Even as the speculators narrow down the potential candidates to replace Louis Freeh as director of the FBI, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller III seems to be the most prominent finalist, though former deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger III and New York federal judge Sterling Johnson have also been mentioned. Inasmuch as none of the candidates seems qualified to deal with the agency’s current problems, perhaps they are seen as placeholders while the role and functions of the FBI are reconsidered and thought through afresh.
One may hope. But it’s more likely the new chief will simply be asked to muddle through and the government will hope against hope no new scandals emerge and the memory of the last few years will eventually fade. Unless the agency is thoroughly reassessed, however, the scandals and embarrassments are likely to keep on comin’.
My retired law enforcement friend, Mr. Anonymous, says that the integrity those in charge of appointments seem to be looking for is essential, but what’s really needed in that position is administrative experience in a large law enforcement agency. The FBI, from an operational perspective, he says, needs at least two solid levels of supervision instead of little cliques doing it their way. That means the top guy must know how to make such a system work, including how to avoid being snowed by entrenched upper-level officials. Working as a federal attorney, or even in the Justice Department, might not equip somebody with the tools, the knowledge, the instincts and the cojones to cut through the crap.
He thinks an outsider wouldn’t be a bad choice. Almost anybody who has come up through the FBI ranks will inevitably have some favorites – remember how Louis Freeh, when he started, made the huge mistake of promoting his friend Larry Potts after Potts had been deeply involved in the Ruby Ridge debacle. And since one of the most important tasks will be to get rid of deadwood that has become implanted as the organization has grown too quickly to be properly managed, an outsider without too many personal ties might be the only candidate likely to be able to accomplish real change.
My friend thinks that an endorsement of Robert Mueller by California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer amounts to a kiss of death, even if it is a pro forma matter of political politeness. He does say that having worked the homicide division in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., was probably good experience – although as a gumshoe, he hasn’t been especially impressed with the kind of work federal prosecutors around the country have done in recent years. And he doesn’t think U.S. Attorneys get any of the kind of management training and experience it will take to whip the FBI back into shape.
Those might be details. In light of hearings in the Senate, convened by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a skilled and able politician and a thoroughly partisan Democrat, a down-to-the roots reassessment of the FBI just might coincide with appointing a new director. Any such assessment – Sens. Hatch and Schumer say they will introduce a bill to create a panel of non-governmental experts to look at the FBI – should include at least a discussion of the option that the federal government doesn’t really need a bureau of investigation or a national law enforcement agency at all.
Short of outright abolition, however, almost all the retired cops and criminologists I talk to say the FBI has simply grown too quickly and in a too disorganized and unaccountable way to be effective any more – it’s “overgrown, overextended and underqualified” as one told me. The FBI needs to cut the PR crap and the intensive involvement in essentially local matters and concentrate on what it used to be able to do well – espionage, crimes with a clear interstate aspect and clear national significance and maybe some bank robberies. It would be intelligent to pull away from drug law enforcement cases – J. Edgar Hoover, whatever his faults, understood the huge potential for corruption and demoralization in that cesspool.
Given that the FBI has grown too quickly for its own good, that it still has a culture of secrecy and cover-up, that its supervision has been about on a par with its crime lab work, it is hardly surprising that new scandals keep emerging. The latest, of course, was the FBI analyst arrested in Las Vegas, accused of selling classified files and other information to the mafia and other targets of criminal investigations.
It may be even less surprising that the lawyer for James Hill, the accused FBI agent, is pointing the finger at another retired FBI agent as the real bad guy. Lawyer Barry Levinson says Mike Levin, now a private investigator bothered Hill and others for classified files and other information – maybe for clients, maybe for federal investigators. Whatever tangled tales emerge, the indications are that the Las Vegas office of the FBI didn’t exactly specialize in clear lines of accountability and communication.
All this comes on top of the previous scandals revolving around information incompetently assembled and released during the Oklahoma City bombing investigation – with much more embarrassing revelations yet to come. Despite former Sen. Danforth’s whitewash, more revelations about FBI misdeeds at Waco will come out some day. The FBI crime lab is a scandal. The Robert Hanssen spy case has been embarrassing enough and more embarrassments are sure to come.
The FBI is far from the only government agency that has grown too quickly, too unaccountably and too secretively in recent years. But it is one of the most important since, at one time, it held the respect of most Americans and is now on the verge of being a national laughingstock. Far from understanding the scope of problems arising from over-expansion, Louis Freeh has made the key “accomplishment” of his tenure the internationalization of the FBI, opening offices in Moscow, Warsaw and elsewhere.
Talking about rising to the level of total incompetence!
And to be reasonably fair to the agency, Congress has not done an adequate job of overseeing the agency. Recent hearings and proposals for independent assessment might improve the situation, but don’t count on it.
It seems unlikely that downsizing suggestions will be taken seriously – a recent commission report recommended folding the DEA into the FBI, which would have made it even larger and more unwieldy. But reducing the scope of the FBI’s mission should at least be on the table.
One way to start might be to confine the agency to investigating crimes that have a clear, unambiguous interstate component. Another might be to take the word “investigation” more seriously and reduce the field operational aspect.
Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute (whose report on Danforth’s Waco whitewash is simply devastating) told me it might be interesting to think about folding all the federal law enforcement agencies – about 70 federal outfits now have people who are authorized to carry weapons and make arrests – into one agency and then downsizing as the missions are consolidated. It’s an interesting notion, though I fear the promised consolidation and downsizing simply wouldn’t happen and the result could be an even more unaccountable federal law enforcement establishment.
In thinking through the FBI’s problems, it is important to keep the option of abolition at least lurking in the background. Aside from a few very specialized outfits operating on federal properties, we didn’t have a national law enforcement agency until the early part of the last century. It is questionable whether such an outfit fits into the constitutional scheme the founders envisioned. And it might be that the possibility of abolition is the only way to get the FBI’s attention sufficiently to induce genuine reform.
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