White House Wants FBI Chief to Step Down

WASHINGTON — Clinton Administration officials have concluded that the ethics issues raised by FBI Director William S. Sessions’ conduct are so serious that he must leave office, but they hope he will “see reality” and step down voluntarily, a senior Administration official said Friday.

At the same time, the source said the White House will not publicly depart from its announced plan of taking no action until Bernard Nussbaum, President Clinton’s counsel, has reviewed both a Justice Department report that found Sessions had abused his office and the challenges to that report lodged by Sessions’ two lawyers.

“There’s no way Bill Clinton is going to keep him, but he doesn’t want to be pushing Sessions out the door,” said the senior official who declined to be identified by name or agency.

Sessions, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, is now in the sixth year of a 10-year term, but Clinton’s spokesmen have noted that he can be removed by the President at any time.

Despite the hope that he will leave voluntarily, Sessions showed no signs Friday of giving up his fight to hold onto his job as he presided over an extraordinarily heated meeting with several of the bureau’s senior officials.

After the meeting, Sessions reversed an order by Associate Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy, who had suspended disciplinary action against FBI agents who have violated bureau policy on the use of government vehicles--a policy that the Justice Department probe concluded Sessions had violated on “numerous” occasions.

Kennedy had suspended the disciplinary action to avoid the appearance of a double standard, with agents and other FBI employees being punished for infractions similar to those the director himself had allegedly committed, an FBI source said.

Kennedy acted about two weeks ago without public notice, the source said. Several agents who received 30-day suspensions for personal use of FBI vehicles have protested the discipline and “field personnel” have expressed concerns about the potential for a double standard, according to the source. Bureau rules strictly prohibit personal use of official vehicles, including transporting anyone who is not involved in government business.

Sessions, noting that the suspensions had occurred without his knowledge, said: “I have now considered the matter and instructed that all disciplinary allegations within the FBI be thoroughly and promptly investigated and adjudicated without delay and without regard to any circumstance involving me.”

The meeting of senior officials called by Sessions included Kennedy; Deputy Director Floyd I. Clarke; David G. Binney, assistant director for inspections; Steve Pomerantz, assistant director for administrative services, and John Collingwood, who heads the bureau’s Congressional Affairs Office.

Sessions, described by one participant as “enraged,” called the meeting to challenge a New York Times report Friday that the FBI had halted all disciplinary proceedings against agents accused of violating internal rules like those Sessions was found to have broken.

The meeting grew especially charged when Sessions dismissed suggestions of a double standard and remarked that some people had questioned whether he should be using his FBI limousine to transport private attorneys he has retained to represent him in the ethics case, according to some of those present.

Sessions, ridiculing the idea of applying the rule to his personal attorneys, said he had asked his bureau driver whether it was wrong to provide such transportation and that the driver had assured him it was not.

One official then responded that Sessions had placed the driver in a difficult position, officials attending the meeting said.

At another tense point in the meeting, officials questioned whether the bureau would now have to allow agents to be represented by counsel in administrative disciplinary proceedings--a privilege they do not now enjoy--because Sessions retained attorneys in his case.

The FBI director responded that his case was “different,” because he needed attorneys to protect him against “leaks” of information from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which helped conduct the investigation of Sessions.

That drew a protest from Binney, who oversees that office, but Sessions cut him off, participants said.

The meeting reached its tensest moment when Sessions asserted that he had done nothing wrong and turned to Clarke, whose loyalty he questioned in a television interview, and asked if he agreed.

Clarke, who has declined requests for an interview and has said nothing publicly, then said: “You don’t want me to answer that,” one participant in the meeting recalled.

But Sessions pressed him, and Clarke responded with a summary of the Justice Department findings against the FBI director, the source said.

In an interview, Acting Atty. Gen. Stuart Gerson said he had satisfied himself that the FBI is “not out of control” after discussions with Sessions, Clarke and others who attended the high-level bureau meeting Friday.

“I don’t think anything is out of control,” Gerson said. “I agree the personnel issue must be resolved, and the President has set forth the mechanism,” he added, referring to the White House statement that Nussbaum will review the Sessions case.

Gerson said he is hopeful that the final element in the investigation, involving the allegation that Sessions’ $375,000 home mortgage constituted a “sweetheart” loan not available to ordinary citizens, will be sent to the White House early next week.

However, that investigation has not been completed because of a snag--Riggs National Bank has refused to allow interviews of employees involved in the mortgage transaction without obtaining signed waivers from Sessions and his wife, Alice, sources familiar with the matter said.

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this article.