Sessions to Snub Two FBI Officials in Filling No. 2 Post

In a major shake-up at FBI headquarters, FBI Director William S. Sessions plans to pass over senior FBI executives to fill the agency’s long-vacant No. 2 post and to tighten management because of growing dissatisfaction by Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, government sources said Thursday.

Sessions intends to elevate to the powerful associate director’s post Floyd I. Clarke, an official who had been promoted only two months ago to the top management level. In doing so, he will bypass two veteran FBI officials who had been considered possible heirs to the director’s job.

Sessions has been meeting frequently with Thornburgh in recent weeks about the attorney general’s concerns that the bureau has not been moving quickly enough to resolve management shortcomings, sources said.

Over the last year, the bureau has been sharply criticized for its treatment of minority agents and for an investigation that allegedly violated the rights of activists opposed to the Administration’s El Salvador policies.

Thornburgh has approved the elevation of Clarke and related moves, but word of the shifts has been held so tightly that some of the principals said Thursday that they had not heard of the changes. Announcement of the action in the next few weeks is expected to be a bombshell at the FBI.

The management shifts are coming after reports that Thornburgh was searching for a way to ease Sessions out and that he had considered recommending him for a vacancy on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Thornburgh, however, denied those reports.

Oliver B. Revell, one of the senior officials passed over, oversees all FBI investigations. John Otto, the other official not promoted, had served as acting director before Sessions took command of the agency in November, 1987.

Revell and Otto are 50 and thus eligible for full retirement under FBI rules. Otto said that Sessions had not discussed Clarke’s appointment with him and that “I enjoy what I’m doing here.” Revell could not be reached.

In other shifts approved by Thornburgh, Sessions has downgraded the office of congressional and public affairs and is having each of those functions report separately to him. Milton Ahlerich, who has headed the joint office as assistant director, is expected to be named a special agent in charge of one of the bureau’s 58 field offices, which an official noted is “the next logical step in his career.”

Clarke, 47, was a deputy under Revell in 1982 when Revell headed the FBI’s criminal investigative division. When Revell was promoted to executive assistant director in 1985, Clarke took over the criminal investigative division--the FBI’s highest-profile unit. In February, Clarke was named to one of the three executive assistant director posts.

On April 5, Sessions brought William Baker back from the CIA as assistant director in charge of the criminal division. Baker, a veteran FBI official, had moved to the CIA with former FBI Director William H. Webster when he became head of the CIA.

Clarke, who has been with the FBI for 25 years, served as assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office and headed the bureau’s Kansas City office before moving to headquarters in 1982.