FBI Chief To Call It Quits

FBI Director Louis Freeh, who was appointed by President Clinton in 1993 and who often clashed with the Clinton White House, said Tuesday he will be leaving his job in June.

Freeh, who has a 10-year term lasting until 2003 as head of the federal law enforcement agency, told FBI employees in a letter he would be retiring in June "at the end of the school year," after a 27-year career in government.

The FBI director, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, serves a 10-year term to minimize the role of politics in the job.

President Bush had asked Freeh, a former federal prosecutor and federal judge in New York City, to remain as FBI chief.

"It did catch me by surprise, and I'm disappointed. I was hoping that he would stay on," Bush said. "I think he's done a very good job."

Mr. Bush was not alone in praising the outgoing FBI Director.

Attorney General John Ashcroft called Freeh "a model law enforcement officer." In a statement, Ashcroft went on to say, "His commitment to excellence has enriched the FBI's heritage of thorough professionalism."

He listed many accomplishments achieved at the bureau since then, including hiring several thousand new special agents, forging a relationship with the CIA, doubling the FBI's overseas presence and a bigger budget for crime-fighting.

In a recent success, a beaming Freeh stepped to a podium here to announce the capture of James Kopp, a 46-year-old wanted in connection with the 1998 slaying of an abortion-providing doctor from Buffalo, N.Y.

But Freeh's tenure was also marked by controversy.

The bureau was embarrassed by the arrest early this year of a veteran FBI agent, Robert Philip Hanssen, on allegations that he had spied for Moscow since 1985.

In the aftermath of the arrest and the fallout from it, Freeh and his top deputies agreed to take lie-detector tests as part of stepped-up security procedures following Hanssen's arrest.

Also, Freeh had differences with then-Attorney General Janet Reno over the government's investigation of alleged wrongdoing by Democrats in connection with 1996 campaign-fundig activities.

In a memo kept secret for two-and-a-half years, Freeh said the Justice Department was ignoring "reliable evidence" that conflicted with Vice President Al Gore's accounts of his fund-raising activities.

Justice Department officials said the FBI's legal analysis was flawed.

Freeh's legacy also includes a confrontation that agents had with David Koresh and his followers in the Branch Davidian group — a clash that left 83 dead in Waco, Texas.

After a 10-month independent investigation, former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., concluded that the blame for the catastrophe rested solely with Koresh.

When he took over the FBI, Freeh had been an agent for 18 years and carried out investigations that led to a number of high-profile convictions in New York.

He left the bureau briefly to become an assistant U.S. attorney and became one of the front-line prosecutors in what became known as the "Pizza Connection" case, a major heroin distribution operation.

Freeh has six sons ranging in age from 3 to 16 and made a point in his written statement of saying that he would be leaving the FBI "by the end of the school year in June."

Freeh said he looks forward to spending the summer with his family and "engaging in new challenges," but said he has not been job hunting.

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