FBI Director Freeh to Quit; Bush, Capital Left Surprised

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh abruptly announced Tuesday that he will resign next month after eight tumultuous years marked by terrorist bombings, political scrapes, spy scandals and a growing overseas presence for the nation’s most vaunted law enforcement agency.

Freeh’s decision caught President Bush and many others off guard because, after receiving strong words of endorsement from the White House in January, Freeh had hinted that he intended to finish out his 10-year term in 2003.

His departure triggered the time-honored Washington tradition of politicians floating and assessing the names of would-be successors. Among those immediately thrown into the mix were Republican Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma, former Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana, acting Deputy U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert Mueller and even Democratic appointee Mary Jo White, the New York prosecutor who is investigating former President Clinton’s last-day pardons.

President Bush said he regretted seeing the 52-year-old Freeh leave the job. “We are fortunate to have had a man of his caliber serve our country, and we will miss him,” Bush said at the White House. He made no mention of how he will go about choosing Freeh’s replacement.

Asked about possible successors at the FBI, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said only: “We need a good one.”

Freeh Reportedly Seeks More Money

Freeh, who has six sons at home under the age of 17, said he will leave office “by the end of the school year in June.” After 27 years in government service, he said he wants to spend time with his family and explore “new challenges.”

Associates said that with his children approaching college age and his parents in poor health in New Jersey, Freeh’s desire to make more money to support his family was a major factor in his early departure. He could earn $1 million a year as a lawyer or corporate executive, one friend and colleague said.

Freeh earns more than $145,000 a year as head of the FBI, one of the most powerful and fabled positions in American law enforcement. He oversees more than 27,000 employees in 44 countries and has shepherded a significant expansion of the bureau’s annual budget to $3.4 billion.

A former judge who is regarded as both a tough lawman and a deft politician, Freeh guided the FBI through a time of rapid transition in the 1990s in tackling international crime, terrorism, Internet fraud and other growing threats.

He weathered numerous crises, including the FBI’s much-criticized handling of the standoff with David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers outside Waco, Texas; the 1996 bombing in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics; and espionage investigations of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee and accused Russian spy Robert Philip Hanssen.

But he survived these controversies with his personal reputation largely intact, thanks in part to his strong relations with Republicans who hailed his efforts to investigate the campaign finance abuses of the 1996 Clinton-Gore reelection campaign.

Chosen, Hailed by Clinton in ’93

It was President Clinton who chose Freeh for the FBI job in 1993, hailing him as a “law enforcement legend” for his work as an FBI agent, a prosecutor and a federal judge in New York.

But four years later, Freeh wrote a secret memo recommending that an independent counsel investigate the campaign fund-raising allegations, a recommendation that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno rejected. The split became even more pronounced when Freeh praised Clinton nemesis Kenneth W. Starr and a second independent counsel who was probing alleged misdeeds in the Clinton administration.

Freeh’s independent stances delighted Republican members of Congress. Indeed, the most lavish praise heaped on the FBI director after his announcement Tuesday came from GOP leaders.

Typical were the comments of Ashcroft, a former senator from Missouri, who called Freeh “a model law enforcement officer” with “uncompromising integrity.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said Freeh “will leave an enduring legacy at the world’s premier crime-fighting body.”

But his legacy may be a study in contrasts, marked by both critical successes and embarrassing gaffes.

In announcing his departure to FBI employees, Freeh said he is proud of many accomplishments, including doubling the bureau’s overseas presence; expanding its budget for fighting cyber-crime and other cutting-edge investigations; cooperating more closely with other law enforcement agencies; and swearing in more than 5,000 new FBI agents, including many minorities and women at an agency long dominated by white men.

“His legacy,” former FBI Director William H. Webster said in an interview, “will be that he moved early and strongly into the international arena, he opened up more FBI offices abroad, including Moscow, and encouraged cooperative efforts in dealing with major problems on a worldwide basis, like terrorism and organized crime.”

John Sennett, head of the FBI agents’ association, said Freeh met frequently with the bureau’s agents and always responded “with an open ear and an open mind,” reforming internal investigation procedures to meet agents’ concerns about due process.

Some Skepticism by FBI Agents

Some agents grew skeptical of the energy Freeh devoted to international efforts as he traveled to 68 countries and met with 2,100 foreign leaders. There was a gnawing sense among some agents “that the time and effort might be better spent on working traditional forms of crime on the streets of the United States,” Sennett said.

“His record is not perfect, and he is not universally loved . . . but my overall impression is that his successor will have a tough act to follow,” Sennett added.

As major crime in the United States fell for each of his eight years in office, Freeh earned plaudits for the FBI’s crackdowns on international drug traffickers and its investigations into terrorist bombings in Oklahoma City, New York City, Africa and elsewhere.

But espionage proved a weak spot. Last year’s investigation of scientist Wen Ho Lee--who was originally suspected of passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese--crumbled amid evidence of bumbling and harassment by FBI investigators.

And the February arrest of FBI agent Hanssen, a senior counterintelligence officer suspected of spying for the Russians for 15 years, has raised troubling questions about how Hanssen’s activities went undetected for so long. Some FBI investigators suggested after CIA agent Aldrich H. Ames was arrested in 1985 for spying for Russia that the FBI was ignoring the possibility of moles within its ranks. The controversy has prompted Freeh to order expanded polygraph testing of his agents and to submit himself to a polygraph.

Freeh ordered a broad review into counterintelligence lapses in the wake of Hanssen’s arrest, and the timing of his resignation surprised some federal observers who believed he wanted to stay on the job at least until that security review is completed later this year.

Freeh was also shadowed by the FBI’s role in two notorious episodes that predated his tenure: the fatal 1992 shootings of the wife and son of survivalist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the deadly standoff with the Branch Davidians outside Waco in 1993.

Freeh took heat for making senior FBI official Larry Potts his top deputy after Potts had been mildly sanctioned for management failures in the Idaho shootings. Later, when Justice Department investigators informed Freeh that Potts had allegedly helped cover up how the standoff unfolded, Freeh angrily suspended Potts.

The Branch Davidian episode erupted anew for Freeh in 1999, when new evidence emerged showing that the FBI had falsely denied using pyrotechnic devices on the last day of the confrontation.