Illness Postpones Swearing In of Sessions

FBI Director-designate William S. Sessions was stricken by a bleeding ulcer while flying to Washington and was hospitalized early Thursday, forcing the postponement of his swearing-in ceremony.

Sessions, 57, was listed in “good” condition at George Washington University Medical Center, where he was taken in an FBI car after landing at National Airport.

The FBI director-designate, whose small duodenal ulcer had not been previously diagnosed, will remain in the hospital for as long as three days to guard against a recurrence of bleeding, said Dr. Allen Ginsberg, the attending physician.

Ginsberg said the episode should have no effect on Sessions’ ability to serve as FBI director. “This condition is entirely benign,” he said.

Said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: “I would not anticipate any enduring problems. Usually when a person comes to Washington, it takes a couple of weeks to get an ulcer.”

The attack was attributed to aspirin that Sessions had taken for a headache on an empty stomach. Ginsberg said he could not speculate whether stress played any part in the incident.

In San Antonio, where Sessions served as a federal district judge, his secretary, Dora Samudio, said that he had grown tired from packing all day Wednesday after receiving only two days’ notice of the ceremony.

Sessions had wanted two weeks to prepare, but the White House insisted that the event take place Thursday. Reagan had planned to make a strong defense of Robert H. Bork, his embattled Supreme Court nominee, at the ceremony. Instead, he made his comments in a meeting with reporters at the White House before going to see Sessions at the hospital.

In contrast to the controversy over the Bork nomination, Sessions was confirmed by a 90-0 Senate vote last Friday after less than five minutes of discussion in which he was praised by both Democrats and Republicans. He succeeds William H. Webster, now the CIA director, in the 10-year post.

Sessions was taken ill on a Delta Airlines flight from Dallas to Washington and managed to reach the restroom before vomiting and fainting, according to John McLaughlin, a television commentator who also was a passenger on the plane.

Charles Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office, aided by two other agents, flight attendants and a doctor assisted Sessions, who regained consciousness in a matter of minutes, sources familiar with the incident said.

For six to nine months, Ginsberg said, Sessions has been experiencing “some indigestion and burning pain after having Mexican food.”

Sessions is being given Ranitidine, a drug that decreases the secretion of stomach acid, allowing ulcers to heal, Ginsberg said.

In 1977, former President Jimmy Carter’s first choice to head the FBI, federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. of Alabama, withdrew his name shortly before his Senate confirmation hearings after requiring surgery for an aneurysm on an artery leading to his stomach. Johnson eventually regained his health and was elevated to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.