Louis Freeh: a mixed legacy -- not easily pigeonholed

By Wes Vernon

Trying to make a dispassionate assessment of Louis Freeh's stormy tenure as FBI director is not something for those who lack an appreciation for varying shades of gray. Quite honestly, that is this writer's take on his memoirs, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.

If you have any integrity and you're the nation's top G-man, what do you do when you find out you're going to have to investigate the man who appointed you? Almost from the day he became FBI director, Louis Freeh had to do just that.

President Bill Clinton knew he was guilty of wrongdoing and that he might be facing an FBI investigation in the Whitewater scandal. So how to finesse that? No problem. Just invite the FBI director and his wife over to the White House for dinner with the president and first lady and an evening in the company of film star Tom Hanks.

But what would you say of an FBI director who turned down the invite, much to chagrin of his wife — to whom he could say nothing about the investigation underway? He couldn't tell anyone, not even her, why he could not get too cozy with the president because of conflict-of-interest issues.

People don't normally reject White House invitations — certainly not those that are that alluring — unless there's a good reason for it. And even then, if you were Louis Freeh, you would — as he did — resist the temptation to justify it in his own mind.

As FBI director, Freeh was repulsed by the Clinton administration's non-response to the terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. Publicly, the president had told Americans he was "outraged" by the terrorist attack and that "the cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished." Privately, Clintonistas were sitting around worrying about how they were going to spin this with the media and with Congress.

The FBI investigation discovered the Khobar Towers attack had been sanctioned, funded and directed by senior officials of the government of Iran (yes, the same Iran that now threatens the world with nuclear annihilation). The big White House pow-wow was focused on how to deal with the public in case the information leaked — not with how we would get the oil-rich Saudis to cooperate in giving us access to the suspects for questioning.

To Bill Clinton, committing a crime was okay just as long as it was done in the interest of saving his political hide.

When others in the room were worrying about how they would manage the findings of the Khobar Towers investigation, Freeh chimed in with, "Wait a minute. Are we going to talk about the fact that Iranians killed nineteen Americans?" In his book, he answers his own question by declaring, "It seemed we were here to manage the issue, not do a damn thing about it."

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah visited President Clinton in Washington. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger — who would later confess to stealing classified documents out of the National Archives by stuffing them in his pants — assured Freeh that Clinton "leaned on him [the prince] hard." But Freeh heard from other sources that the president mentioned Kohbar Towers to the prince briefly, and then hit him up for a contribution to his library.

Only when the administration of George W. Bush came to the White House was Freeh able to get some action in the matter.

The purpose of mentioning this case — which is in Freeh's lead chapter — is not to rehash Clinton's many crimes — but to try to put in perspective the former FBI director's dilemma. As the top cop appointed to his office by a crook, he could have resigned and embarrassed the White House. He could have done that. But as he tells it, he feared the kind of choice that Clinton would make as his replacement, even on a temporary basis.

By then, Freeh's relations with President Clinton had soured. Even though the president had promised him independence from political influence, Freeh was under unrelenting pressure to become a Clinton lackey. Clinton says in his memoirs that appointing Freeh was one of his biggest mistakes, and that Freeh was out to bring down his presidency. Freeh says this is "bunk." But how many times can a cop aggressively pursue serious and arguably treasonous violations of the law that keep leading to the doorstep of his boss without either compromising himself or quitting in disgust?

Freeh tried to navigate those rough waters with mixed results. While he pursued what he considered the worst cases, he was shrewd in how he picked his fights. The Clinton crimes were so numerous that just keeping up with them was more than a fulltime job. Freeh says he got about five hours of sleep each night.

Not only Khobar Towers, but the investigation of Clinton's taking of illegal campaign money from the Communist Chinese, and the Chinese espionage case involving scientist Wen Ho Lee at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, laboratories are matters that he tried to pursue.

Don't give Freeh any of that poppycock about how Wen Ho Lee was persecuted just because of his Asian ethnicity, as the Clintons have insisted with the backing of the media and an activist judge. The onetime FBI boss makes it clear the Wen Ho Lee case ended in a huge coverup. That a stupid judge would disparage the case and cloud the issue by playing the ethnicity card is a prime example of an arrogant segment of the judiciary making up its own laws as it goes along. As Freeh puts it in his book, "The gods of political correctness were satisfied. The firestorm died down, but in the end, I didn't feel that justice was served." So far, so good on Freeh's part.

But alas, there is a little more to the story's ending. Notra Trulock — who was director of Intelligence for the Department of Energy at the time — pursued the case against Lee from Day One. In his 2003 book, "Code Name Kindred Spirit," a frustrated Trulock says the following: "FBI Director Louis Freeh justified the plea bargain [for Lee] by claiming that this was the government's best opportunity to protect the national security by finding out what happened to the seven missing [stolen] tapes [of vital U.S. secrets] as well as the additional copies of the tapes that Dr. Lee has now admitted to having made."

In the end, however, what did the government get? "Nothing," according to Trulock. "Lee stuck to his story that he had erased the tapes and thrown them in a dumpster, and he refused to disclose why he had made them in the first place."

In order to believe Lee's story, you would have to accept it as quite natural for him to sneak into the Los Alamos labs at 3:30 a.m. Christmas Eve — at great risk to himself since his security clearance had been taken away from him — and make copies of the tapes just to toss them in the dumpster. By the way, Freeh says FBI agents "spent days pawing through the sites where his home garbage would have been dumped and found no evidence whatsoever of what he [Lee] alleged had happened."

In his memoirs, Freeh blames the weird legal strategy on Attorney General Janet Reno. "Janet had made up her mind," he writes. Probably so. But did the director of the FBI need to put the FBI's public stamp of approval on the surrender? It would have been better for him simply to be silent if he truly "didn't believe that justice was served." Let Reno do the explaining if he so strongly disagreed with the policy.

This is a classic example of why this column has a mixed view of Freeh's legacy at the Bureau.

To his credit, he fought for all-out prosecution of Wen Ho Lee; would not be dissuaded from investigating Clinton on Whitewater; pursued the Kohbar towers case; makes mincemeat of the pretensions of Richard Clarke before a fawning media during the later 9/11 hearings where Clarke blamed nearly everyone but himself for the terrorist attacks; encouraged the speedup on nabbing Robert Hannsen — a traitor in the FBI's midst who had sold information to the Soviets for money; and in his book, Freeh makes some telling critiques of the convoluted bureaucratic layer of intelligence imposed as a result of the public hectoring by the 9/11 commission.

On the minus side of the ledger, Freeh publicly defended dropping the ball in the Lee case (a defense not mentioned in his own book); glossed over the Filegate scandal by admitting the bureau goofed in sending FBI files on political opponents to the White House, but at the same time the former director does not make the link to Hillary Clinton through the executive mansion's in-house bar bouncer Craig Livingstone; glossed over the Ruby Ridge, Idaho, shootout by defending his old buddy Larry Potts, who bungled the case, and by failing to mention FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, who shot Vicki Weaver while she held a baby in her arms; defended agent Jim Kallstrom, who brushed aside evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts that the downing of Flight 800 just off Long Island may have resulted from a missile hit; ignored investigative reporter Jayna Davis's findings which pointed to possible Iraqi involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing; made no mention of the slander that rained down on former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, whose expose of White House security lapses was released on Freeh's watch; and defended FBI counsel Howard Shapiro, who improperly leaked to the White House an advance manuscript of Aldrich's book that had been submitted to the FBI for approval. Such approval was a legal requirement. Giving the White House a heads up was certainly not required, but it enabled the Clintons to prepare the smear bucket to dump on Aldrich so as to smother the book. It didn't work. The book "Unlimited Access" became a smash best-seller.

Louis Freeh goes out of his way to praise President George W. Bush "under whom I was FBI Director for five months, it was a pleasure to serve a president of honor and integrity, just like his father."

As for President Clinton's comment that appointing Freeh was one of his worst mistakes, Freeh proudly proclaims, "I wear it as a badge of honor."

Considering the circumstances, Freeh is probably the best FBI director we could have expected in a Clinton presidency. Had he served the Bush administration through 9/11 and beyond, he likely would have been an outstanding public servant. But how can anyone excel in that job at a time when a major figure on the wrong side of the law is not one of the gangsters of J. Edgar Hoover's early years, but the President of the United States?

When Freeh — by all accounts, a good family man — says he is guided by his faith, I believe him. For all of the misgivings we may have over his tenure at the Hoover Building, the fact that Bill Clinton regrets having appointed him speaks volumes in Freeh's favor.

© Wes Vernon