U.S. Judge May Be Named New FBI Chief Today

William Steele Sessions, a federal judge in Texas with a tough “law and order” reputation, has emerged as the leading candidate to be director of the FBI and could be nominated as early as today, Reagan Administration sources said Thursday.

Sessions, 57, will be interviewed today by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, sources said. “If that goes well, they’ll take him to see the President, and it’s a done deal,” one senior official said.

The selection of Sessions would complete an arduous search by Meese and other Administration officials to find a successor to William H. Webster, now director of the CIA. Several better-known candidates have turned down the job or let it be known that they were not interested in the 10-year appointment.

Sessions, a Republican, served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division during the early years of the Richard M. Nixon Administration.

He was appointed to the U.S. District Court 12 years ago by Gerald R. Ford and is the chief judge of the federal court in San Antonio. From 1971 to 1974, Sessions served as a U.S. attorney in Texas.

An Administration official, predicting that Sessions’ years on the federal bench would leave little for investigators to examine, said: “He’s been through the mill before. I can’t imagine there are a lot of skeletons there.”

Indicated Interest in Job

The judge indicated last March that he was interested in the FBI directorship, when he said in an interview with the San Antonio Light: “If the opportunity comes and it’s appropriate, I’ll accept the job.”

Unless unforeseen obstacles arise, his nomination could be announced after the meetings with Meese, President Reagan and White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., officials indicated. But a White House official said he was not certain that a background investigation could be completed in time for his nomination to be announced today.

The Administration is known to want to avoid announcing Reagan’s choice while Meese is testifying before Congress’ Iran- contra committees next Tuesday and Wednesday. It is feared that Meese, who has been at the center of the search for a new FBI director, will come under hostile questioning and that some of the negative publicity might affect the nomination.

Reagan Speaking Trip

Because the President is scheduled to be on a speaking trip to Wisconsin all day Monday, today appears to be the Administration’s best time to announce the nomination.

In addition, as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for its hearings on Reagan’s nomination of appellate Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, congressional Republicans have put mounting pressure on the Administration to move ahead quickly with an FBI nomination to avoid protracted delay. The FBI appointment must also be approved by the Senate.

Sessions’ background and reputation appeared to make him a highly attractive candidate to the Administration. He is a “conservative, a down-the-line Reagan Administration judge,” said Norma Cantu of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in San Antonio.

As far as the civil rights groups were concerned, the Administration could have done worse. “He’s a conservative Republican but ran a fairly fair court,” Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Liberties Union said. He acknowledged that Sessions is known for being tough in criminal cases but added: “That’s not unusual for Texas judges.”

Sessions is known to be highly regarded by Webster, who himself was a federal judge before becoming director of the FBI, and has been on the list of potential nominees since the search for a director got under way.

He presided over the sensational San Antonio trial in 1982-83 stemming from the slaying of U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr., the first U.S. judge assassinated in the 20th Century.

The FBI’s investigation of the murder cost more than $5 million and was compared in scope to the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sessions imposed two life terms on the convicted killer.

The FBI post has been vacant since May, when Webster was sworn in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the search actually began in March, when Webster was nominated. Since Webster’s departure, the bureau had been led by Acting Director John Otto, long a senior official at the agency.

Pressure on Meese

As recently as this week, Meese had indicated to subordinates that he would prefer someone with a background in executive management, rather than a federal judge. But, with several prospective nominees turning the Administration down, pressure grew on the attorney general to make a recommendation to Reagan.

Among those who rejected the job was U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen of San Francisco, a former deputy attorney general who worked with Meese not only at the Justice Department but as an assistant prosecutor in Alameda County. Meese was said by White House officials to have tried at great length to persuade his old friend to take the job.

Former Gov. Dick Thornburgh of Pennsylvania, who served as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division during the Ford Administration, also rejected overtures from the Administration that he take the job.

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William Wilkins, whose candidacy was advanced by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, took himself out of the running, although it was not clear whether he had actually been offered the job.

A number of other federal judges turned the job down, and there were reports that Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White signaled a lack of interest after his name was brought up in the White House.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Wednesday that Baker had indicated to him earlier this month that the Administration would like to see an FBI nominee confirmed before the opening of the Bork hearings, which are expected to be extremely contentious. Doing so, however, would require a postponement of the Bork hearings.

Administration officials and Republican senators already have complained that those hearings, currently scheduled to begin Sept. 15, have been postponed too long. When asked Thursday about the possibility that Bork’s hearings might be put off, Biden spokesman Pete Smith said only that “it would be inappropriate to rule anything out.”

In addition, Smith said, “we don’t know enough about the individual” and what controversy, if any, might be raised by Sessions’ nomination.

However, it is unlikely that a Sessions nomination would draw the type of vitriolic opposition facing Bork. Any controversy among Democrats in the Senate would probably be dampened by the prospect that Sessions could be moved out of the FBI post if a Democratic President is elected next year.

The law is ambiguous about the FBI director’s tenure, providing a 10-year maximum but no minimum, aides to several senators noted. One aide to a senior Republican noted that, in discussing the FBI job with prospective nominees, Administration officials had talked only of a “moral commitment” to a full 10-year term.

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.