Adam G. Ciongoli

Who is Adam G. Ciongoli?

Adam G. Ciongoli is a government and private lawyer, and was the Counselor to United States Attorney General John Ashcroft during the September 11, 2001 attacks and in the period that followed.

According to an October 2002 profile in Legal Times, Ciongoli grew up in Burlington, Vermont, the son of A. Kenneth Ciongoli, a neurologist and chairman of the National Italian American Foundation. Ciongoli attended the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. He began his legal career as a clerk for then-Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Newark, New Jersey. After his clerkship, Ciongoli went to work for Kenneth Starr, Paul Cappuccio and other noted Republican lawyers in the Washington, DC office of Kirkland & Ellis. In 1999, he succeeded his friend and former Kirkland colleague, Paul Clement as the chief counsel to the United States Senate Constitution Subcommittee, which was chaired by then-Senator John Ashcroft.

After an unusual re-election defeat, Ashcroft was appointed Attorney General by President-elect George W. Bush, and took Ciongoli to the Justice Department with him. Ciongoli played a prominent role as the Attorney General's legal advisor, including participation in formulating the Patriot Act, and drafting the administration's order authorizing military commissions to try suspected terrorists and writing the subsequent regulations. In 2003, the White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, named Ciongoli as the administration's chief liaison to the Independent 9/11 Commission; Some Democratic members of the Commission criticized Ciongoli for restricting the Commission's access to key people and documents.