US President George W Bush has nominated a former Rhodes scholar and top Justice Department attorney to be the United States' ambassador to Australia.
Robert D McCallum, Associate Attorney-General at the Justice Department in Washington, has been selected to fill the post in Canberra.
Mr McCallum and Mr Bush were classmates at Yale University, from where they graduated in 1968.
Both men were part of the Skull and Bones fraternity, a Yale club that has nurtured several other Bush appointees.
Mr McCallum went on to become a Rhodes scholar at England's Oxford University.
He also worked as a lawyer for tobacco giant RJ Reynolds.
That job contributed to controversy later in Mr McCallum's career when he found himself on the other side of the court.
In a landmark civil racketeering case last year, Mr McCallum was on a US Government team seeking sanctions against the tobacco industry.
Witnesses said Mr McCallum asked his own witnesses to tone down their testimony to go easy on the tobacco industry.
"We're trying to allow a legal industry to keep going," Mr McCallum said at the time.
Seven Democratic congressmen called for the Justice Department to investigate political interference in the case.
Appointment delay
The United States' last ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer, left at the end of 2004 and the position has been vacant since.
Paul Dibb, from the Australian National University, says the delay is not a sign of a strain on the bilateral relationship.
"I think it's more a perception problem," he said.
"Business goes on as usual, we've got Dennis Richardson - our ambassador in Washington - [who] is a highly capable person."
https://au.news.yahoo.com/060311/21/y77l.html
Mar 11, 2006 @ 23:08:54
