FBI Chief Faces Inquiry on Acts of Wife, Aide

The Justice Department is investigating allegations that FBI Director William S. Sessions permitted his wife and his special assistant to misuse power, sources familiar with the inquiry said Monday night.

Among the allegations: that special assistant Sarah Munford used her FBI credentials to try to persuade state troopers in Texas not to ticket her son and that Alice Sessions obtained a special building pass that normally requires top secret security clearance and is reserved for assistant FBI directors.

Sessions has served more than half of his 10-year term, but the charges, if found to be true, could create serious problems for him at the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill, government sources said.

The FBI director confirmed in a telephone interview Monday night with Reuters news service that an inquiry had begun, but he declined to comment further.

John Collingwood, the FBI’s director of congressional and public affairs, and Paul McNulty, chief spokesman for U.S. Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, declined to comment on the investigation being conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

The allegations were detailed in an eight-page letter that Ron Kessler, author of a book on the FBI, wrote to the FBI’s public affairs office June 24, when he was seeking to interview Sessions about the charges, Kessler said Monday.

A government source said that the basis for the investigation is Kessler’s book, which will not be published until next year, and a letter sent to Barr anonymously.

Kessler is writing “FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency” with Sessions’ cooperation. He said he had been told that his letter was circulated among top FBI officials and “was given to the Justice Department by someone in the FBI.”

Kessler said Sessions met with him Aug. 7 for 30 minutes and “reamed me out, without answering the questions, for having gone into these abuses and other personnel matters.”

About half the alleged abuses in Kessler’s letter involve actions by Sessions’ wife, and the others by Munford, he said.

In one, Mrs. Sessions accused the FBI of “wiretapping or bugging her house,” Kessler said. He said she made the allegation in a taped interview with him and two FBI agents who “reported it up the chain of command.”

The incident involving Munford and the Texas troopers allegedly took place last Dec. 24. The troopers had approached Munford’s son, Glenn, who was driving the car, when Munford allegedly leaned out the passenger side of the car and waved her FBI credential, saying that she was an assistant to the director of the FBI.

The trooper nevertheless issued a ticket for driving a car with windows tinted too darkly, and Kessler said the $55 ticket had not been paid as of a month ago.

The trooper complained to the bureau about Munford’s alleged attempt to use her FBI identification, and the Office of Professional Responsibility is understood to have recommended that she be suspended for seven days. It could not be determined Monday whether the disciplinary action was imposed.

“Sessions was informed and hasn’t taken any action,” Kessler said.

The special building pass carried by Mrs. Sessions allows her to enter the FBI’s highly guarded headquarters with visitors who are not required to sign in. She was given the pass even though she does not have top secret clearance, a prerequisite under FBI policy.

Normally, visitors to the FBI building must be cleared at a security desk and are escorted to and from appointments.