FBI Chief in Blistering Attack on Ex-Boss Barr : Investigation: Sessions says ‘animus’ and ‘anger’ on the part of his former superior motivated report alleging misconduct.

FBI Director William S. Sessions, in an extraordinary public attack on his former superior, charged Saturday that ex-Atty. Gen. William P. Barr acted out of “animus” and “anger” toward him in approving a Justice Department investigation that found Sessions had used his office for personal gain.

Sessions claimed that Barr “was in league with others who were determined to scuttle the director.” He suggested that Barr might have been motivated by opposition to Sessions’ attempts to increase the number of women and minority agents or to the FBI’s conduct of controversial investigations.

But Sessions declined to offer any support for those allegations except to circulate statements by Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, concurring with his speculation about opposition within the bureau to improved race relations.

At the same time, Sessions agreed to several demands made by Barr as a result of the investigation. He said he would pay back-taxes on the use of his bureau limousine for trips between his home and office, accept instruction in the proper use of his security detail and turn over records pertaining to his home mortgage so investigators could determine whether he had received a “sweetheart deal.”

He is continuing to resist Barr’s orders that he repay the government for the cost of a fence around his yard and for air travel deemed in the report to have been personal, rather than a business expense.

Sessions offered his scathing challenge to the report by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), during a meeting with reporters Saturday. In a 25-page memo prepared for him by two private attorneys he has retained to represent him in the investigation, he said the report “deserves no respect.”

Barr could not be reached Saturday, but Paul McNulty, a former spokesman who will accompany Barr to his new job at a Washington law firm, said: “Barr is not going to allow Sessions to draw him into this,” adding that Barr “has great confidence in the report, and stands by its conclusions and process.”

Sessions’ public attack on the department’s findings demonstrates the extent to which he is willing to go to hold onto his job, which is now widely believed to be in jeopardy. But it is a strategy that could backfire by keeping the issue of his performance in the public eye and placing additional pressure on the White House to become involved in the dispute.

In what may be a sign of flagging support from President Clinton--who has the power to remove Sessions from his job--White House spokesmen have called the report’s findings “disturbing.” They have also said, however, that Sessions “needs to have a chance to respond.”

Asked about Sessions during a photo session Saturday in the Oval Office, Clinton would say only: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the FBI, said during an appearance on CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday” that he believes there is sufficient reason to remove Sessions for cause “unless he can come out and exonerate himself.”

Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), another member of the Senate panel appearing on the same program, said it is too early to tell whether Sessions should go. The director, appointed during the Ronald Reagan Administration, is midway through a 10-year term.

White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said Counsel to the President Bernard Nussbaum will evaluate the Justice Department report and Sessions’ written response before making a recommendation to Clinton.

Sessions, in condemning the investigation as “inaccurate, incomplete and biased in a way that mischaracterizes the conduct of the director and seriously misleads the public,” has found himself in the awkward position of criticizing an inquiry conducted by his own FBI agents.

Asked what message that might send to the public about the quality of FBI investigations, Sessions said he had seen only the 161-page OPR report and not transcripts of the supporting interviews filed by the investigating agents.

“I believe our agents are very thorough. . . . If they’re guided properly they are very capable of doing that investigation,” Sessions said. “I’m astounded . . . that they did not, that OPR did not do a thorough job.”

Sessions and his attorneys contended that the report leaned heavily on “representations” by Ron McCall, the former head of Sessions’ security detail, who was removed by the FBI director after he was found in Sessions’ bedroom “under entirely unauthorized and surreptitious circumstances.” Sessions said he learned last July that McCall, now a supervisor in the FBI’s intelligence division, had removed travel records from Sessions’ security room at FBI headquarters.

But Michael E. Shaheen Jr., who has headed OPR since it was created in 1975 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, rejected Sessions’ claim that the report hung on McCall’s testimony.

“Our report did not rely upon the uncritical acceptance of the claims of any one individual,” Shaheen said Saturday. “Our investigative process involved the interviews of scores of individuals under oath or otherwise subject to perjury penalties.”

Sessions rejected the OPR’s conclusion that he took part in a “sham” arrangement, carrying an unloaded firearm in a briefcase in the trunk of his limousine to qualify for a law enforcement exemption on paying taxes for his transportation to and from home.

But under questioning, he acknowledged that the details of the arrangement described in the report were correct, including his failure to take firearms training and to fire the weapon at prescribed times. He said, however, that he believed he had qualified for a “technical exception” based on advice from FBI chief legal counsel Joe Davis.

But Sessions’ private attorneys said that after reviewing the matter, Davis now agrees with OPR and Sessions will pay the taxes, estimated at between $500 and $1,400.

While Sessions also attacked the report’s finding that he had abused his travel privileges by using government funds for personal trips, he did not deny that he traveled to San Francisco, where his daughter lives, every Christmas from 1987 to 1991--except 1990, when his daughter spent the holidays in Washington.

Instead, he took issue with the report’s suggestion that he was on personal time from Dec. 22 to Dec. 27, 1987, while in the San Francisco area. He said that on Dec. 23 he flew to Butte, Mont., where he met with three delegations that were upset about the FBI’s plan to close its office there. He said he landed during snowstorms in Butte and in Salt Lake City, where he toured FBI facilities, and then flew back to San Francisco.

On the question of the $375,000 mortgage on his Washington home, Sessions did not dispute the report’s finding that 47% of his and his wife’s income was needed to meet the mortgage payments. But he said he did not know whether that exceeded the normal amount allowed under guidelines established by Riggs National Bank, the mortgage holder, as suggested by the report.

He said he had declined to give OPR investigators access to the bank records, contending the matter was sprung on him by the OPR and he feared it would be leaked to newspapers. However, he said, he has now complied with Barr’s order to make the records available.