Disciplining of Freeh Rejected

Justice Department officials who reviewed the FBI’s flawed investigations of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge called for disciplinary action against FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and three other FBI veterans, but the recommendations were secretly rejected in the closing days of the Clinton administration.

Stephen Colgate, an assistant attorney general who had authority to mete out final sanctions in the Ruby Ridge case, denied a recommendation to censure Freeh for condoning the shortcomings of the FBI investigation. Colgate, now in private practice, said Friday he stood by his Jan. 3 decision.

But FBI agents who spent years turning up flaws in the FBI’s initial inquiries into the events at Ruby Ridge, Idaho--where an FBI sniper killed the wife of separatist Randy Weaver--denounced Colgate’s decision as “outrageous.”

The agents told the Senate Judiciary Committee, which learned only last month of Colgate’s decision, that they were especially dismayed because senior FBI officials had subjected them to threats for conducting a thorough investigation.

Freeh, who left the bureau June 22, did not respond to a request for comment.

The recommended disciplinary actions against Freeh and others were cited in a July 27 letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and four other judiciary committee members seeking documents in the case.

They noted that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and a task force of the Justice Management Division “recommended in 1999 that two senior FBI executives be suspended and that the FBI Director and one other FBI agent be censured.” Committee officials refused to disclose the names of the other three FBI officials.

They also noted that officials at Justice had urged that disciplinary actions Freeh took in January 1995 against three other unnamed agents involved in Ruby Ridge be rescinded, because the punishments were not warranted.

Nothing was done about the recommendations until Jan. 3, when Colgate, assistant attorney general for administration, decided that “no new discipline would be imposed.” Colgate, designated by Attorney General Janet Reno as the final arbiter in the matter, also refused to rescind any previous disciplinary actions.

He conveyed his decision in a memo to then-Deputy attorney General Eric Holder. It was not announced publicly or reported to Congress. The decision, Leahy said, surfaced when he asked direct questions about “final discipline” while preparing for a July 18 FBI oversight hearing.

The reasons for Freeh’s proposed censure have not been spelled out, but Leahy suggested a rationale in written questions he sent to the agents who testified at the hearing.

Leahy asked if it would be a breach of conduct warranting discipline if an FBI official ordered or took part in an inquiry knowing that the person conducting the inquiry is biased or a friend of the target. He also inquired about officials accepting the results of such an investigation when it has “obvious holes.”

FBI agent Roberts, the OPR unit chief in charge of internal investigations, said this would amount to “investigative dereliction.”

“In the case of the Ruby Ridge investigation,” said Roberts, who won the FBI’s Ethics Award last year, “ . . . talking about senior executives in the FBI with many years of experience.” He said at the hearing that culpability “goes to the highest levels of the FBI.”