政府官员，此前司法部成员认为该项目违反了法律。

One uses language incoherently on Twitter and in person, emitting a relentless stream of lies, insults, boasts, dog-whistles, divisive appeals to anger and fear, and attacks on institutions, individuals, companies, religions, countries, continents.

一个在推特和与人交流中颠三倒四，满嘴谎言、脏话、吹牛和挑拨之辞，通过引发愤怒和恐惧造成分裂，攻击体制、个人、公司、宗教、国家和整个大陆。

The other chooses his words carefully to make sure there is “no fuzz” to what he is saying, someone so self-conscious about his reputation as a person of integrity that when he gave his colleague James R. Clapper, then director of national intelligence, a tie decorated with little martini glasses, he made sure to tell him it was a regift from his brother-in-law.

另外一个则谨言慎行，确保不“乱放炮”，爱惜自己的羽毛，要做一个正直的人，他曾送给同事、时任国家情报主任詹姆斯·克莱伯一条饰有马丁尼酒杯的领带，还特意告诉他这是自家姐夫送的礼物。

One is an impulsive, utterly transactional narcissist who, so far in office, The Washington Post calculated, has made an average of six false or misleading claims a day; a winner-take-all bully with a nihilistic view of the world. “Be paranoid,” he advises in one of his own books. In another: “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”

一个是任性的自恋者，一切都是生意，按《华盛顿邮报》的算法，他就任以来，每天平均发表六个错误或误导性声明。他是个胜者通吃的土霸王，拥有虚无主义世界观。“要偏执，”他在一本书里说。在另一本中说，“有人搞你，你干脆就搞回去。”

The other wrote his college thesis on religion and politics, embracing Reinhold Niebuhr’s argument that “the Christian must enter the political realm in some way” in order to pursue justice, which keeps “the strong from consuming the weak.”

另一位的大学毕业论文是宗教和政治，拥护雷茵霍尔德·尼布尔的观点，“基督徒必须以某种方式进入政治领域”，推动正义，避免“弱肉强食”。

Until his cover was blown, Comey shared nature photographs on Twitter using the name “Reinhold Niebuhr,” and both his 1982 thesis and this memoir highlight how much Niebuhr’s work resonated with him. They also attest to how a harrowing experience he had as a high school senior — when he and his brother were held captive, in their parents’ New Jersey home, by an armed gunman — must have left him with a lasting awareness of justice and mortality.

暴露身份前，科米用“雷茵霍尔德·尼布尔”的名字在推特上分享大自然照片，1982年的论文和这部回忆录都凸显了尼布尔的作品和他的共鸣。论文和回忆录还证明他高中生涯一段经历如何令人心碎，当时他和兄弟被持枪者囚禁在新泽西父母家中时，这多半给他带来关于正义和道德的持久意识。

Long passages in Comey’s thesis are also devoted to explicating the various sorts of pride that Niebuhr argued could afflict human beings — most notably, moral pride and spiritual pride, which can lead to the sin of self-righteousness. And in “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey provides an inventory of his own flaws, writing that he can be “stubborn, prideful, overconfident and driven by ego.”

科米论文中大段文字都在阐明尼布尔所说的各种骄傲对人类的伤害，尤其是道德的骄傲和精神的骄傲，这会导致自以为是之罪。《更高忠诚度》一书中，科米反思了自己的过错，他写道他“固执、骄傲、过分自信，自我为中心。”

Those characteristics can sometimes be seen in Comey’s account of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, wherein he seems to have felt a moral imperative to address, in a July 2016 press conference, what he described as her “extremely careless” handling of “very sensitive, highly classified information,” even though he went on to conclude that the bureau recommend no charges be filed against her. His announcement marked a departure from precedent in that it was done without coordination with Department of Justice leadership and offered more detail about the bureau’s evaluation of the case than usual.

这些特点有时反映在科米处理希拉里·克林顿邮件调查过程的记述中，他感觉有道德义务去解决它，在2016年7月的新闻发布会上，他说如此处理“非常敏感和高度机密的信息”，说明她“极端不负责”，尽管他得出结论，联调局不建议对她提起诉讼。他的声明有违先例，因为那没有同司法部领导层协商，也未遵从惯例，对联调局做出的案件评估情况提供更多细节。

As for his controversial disclosure on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the election, that the F.B.I. was reviewing more Clinton emails that might be pertinent to its earlier investigation, Comey notes here that he had assumed from media polling that Clinton was going to win. He has repeatedly asked himself, he writes, whether he was influenced by that assumption: “It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.”

至于大选11天前，2016年10月28日，他颇具争议地披露联调局正在审查更多克林顿的电子邮件，而这些电子邮件可能与此前调查有关，科米在本书中指出，他从媒体调查上得出结论，克林顿要赢。他在书中写道，他反复问自己，他是否受到下列观点影响：“因为希拉里·克林顿将要成为下一届总统，我正是在这种环境中做出了决定，我担心隐瞒重启调查之事会让她成为一个非法总统，这种担忧比大选看起来势均力敌或唐纳德·特朗普在民调中领先时的担忧更大，这是完全可能的，但我也不知道。”

He adds that he hopes “very much that what we did — what I did — wasn’t a deciding factor in the election.” In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017, Comey stated that the very idea that his decisions might have had an impact on the outcome of the presidential race left him feeling “mildly nauseous” — or, as one of his grammatically minded daughters corrected him, “nauseated.”

他还说，他非常希望，“我们做的事，我做的事，不是大选的决定性因素。”2017年5月3日在参议院司法委员会作证时，科米说他的决定可能影响了总统大选结果，这一想法让他感到“有点呕吐”，或如她注意语法的一个女儿纠正得那样，“有点恶心”。

Trump was reportedly infuriated by Comey’s “nauseous” remark; less than a week later he fired the F.B.I. director — an act regarded by some legal scholars as possible evidence of obstruction of justice, and that quickly led to the appointment of the special counsel Robert Mueller and an even bigger cloud over the White House.

据称，特朗普被科米的“呕吐”言论激怒了，不到一周后，他炒了科米，有法律学者认为这一行为可能是特朗普妨害司法的证据，于是很快任命了独立司法官罗伯特·穆勒，白宫的水更浑了。

It’s ironic that Comey, who wanted to shield the F.B.I. from politics, should have ended up putting the bureau in the midst of the 2016 election firestorm; just as it’s ironic (and oddly fitting) that a civil servant who has prided himself on being apolitical and independent should find himself reviled by both Trump and Clinton, and thrust into the center of another tipping point in history.

讽刺的是，不想让联调局涉足政治的科米本不该让联调局钻进2016大选的烈火之中，同样讽刺且又合乎情理的是，一个没有政治倾向、行事独立的公务员发现自己被特朗普和克林顿两头咒骂，且一头扎进历史上另一个转折点的中央。

They are ironies that would have been appreciated by Comey’s hero Niebuhr, who wrote as much about the limits, contingencies and unforeseen consequences of human decision-making as he did about the dangers of moral complacency and about the necessity of entering the political arena to try to make a difference.

科米心中的英雄尼布尔会欣赏这种讽刺，尼布尔的作品很多有关人类决策的界限、意外和不可预见后果，他写得正是道德自满引发的种种危险以及进入政治舞台有所作为的必要性。