Former FBI chief James B. Comey ended a months-long Twitter tease Monday when he confirmed that he is the owner of a cryptic, nature-photo-loving account with the name Reinhold Niebuhr.
Since the spring, when Gizmodo journalist Ashley Feinberg sleuthed that the account belonged to Comey, thousands of people have retweeted and analyzed the account’s nature photos and brief phrases.
“So what you’re telling us is: Mueller is the lone kayaker over a river of treasonous information… right?” one responded. Another: “The scene of Benedict Arnold’s crimes. Hmmm…”
Photos last week about Iowa triggered panting speculation that Comey is running for president, an endeavor that often begins with the Iowa straw poll and then the caucuses there.
“Is this a veiled nod to some political future? (very pro, if so),” wrote one.
Some embraced the total vagueness.
On Monday, Comey tweeted the account’s sixth tweet: a photo of himself.
So that’s one mystery solved. But who is Niebuhr, and why did Comey name the account after him?
Our best guess comes from religion reporter colleagues who after the Gizmodo reporting found Comey’s undergraduate thesis at the College of William & Mary. The paper was about Niebuhr, a prominent theologian.
Jack Jenkins wrote in Think Progress that while most Americans wouldn’t know Niebuhr’s name today, “he was once unavoidable: beginning in the 1930s and extending into the 1960s, Niebuhr’s various treatises on the intersection of Christianity and public life were at the center of innumerable public debates, and his voice was a constant in conversations about the moral dimensions of war, use of nuclear weapons, and civil rights.”
Among those who have quoted and called Niebuhr their favorite theologian are thinkers and politicians from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to David Brooks and John McCain, Jenkins wrote.