LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's been called one of the hardest jobs in the U.S. government. The Deputy Attorney General is second in command at the Justice Department, responsible for sensitive prosecutions and monitoring threats from al-Qaida and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. James Cole has had this job for four years, longer than anyone since the 1950s. Cole is leaving soon, and he sat down with NPR's justice correspondent Carrie Johnson for this exit interview.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: James Cole rushes into his office suite with an apology. A meeting at the White House ran long - par for the course.
JAMES COLE: There's a number of ways that I've described this job. Virtually everything that happens in the United States government ends up in this office, but broken.
JOHNSON: Two U.S. attorneys fight over who gets to pursue a big case? He's the referee. There's a foreign-policy debate over whether Cuban prisoners in the U.S. should receive clemency as part of a warming of relations? Cole's at the table with decision-makers.
COLE: And what you're confronted with is a large menu of unacceptable options, and you have to pick the least unacceptable option.
JOHNSON: One of the toughest calls in his four years at the Justice Department, he says, was approving subpoenas for reporters' phone records. His decision to seek data from 21 Associated Press phone lines infuriated the news media and some members of Congress when they found out about it in 2013. But Cole is hard-pressed to express regrets about taking those measures to plug a national security leak.
COLE: It was also one of the worst leaks of information that I had seen in my history in the government, so it was a very, very tough call. At the end of the day, I'd probably have to do it again.
JOHNSON: Justice Department officials met with media groups about that controversy. They say they're soon revising guidelines for how reporter records get subpoenaed in the future to give greater consideration to First Amendment concerns. A happier legacy, James Cole says, is his work to dial back tough penalties for nonviolent criminals, rather than throwing the book at everyone.
COLE: We put an end to that. We said no, no, make the punishment and the charge fit the circumstances. And if the person that's standing in front of you has a drug problem, and that's wha's driving it, deal with the drug problem. If they have a mental health problem, deal with the mental health problem. Let's not just throw people in jail as a way of trying to avoid dealing with the problems that are really present.
JOHNSON: Cole says he's confident his successor, longtime Atlanta prosecutor Sally Yates, will share those priorities and bring them to bear during the last two years of the Obama administration. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.