Needing a Good Guy for G-Men

When William H. Webster is confirmed by the Senate as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, attention will turn to the nomination of his successor as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That decision is perhaps more important than the choice of someone to run the CIA or most Cabinet departments. An FBI director, through actions and statements, has a powerful influence over the performance of law enforcement agencies at all levels, and his standards of behavior determine public attitudes toward those agencies. His reputation may even affect foreign opinion toward the United States.

The FBI director tends to be much better known than, say, the U.S. attorney general. If he introduces high standards and scientific techniques, as J. Edgar Hoover did in his early days, he will be revered. If, on the other hand, he seems obsessed by subversives and bogymen, as was Hoover toward the end of his 50-year career, he will be held up to ridicule.

There is a serious risk that in a bipartisan orgy of satisfaction with Webster’s performance during the past nine years, senators will be inclined to relax their guards and endorse whomever President Reagan names.

So long as the White House produces a nominee with a plausible background in law enforcement, he may be able to count on an uncritical reception from the Senate Judiciary Committee; chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) is spending much of his time these days running for President. Indeed, some members of Congress suffer a severe case of outrage fatigue and they search for issues on which to support Reagan, still an immensely popular figure.

But it would be a mistake to wave a new FBI director through the confirmation process without proper scrutiny.

The truth is that the ghost of Hoover stalks the corridors of the fortress on Pennsylvania Avenue that bears his name. Though the FBI has gone through a recent period of calm, not all its problems have been solved.

The FBI budget is virtually out of control again, and some of the rigorous standards instituted in the late 1970s to govern “security” investigations may have begun to slip. With the wrong person at the top, the FBI could easily revert to the worst abuses of its past.

Webster is the fourth person to run the bureau since Hoover died in office in 1972. This straight-shooting former federal judge is given major credit for bringing the FBI into the modern era and restoring its reputation as an investigative force.

According to one of his former law clerks, Susan Appleton, now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Webster’s “honesty and integrity are so unshakable that he has been able to create a whole new image for the FBI.”

New image or not, many congressional observers believe that certain realities have changed little since Hoover’s time--and that the remnants of the old guard have even managed to pull the wool over Webster’s eyes. “Few people understand the bureaucratic nightmare that can still be the FBI,” says one Senate aide close to bureau affairs.

Thus, many agents are still unwilling to step out of line and question the traditional way of doing things. Thus, the FBI, out of fear of looking bad, has largely managed to avoid involvement with the country’s most serious crime problem, the illegal drug trade.

And it seems relatively easy to persuade the FBI to back off, temporarily, from a criminal investigation in the name of “national security”--as the bureau apparently did (to Webster’s belated embarrassment) when it first began looking into the role of Southern Air Transport in resupplying the contras .

For some insiders, that incident is an uncomfortable echo of the willingness of L. Patrick Gray III, former acting director, to delay investigating the Watergate affair in 1972 (and later to destroy evidence, an action that cost him his job). Yes, the FBI is a very different, much-reformed place since 1972. And yes, Webster played a significant role in the reformation. He, for example, aggressively recruited women and minorities as agents; among other advantages, that has made the bureau far more capable in conducting certain investigations. Webster also greatly improved FBI capability in counterespionage.

Yet the bureau’s budget has expanded in a way that would astonish even Hoover, and Congress has watched it happen with a quiet acquiescence reminiscent of the days when Hoover himself reigned supreme. From an annual figure of $584 million in 1979, when Webster took over, the budget grew to more than $1.3 billion in 1987. For 1988, the Administration has requested nearly $1.5 billion.

Inflation notwithstanding, that figure is enormous in a period of mammoth deficits and cutbacks in social programs. Some budget lines are particularly questionable. Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), once briefly an FBI agent, points out, for example, that the bureau now has a fleet of 65 airplanes. A recent audit of bureau log books shows that the planes are used an average of only two hours a day. Yet the new FBI budget contains a request for still another airplane.

At the same time, the bureau has been developing voice scramblers so that agents can conduct secure conversations with each other in their cars. Originally budgeted for $70 million, the program has already cost more than $150 million and is still not complete.

The FBI’s recent investigations of groups opposed to U.S. policy in Central America have raised concerns reminiscent of the 1960s, when Hoover harassed civil rights and anti-war activists with “counterintelligence programs.” Members of one organization based in Berkeley claim that FBI agents confronted them on their return from humanitarian projects in Nicaragua and accused them of helping Cuba and the Soviets.

For a time, it seemed that Reagan might replace Webster with one of several up-and-coming agents in the FBI hierarchy, and many bureau supporters argued that the agency was again ready to be governed from within. But a surprising number of agents, particularly younger ones, believe that another outsider--perhaps another federal judge who, like Webster, has direct knowledge of the constraints on law enforcement--would be better able to protect against internal and external pressures. “If someone is promoted from within, stagnation would occur,” said an agent stationed at Washington headquarters. “I would like to see another breath of fresh air, but a different one . . . someone less formal than Judge Webster, maybe a real business manager who could get control of the budget.”

Certainly a nonideological judge with a credible record would be a popular choice in Congress, and that is why many expect the Administration to name D. Lowell Jensen, a Democrat who is a long-time friend and associate of Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and has, for the past year, been sitting on the federal district court in San Francisco.

But it would be a shame to give any nominee a quick endorsement without examining some of the serious questions surrounding the FBI today. And in Jensen’s case, it will also be important to gauge his capacity for independence from Meese--especially if, as some expect, the attorney general becomes implicated in investigations of the Iran- contra affair.