Memo by Freeh Denies Rumors He’ll Quit FBI

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, battered by a cross-fire of partisan politics and widely rumored to be planning to resign, has sent a memorandum to bureau employees assuring them that he intends to remain on the job.

In the memo, Freeh said media reports and recurring rumors that he was planning or contemplating a resignation “are simply not true.”

“As I have stated in several field offices,” he wrote, “. . . I am proud to be the FBI director.”

For several months, Freeh has had to contend with what a senior Justice Department official described as “an unpleasant atmosphere around here with all the cross-fire” stemming from several politically sensitive FBI investigations and from some of Freeh’s comments about them. The criticism came from congressional Republicans and President Clinton’s aides alike, and they fed rumors that Freeh was planning or being pressed to resign.

The 46-year-old Freeh--a former FBI agent, federal prosecutor and federal judge--was described by Clinton as a law enforcement legend three years ago when he assumed control of the FBI.

The director was greeted enthusiastically by the FBI and was strongly supported by Republicans and Democrats when he was named to succeed the discredited William S. Sessions, who left a demoralized bureau.

But relations between Freeh and Clinton cooled this summer after the director rebuked the White House for its handling of confidential FBI files that the agency sent to the White House for use in updating security clearances for its employees.

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On Friday, however, George Stephanopoulos, a senior Clinton aide, said that the president “thinks Louis Freeh has done a great job” and wants him to remain as director. Stephanopoulos insisted there is “no unhappiness” with Freeh at the White House.

The director declined comment, but aides said he remains determined to serve out his 10-year appointment--a commitment he made enthusiastically when he assumed the position. In a discussion last year with former colleagues on the bench in New York, Freeh mentioned he sometimes wished he were still a federal judge, secure in a lifetime appointment, but that he intended to serve out his term.

More recently, the criticism has led some who deal with him to suggest he was considering resigning.

Freeh has won acclaim for establishing unambiguous ethical and disciplinary rules and for the FBI’s solving of the World Trade Center bombing, and for arrests in the Unabomber attacks and in the Oklahoma City bombing. But his handling of several other cases has brought harsh criticism at one time or another from members of both parties.

His first misstep involved his handling of repercussions of a case that occurred a year before he took office--the Ruby Ridge, Idaho, siege in which an FBI sniper killed the wife of an anti-government fugitive.

Although Freeh took steps to discipline Larry A. Potts, the FBI official who oversaw the siege, the director also insisted on promoting Potts, a longtime friend, to be his top deputy. Freeh subsequently admitted that he had made a “grave error” and suspended Potts and other FBI officials, who are now subjects of criminal investigations.