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.
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# posted by madthumbs @ 9:54 AM
