Strong Work Ethic Helped Propel Career

During the FBI’s long-running investigation of waterfront corruption in the late 1970s, New York-based agents and other law enforcement officers often would discuss their accomplishments over a late-night beer.

But one of the younger agents, Louis J. Freeh, would always excuse himself from the group before midnight.

An out-of-town colleague who usually slept at Freeh’s New York apartment when he was in town remembered Tuesday that “I’d get in from our gathering about 2 a.m. and be awakened at 5 by Louie singing opera while shaving.

“He’s always been a very straight, very conservative type of guy and he has a great capacity for long workdays.”

The waterfront investigation--code-named UNIRAC by the FBI for “union racketeering”--was Freeh’s first experience at investigating a widespread conspiracy. It would set a career path for the Rutgers Law School graduate that ultimately would lead to his nomination to head the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has traditionally fought organized crime.

Those who have known the 43-year-old FBI director-designate as a federal agent, prosecutor and later a federal judge describe him as a hard-driving professional who has inspired others with his work ethic and has never sought personal aggrandizement.

The six-year UNIRAC inquiry that Freeh helped guide--dependent largely on evidence gathered from wiretaps, hidden microphones and government informants--led to the convictions of 125 mobsters, businessmen and leaders of the International Longshoremen’s Assn., including Anthony Scotto, a high-ranking member of the New York-based Genovese crime family.

Like all of Freeh’s big projects in the last 18 years, the conspiracy, bribery and racketeering cases he helped develop in UNIRAC involved the teamwork of many law enforcement officers. UNIRAC cases ran from Boston to Miami and across to Galveston, Tex., and involved the cooperation of dozens of FBI agents and other federal officers, as well as police investigators from 12 states.

Raymond Maria, an ex-FBI agent who worked with Freeh at the time, recalled that “in the midst of a turbulent investigative environment, Louie was objective, nonpartisan and got along well with others. He never got involved in struggles over who should get the credit for what.”

Even greater tests of his organizational ability and management skills lay ahead.

Leaving the FBI, Freeh received an appointment as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York, rising after six years to become chief of the organized crime unit in 1987. In that role, he led a team of lawyers and investigators who broke up a billion-dollar Sicilian Mafia heroin ring known as “the pizza connection”--so named because mobsters used pizza parlors as business fronts and meeting places.

Freeh’s prosecution of the New York-based Mafia members resulted from years of painstaking effort, according to Tom Sheer, who then headed the FBI’s New York field office, the largest in the nation.

“When our agents came across early evidence of the drug dealing, Louie was the first to grasp the significance of it,” Sheer said.

“He grew with the case. He’s very low-key and very measured but he’s a committed guy. He thinks things through early, then makes decisions that are well-founded.”

In the “pizza connection” prosecution, Freeh demonstrated his grasp of the details of an international conspiracy flowing from 75 court-approved wiretaps as well as from other sources. “He was responsible to the court for almost every one of the taps,” Sheer said.

His detailed knowledge was reflected in the 14-month trial, the longest criminal proceeding in U.S. history, culminating in an emotional closing argument in which Freeh called the defendants “blood-sucking parasites.” Telling jurors that the Mafiosi had lived off the misery of heroin addicts, he said that “drug dealing is a disease, it’s a cancer, it’s a plague upon society.”

He won the conviction of 16 of 17 accused heroin traffickers headed by Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore Catalano, who received the heaviest sentence of 45 years in prison.

By the time the pizza-connection case was over, Freeh was supervising 180 attorneys working white-collar crime cases in the office then headed by U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“He’s a prodigious worker and exceedingly well organized,” said Washington attorney Paul Perito, a former member of the Manhattan federal attorney’s office.

Although he was little known outside the New York area, Freeh’s reputation by 1990 had reached the George Bush Administration’s Justice Department under then Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh. The department’s criminal and civil rights divisions and the FBI were working to solve the mail-bomb murders of U.S. Appellate Judge Robert S. Vance of Birmingham, Ala., and Robert Robinson, a civil rights lawyer who was a Savannah, Ga., councilman. Department officials turned to Freeh as the man to conclude it.

Not only had two murders occurred, but authorities had intercepted two other pipe bombs in the mail.

“This was perhaps his greatest test,” a colleague said. “Assistant U.S. attorneys in five different jurisdictions were raging at each other, and the department needed someone to pull it all together and coordinate the work of about 300 investigators.”

Freeh built a complex case that ended with the conviction of Walter Leroy Moody of Rex, Ga., who now is serving seven life sentences. For his efforts, Freeh received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

Freeh, known for his down-home dress and manner, often wears scuffed shoes to work and prefers dining at his desk, usually eating his favorite lunch of a baloney sandwich, banana and bottle of mineral water while discussing cases with clerks. On occasion he goes out to lunch, usually to have pizza at a favorite spot in Manhattan’s nearby Chinatown.

The athletically built judge is an avid runner who covers three miles daily, usually going out during the noon court recess. His other hobby is reading, where his preference runs to biography and history.

Profile: Louis J. Freeh

Here is background on President Clinton’s FBI nominee:

* Age: 43

* Education: Rutgers College, Bachelor of Arts, 1971; Rutgers Law School, JD, 1974; New York University Law School, masters in law, 1984.

* Career: FBI special agent, New York, 1975 to 1980; supervisory special agent, Organized Crime Section, FBI headquarters, 1980 to 1981; assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 1981 to 1990 (chief of its organized crime unit, 1987 to 1989); special prosecutor on assignment by the attorney general, in charge of the mail-bombing and civil rights murder case, May, 1990, to July, 1991; U.S. district judge, Southern District of New York, July, 1991, to present.

* Personal: A native of Jersey City, N.J., Freeh is married and has four young sons.

Source: Times staff