Even in the face of uncertain times and untested missions, the new directorexpressed stout confidence. "We must do now and here what the people of Americahave always done in terms of crisis--take control of our own destiny and use ourenormous resources, ingenuity and will to establish the domestic tranquility andjustice envisioned in the Constitution of the United States."
The year was 1993. The president, of course, was Bill Clinton. And theiron-spined G-man selected to lead the bureau through troubled and transitionaltimes was Louis Freeh.
At the time, Freeh seemed like an inspired choice. Following William Sessions,whom Clinton had fired in large part because of his personal use of FBIresources, Freeh seemed straighter than a shotgun barrel. A former FBI agent,federal prosecutor, and judge celebrated for his investigations into organizedcrime and drug trafficking, Freeh knew the bureau inside and out. Even the GOP,mindful of Freeh's appointment to the federal bench by President George H.W.Bush, couldn't muster a word of dissent. He was, Clinton said at the time, "thebest possible person to head the FBI as it faces new challenges and a newcentury."
Eight years later, the new challenges of the new century are asunambiguous as the billion tons of rubble still smoking in lower Manhattan. UnderFreeh's successor, Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI is leading the investigationinto the September 11 attacks and whatever may remain of the terrorist network onAmerican soil. Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft have plans to turn theFBI into a mean, if not so lean, terror-fighting machine. But 27,000-personbureaucracies cannot transform themselves overnight. For the time being, it isstill Louis Freeh's FBI.
There's reason to believe that the FBI may not yet be up to the job nowbeing asked of it. Whether or not the bureau could have prevented the attacksfrom taking place is unanswerable. What is certain, though, is that Freeh'smanagement of the FBI failed to move it to where he--and many others in1993--acknowledged it needed to go. How he fell short, and why no one held himaccountable, is an object lesson in the importance of focused management, thecomplexities of counterterrorism, and the need for balanced FBI oversight.
Micro-mismanagement
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the FBI was not asleepto the possibility of another terrorist attack. During the eight years that hewas director, Freeh would tell anyone who would listen of the imminent terroristthreat, especially if that person sat on a congressional appropriationscommittee. "In the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing," Freeh testifiedin 1994, "the U.S. must maintain credible defenses and constant vigilance againstthose groups who would terrorize the citizenry of this country." The call tovigilance would become part of the FBI congressional liturgy, repeated year afteryear. Because Freeh was a master at maneuvering amid the politics of CapitolHill, Congress always answered, "Amen." From 1994 to 2001, legislators increasedthe FBI's counterterrorism budget from $79 million to $372 million--a whopping471 percent.
Freeh's expansion of the bureau's role in counterterrorism extended beyondits budget. A series of presidential declarations and antiterrorism billsbroadened the FBI's role as the lead agency in the prevention, crisis management,and investigation of any domestic terrorist attack. Freeh took the FBI overseas,creating legal-attaché offices in 44 countries around the world. Theoffices channel intelligence back to FBI analysts and maintain relationships withforeign law-enforcement agencies. Even Freeh's critics agree that the overseasexpansion helps the bureau keep step with the globalized realities of crime andterrorism.
But back in Washington, Freeh appeared more interested inbuilding the FBI's empire than in making sure that it ran effectively. Freeh'sprevious jobs--agent, prosecutor, and judge--rewarded individual brilliancerather than managerial competence, and, as director, he continued in the samevein. Instead of providing steady leadership across the bureau, Freeh often gotintensely involved in individual cases or projects. Chafing at themicromanagement, many FBI agents dubbed Freeh "the bureau's only presidentiallyappointed street agent."
Still more damaging, Freeh never surrounded himself with people who couldcompensate for his shortcomings. Instead, he chose agents with whom he had growncomfortable over the years, even if he had to bend the rules to do it. Forinstance, Freeh loosened the bureau's rules on previous drug abuse in order tohire three former colleagues from his prosecutor days.
Linguini v. Quiche
Mismanagement fell heaviest on the bureau's counterterrorismoperations. Freeh made his name, as most FBI legends do, fighting drugs and theMob, and in those arenas he was as good as they come. But fighting the Mob andfighting foreign terrorists are very different things. The techniques of acriminal investigation are familiar to just about anyone who has gone to themovies in the past 30 years: surveillance, wiretapping, interrogating, and, iflucky, door kicking. An effective counterintelligence and counterterrorismoffice, by contrast, can look a lot like the reading room at the New York PublicLibrary. It's about research, record keeping, and analysis. A surveillance can goon for years and never lead to an arrest--and that's not necessarily a bad thing,so long as an agent continues to get good information that can prevent largercrimes. But because criminal investigators have the power of statistics on theirside--number of arrests, amount of property seized--they tended to be promotedthrough the ranks faster than the counterintelligence agents. "When you have anopening and a counterintelligence agent comes before a promotion board with 400surveillances and no arrests, these old crime guys with their cigars, the guyswho used to be cops, would say, 'What?'" recalls John Lewis, former assistantdirector in charge of national security for the FBI. "The crime guys used torefer to foreign-counterintelligence and counterterrorism guys as 'fern-loving,quiche-eating, chardonnay drinkers. The criminal-division guys were the'red-orchid-loving, linguini-eating, Chianti drinkers.'"
Freeh was a linguini man through and through, and it showed in his approachto counterterrorism. In 1996 the Brown-Aspin Commission held a summit to discussthe roles and capabilities of America's intelligence community. Former FBI agentI.C. Smith, who had worked on both criminal and intelligence over his 30-yearcareer, was on the team to help prepare Freeh for the meeting. "We had done agreat deal of work preparing talking points about the FBI's role as the leadcounterintelligence agency," he relates. "And Freeh basically ignored everything.He launched into a discussion of cop-to-cop relations overseas. I was watchingpeople on the panel," Smith goes on. "They didn't want to hear about cop-to-coprelationships. They wanted to hear about what the FBI was going to do as the leadintelligence agency.... It was clear the FBI had no interest in being a player inthe [intelligence] community."
The people Freeh chose to lead the counterterrorism division shared the samebiases. Of the three assistant directors in charge of national security to serveunder Freeh, only one, John Lewis, who served for only a year and a half, hadfirsthand experience working intelligence cases. The same dearth of experiencepredominated among the top executives in the counterterrorism division. As aresult, they seemed to lack an understanding of the delicacy of internationalinvestigations. One counterterrorism official, John O'Neill, who died in theSeptember 11 tragedy just as he was beginning his job as director of security atthe World Trade Center, was so aggressive in his investigation of the USSCole bombing in Yemen that the U.S. ambassador there barred him from thecountry.
Without experience in intelligence, many of Freeh's executives never seemed tounderstand its value. "The attitude was, 'They aren't making arrests, so why arethey here?'" says Smith. So intelligence resources were regularly "reprogrammed"over to the criminal-investigative side. In 1995, for instance, half of the $5million for intelligence analysts was shifted to a computer crime center. Alaboratory built with counterterrorism funds was used, in part, to bolster thebureau's standard forensics operation. And many of the 1,000 agents that the FBIwas able to hire thanks to $83 million in new counterterrorism funds were insteadused as regular street agents.
To be fair, it can be difficult for an FBI supervisor to justify keeping hisagents on the business of preventing a threat that may never materialize whilethe in-boxes of criminal investigators accumulate more and more case files. Butthe ability to focus on the big threat down the road, as opposed to the littlenuisances nipping at one's knees, is precisely what separates good leaders frombad ones. In seeking the funds in the first place, Freeh's expressed reasoningwas, in fact, that it would "double the 'shoe-leather' for counterterrorisminvestigations so that we can address emerging domestic and internationalterrorist groups." It never quite worked out that way.
The bureau's counterterrorism and intelligence operations sufferedfrom subtler shifts as well. Intelligence analysts were often removed from theircounterterrorism responsibilities and used instead for criminal investigation or,even worse, as secretaries. "They were paid as intelligence analysts," Smithsays, "but many times their actual function was more clerical in nature." At thesame time, the quality of analysis was hurt by a lowering of the standardsgoverning who could become an analyst. The analyst positions became "a rewardsystem for people's secretaries," says Robert Heibel, former FBI intelligenceanalyst and director of the Research/Intelligence Analyst Program at MercyhurstCollege in Erie, Pennsylvania. "If you did a good job and you had typing abilityand could communicate, you could get promoted to an intelligence analyst," heasserts. "The system became bastardized."
Meanwhile, the bureau brought over from the criminal side its bias againstworking closely with local law enforcement. Freeh, to his credit, did address FBIcoordination with local officials by creating "joint terrorism task forces" thatbring together the FBI, state and local police, and federal and localprosecutors. Institutionally, however, there were clues to suggest that the FBIhadn't completely changed its spots. In 1994 the FBI participated in a jointterrorism exercise with the Departments of Defense and Energy that was designedto assess how well the agencies were prepared to coordinate a response to apossible nuclear incident. Nearly 1,000 federal personnel and private contractorsshowed up, but not one of them was from local government. Responding to adisbelieving Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, John Sopko, thedeputy chief counsel to the minority at the time, testified that "there was anapparent belief by the FBI that tactical and technical operations to deal withthe incident could be performed in relative isolation from local officials." TheDepartment of Energy's report on the exercise claimed that the FBI worked "inimperial fashion." Four years later, the FBI worked together with the Departmentof Justice to prepare a five-year counterterrorism plan intended to be theall encompassing national counterterrorism strategy. The report was comprehensivewith one notable exception: It identified no role whatsoever for state and localgovernments.
Mismanagement was not limited to the counterterrorism division. Freeh'spenchant for crony over quality led to his hiring of Larry Potts as deputydirector, despite Potts's censure for his leadership role in the disastrous RubyRidge shootout. Potts later was suspended after it was determined that he hadparticipated in a cover-up of his wrongdoing. And Freeh's cutbacks inheadquarters staff and lack of managerial oversight resulted in the introductionof an expensive but failed computer system (which led to the mishandling of theTimothy McVeigh files) as well as a debilitating one-year backup at the FBI'sonce-vaunted crime lab (a delay that led to the mishandling of up to 50 cases).
A Political Operative
But what Freeh lacked in managerial genius, he more thanmade up for in political and public-relations acumen. In a breathtaking displayof political agility, Freeh skated over the cracking ice beneath him, away fromthe Clinton administration and into the warm and welcoming arms of congressionalRepublicans.
Freeh's relations with congressional Republicans were hard won because, formuch of the first few years of his tenure, his standing was diminished by variousbureau mistakes. In the summer of 1996, it was discovered that the FBI hadprovided the White House Director of Personnel Security Craig Livingstone withthe files of 400 Republicans. The Clinton administration at the time said it wasnothing more than a bureaucratic snafu. Four years later, a three-judgeinvestigative panel agreed with that assessment. Freeh, however, didn't take anychances. "The prior system of providing files to the White House relied on goodfaith and honor," he said. "Unfortunately, the FBI and I were victimized."
At first, congressional Republicans didn't buy the image of the FBI aspolitical naïf. The scandal hit at a time when Freeh was seeking expandedwiretap powers (many of which were finally granted by the USA Patriot Act of2001). With "Filegate" in the air, Newt Gingrich said that "it's very hard tojustify giving that agency more power." In October and again in December, Freehwas called to the Hill to undergo a public grilling at the hands of SenateRepublicans on both the Ruby Ridge cover-up and the Richard JewellOlympics-bombing case. Criticism had grown so intense by the fall that Freehwrote a memo to FBI personnel insisting that he had no intention of resigning.
Since President Clinton was seen as politically incapable of replacing hisholier-than-he FBI director, Freeh's fate seemed to fall into the hands ofcongressional Republicans who weren't sure what use they had for an FBI directorwhose prosecutorial vigilance scared the hardest-core of the GOP's constituency.They soon found out. In January 1997, the FBI discovered evidence suggesting thatChina had sought political influence through illegal campaign contributions. Anew Clinton scandal was born, and Freeh used it to sever his cord to the WhiteHouse. The FBI leaked word of the investigation to The Washington Post.They also briefed congressional Republicans. The White House had to learn aboutit by reading the newspaper. When it was leaked that Freeh had written a pointedmemo to Attorney General Janet Reno objecting to her decision not to appoint yetanother independent counsel to investigate the matter, the battle lines werequickly drawn--and few could help but notice on which side sat the "politicallyindependent" director of the FBI.
Freeh's fortunes changed almost overnight. On June 4, 1997, he testifiedbefore the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue of FBI oversight, ordinarily acontentious issue between Congress and the bureau. Not on this day. There havebeen serious problems within the FBI, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch ofUtah said, "but I would be remiss if I did not mention the positive leadership ofDirector Louis Freeh." Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter went out of his wayto "compliment you on a job well done" and issued a rare invitation for a fundingrequest, reminding Freeh: "The war against terrorism is obviously at the top ofthe agenda, and we have urged you in the past to let us know what additionalresources you need."
From that point on, Freeh and the FBI were virtually bulletproof. The bureauseemed to reward its new friends on the right with briefings and otherinformation unavailable to the Democratic leadership. At times, this was done todeflect criticism away from the FBI and toward Reno's Justice Department. Duringthe investigation of Wen Ho Lee, who was suspected of spying for the Chinese, theFBI fed one-sided information to Specter that squarely placed the blame for thebotching of the Lee investigation on Justice. The report that Specter producedturned out to be so dubiously slanted that not a single other member of theSenate Judiciary Committee--not even South Carolina's Strom Thurmond--would signit. Meanwhile, Freeh was not subtle about where his political sentiments lay. "Itwas useful," says one former Republican Senate Judiciary staffer, "to havesomeone more to your way of thinking from a policy perspective than Reno'sJustice Department."
Suddenly, any concerns that Congress had about the bureau's counterterrorismactivities--or other aspects of the bureau's work--seemed to disappear. Concernsover where the bureau's counterterrorism money was being spent, though raised bythe General Accounting Office, were met with complete silence on the Hill.Indeed, in 1999, Freeh was completely forthcoming in admitting that the bureau'sintelligence analysis capabilities were "deficient." Congress didn't for a momentquestion whether Freeh's leadership contributed to the deficiency. Instead, itrewarded the FBI with still more funds to bolster its intelligence units.
The faults in Freeh's management and Congress's failure toprovide proper oversight are now playing out in the FBI's ever expandinginvestigation into the September 11 attacks. How much further along the FBI couldbe is impossible to know. But the scattershot nature of its investigationcertainly suggests that the bureau has little targeted intelligence on al-Qaeda'sreach in the United States. Moreover, the rush to lock up suspects beforeintelligence on terrorist cells can be developed seems to indicate thepersistence of the cop mentality that prevailed under Freeh. Merely throwing morecriminal investigators at the problem won't be enough. The bureau needs toaddress the lack of intelligence capability not merely by hiring new agents butby making sure that they are trained in the finer points of intelligence andensuring that their supervisors understand it as well. Moreover, it needs to workharder to break down its own cultural bias against local law enforcement. Freehhimself identified that need at his swearing-in, saying that the FBI needed to"share our toys." Director Mueller, who has echoed the sentiment, should back itup with concrete action.
Mueller, for his part, has seemed willing to accept that with an increasedrole will come increased oversight, both from the Justice Department and fromCongress. And the Senate seems willing to step up to the task. After the Senateswitched hands last summer, the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,Patrick Leahy, almost immediately called hearings to look into the question ofFBI oversight--in order, he said, to "restore the luster, the effectiveness, andthe professionalism" of the FBI. If that is to happen, the Senate's vision ofoversight will have to extend beyond holding sharp hearings that say much and dolittle.
The past three months have only increased the desire of Congress--and, indeed,the nation--to make sure that the FBI lives up to its image as the crown jewel oflaw enforcement. In a sense, though, this may be the very image that is holdingthe bureau back. It is not a precious gem to be appreciated and admired fromafar. Rather, it's an industrial diamond--a tool--and more than ever we need toknow that it can do the job.