FBI Under Freeh in the United States

Federal Bureau of Investigation: History Under Freeh

Introduction to FBI Under Freeh

In January 1993 the FBI suffered another scandal when allegations surfaced that William S. Sessions, who had become FBI director in 1987, had committed numerous ethics violations while in office. According to the allegations, later confirmed by a Justice Department investigation, Sessions took personal trips in the bureau’s plane, used FBI resources to construct a security fence around his home, and allowed his wife improper access to FBI headquarters. President Bill Clinton fired Sessions in July 1993 after he refused to resign. Louis J. Freeh, a former prosecutor, judge, and FBI agent, was appointed FBI director in 1993 following Sessions’s ouster. Freeh focused on expanding the bureau’s international presence and increasing the number of overseas offices.

The FBI also confronted new threats from terrorism. The FBI successfully investigated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, ultimately resulting in the conviction of six Islamic radicals for the bombing and ten other Islamic radicals for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks. The FBI quickly solved the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, arresting antigovernment activists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The bombing killed 168 people. In 1996 the agency identified Theodore Kaczynski as the so-called Unabomber, the man responsible for killing 3 people and injuring 23 others in a 17-year bombing campaign against industry, academia, and the airlines. In 1998 bombs were detonated at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 223 people and injuring thousands. The FBI’s investigation traced the bombings to a conspiracy by Islamic radicals to kill American citizens outside the United States. These bombings, combined with the earlier bombings on United States soil, increased the agency’s emphasis on domestic and international counterterrorism programs.

Alongside its successes, the FBI came under attack for its practices at the FBI Laboratory. In 1995 an FBI Laboratory chemist, Frederic Whitehurst, alleged that laboratory staff engaged in sloppy practices, fabricated evidence, and bent their findings to benefit prosecutions. A Justice Department investigation of laboratory practices, completed in 1997, failed to substantiate most of Whitehurst’s charges, but the investigation faulted laboratory examiners for substandard work, scientifically flawed reports, and misleading trial testimony, some of which tended to incriminate defendants. The FBI ordered reforms in report preparation, evidence handling, management, and other areas.

The FBI was also heavily criticized for its investigation of a bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. During the course of the inquiry, FBI agents identified an Atlanta security guard, Richard Jewell, as the prime suspect in the bombing. The security guard was never charged with a crime and was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing. But Freeh and the FBI were criticized for allegedly leaking the suspect’s name to the media and for conducting initial questioning of the security guard under false pretenses.

The FBI’s counterespionage operations came under renewed scrutiny in a series of highly publicized spy cases. In 1984 Richard W. Miller became the first FBI agent arrested (and later convicted) for espionage. In 1994 the FBI arrested Aldrich H. Ames, a veteran CIA official, for selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia. The agency was criticized for not acting earlier to apprehend Ames. In 1996 another FBI agent, Earl E. Pitts, was arrested for selling classified FBI counterintelligence information to Russia; he was convicted in 1997. In 1999 the FBI arrested and jailed Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, on charges of illegally copying nuclear weapons design secrets from Los Alamos computers. When the government agreed to drop all but one of its charges against Lee, critics assailed the FBI and director Freeh for presuming Lee guilty of spying despite weak evidence. In 2001 the FBI arrested Robert P. Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, on charges that he had sold national security secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia for 15 years. The FBI ordered an independent review of how Hanssen escaped detection and said it would administer polygraph tests to agents in key national security positions.

Freeh retired as FBI director in 2001, two years before the end of his ten-year term. President George W. Bush appointed Robert S. Mueller III, a longtime federal prosecutor, as the new director. Mueller was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about FBI Under Freeh in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to FBI Under Freeh

In this Section

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation Structure, FBI Jurisdiction and Investigative Responsibilities, FBI Agents, Law Enforcement Services, FBI Law Enforcement Services (including FBI Fingerprint Identification, FBI Laboratory, FBI Criminal Profiling, FBI Police Training, National Crime Information Center and Crime Statistics), FBI History (including FBI Early Years, Hoover Reforms, FBI in the World War II and Postwar Era, FBI Antiradical Activities, FBI Reform, Ruby Ridge, FBI Under Freeh and September 11 Attacks), FBI and the Patriot Act and National Lawyers Guild.