FBI Director Irks House Panel Members

WASHINGTON — In a stormy welcome to Capitol Hill, new FBI Director William S. Sessions Thursday presented the bureau’s $1.5-billion budget request for next year and was sharply rebuffed by congressional critics who accused him of sidestepping two serious problems that he inherited.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a member of a House panel that is reviewing the FBI budget, refused to look at Sessions’ financial proposals until the director gave a full explanation of minority employment practices at the bureau.

Those practices, the subject of a lawsuit brought by a black FBI agent who says he was harassed by white colleagues, amount to “racial terrorism within the FBI,” Conyers charged.

Surveillance at Issue

Other members of the panel, the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, demanded details on the bureau’s extensive surveillance of groups opposing the United States’ Central America policy. That FBI campaign was documented recently by a New York civil rights organization through bureau records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

“I know this is an awkward time to stand silent . . . (but) it must be done,” replied Sessions, citing continuing investigations and litigation.

Sessions’ rough treatment was very rare for FBI directors, who usually are treated with some deference by congressional committees. The grilling apparently reflects doubts by some lawmakers that the former Texas federal judge, who assumed the post four months ago, is moving quickly enough to address alleged abuses that are the most serious linked to the bureau in several years.

Sounding the theme of the often-combative hearing, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) told Sessions: “It looks like the honeymoon’s over.”

Some Visibly Angered

Several committee members were visibly irked by what they saw as Sessions’ incomplete knowledge and apparent dispassion toward questions raised about racism and First Amendment violations at the bureau.

“We all feel you and the others (at the FBI) should have been a lot madder” about the allegations of racism, said the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose). “Instead, there was just a lot of, ‘Well, you have to look at our side of it.’ ”

In his lawsuit against the bureau, which is pending, agent Donald Rochon alleged that he was harassed by white agents during his stints in the Omaha and Chicago field offices and that his complaints about it to superiors were treated casually.

Also, a group of Latino FBI agents have brought a class-action suit charging that they were discriminated against in assignments and promotions.

Sessions, asserting he considered the allegations to be serious, said they are under review internally and a report is expected.

But Conyers accused Sessions of attempting a “classic stall.”

“I cannot accept it,” said Conyers, who is black. “I am, frankly, deeply disappointed in your lack of anger and outrage.” If Sessions’ attitude does not change, he said, “we’re in for more of the same” racial controversy in the bureau.

‘Absolute Disgrace’

He also called the FBI’s record of minority employment “an absolute disgrace.”

Edwards and Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D-Wis.) unsuccessfully pressed Sessions for details on the FBI’s extensive surveillance of the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador between 1981 and 1985.

Critics have charged that the surveillance trampled on the civil liberties of CISPES members, and the FBI itself has acknowledged that the operation--based on suspicions of terrorism links that were apparently unfounded--was flawed.

Although the bureau has pledged to tighten its oversight of such investigations, Kastenmeier said “questions (are) left hanging” about the FBI’s commitment to respect free political expression.

Kastenmeier said the questions raised by the CISPES investigation have been exacerbated by a recent spate of 97 break-ins at churches across the country that participate in the Central American “sanctuary” movement, which shelters illegal aliens. Kastenmeier went so far as to suggest “a conspiracy” that in some way involved the FBI in the break-ins.

Sessions Denies FBI Role

Edwards said the church break-ins indicate a clear political pattern, “and yet the FBI has told us point-blank: ‘These are local crimes.’ ” Sessions said any suggestion the bureau was involved in the crimes was “a repugnant thought” and that he had no information indicating it was.

With the focus on the racial and First Amendment questions surrounding the FBI, panel members paid little attention to Sessions’ budget proposals. His $1.5-billion package asks additional funding of $92 million, or an 8% hike for fiscal 1989, and calls for greater resources aimed at white-collar and organized crime as well as narcotics investigations.