FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

General Overviews

1990s

H - Q

Isikoff, Michael. "The FBI's Freeh Agent." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 15-21 Nov. 1993, 10-11.

Louis Freeh has been FBI Director since September, and change is in the air.

Jeffreys, Diarmuid. The Bureau: Inside the Modern FBI. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. The Bureau: Inside Today's FBI. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Harter, Surveillant 4.2, notes that the focus of the book is criminal investigations. "Readers searching for ... views on the modern FBI's foreign counterintelligence program will be sorely disappointed." The single chapter on the subject "centers on the controversial CISPES and Iran-Contra investigations, not your typical counterintelligence cases." A second Surveillant 4.2 reviewer concludes that the book is "useful for browsing but hard to read all the way through. And in the end [the author] provides nothing new on the Bureau."

Johnston, David. "Justice Dept. Calls F.B.I. Derelict in Pursuit of C.I.A.'s Most Damaging Spy." New York Times, 18 Apr. 1997, A13 (N).

An internal Justice Department inquiry blames the FBI for failing to aggressively pursue the counterintelligence case that eight years later led to Aldrich Ames. FBI counterintelligence agents believe the criticism is misdirected. An unclassified summary of the report will be released.

Kessler, Ronald. The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Expanded and updated. The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency - By the Award-Winning Journalist Whose Investigation Brought Down FBI Director William S. Sessions. New York: Pocket Books, 1994. [pb]

Surveillant 3.4/5 identifies this as "magazine style material, topical and current." The book is a "readable blend of dialog, fact, history, opinion, surprising revelation, gossip, and accounts of outright malfeasance and scandal.... While much of the book does not deal with the intelligence side of the Bureau, the ongoing and highly sensitive MEGAHUT operation is uncovered here."

Surveillant 4.1 adds that new material is found in the Epilogue of the updated paperback. "Kessler surfaces ... the possible hiring, under pressure by [FBI director Louis] Freeh, of two ex-drug addict associates."

For NameBase "Kessler's unprecedented access ... has produced one of the few books to concentrate on the years since J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972. Although there's a recruitment-poster quality in Kessler's description of hero agents, this book redeems itself by ... describing how things work at the FBI's various departments and major field offices. Whatever one thinks about Kessler's 'inside' books..., at least he's thorough."

McGee, Jim. "Is the FBI Too Charged Up? The Agency's Growing Power Is Causing Concerns about Civil Liberties." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 11 Aug. 1997, 6-9.

This is a nonalarmist-yet-cautionary look at changes, especially those associated with Director Louis Freeh but preceding him as well, in the authorities for and scope of FBI activities. Civil libertarians are concerned that rules adopted in the 1970s in response to revelations of FBI investigative abuses under the rationale of national security are being weakened in the name of combating terrorism.

The "changes at the FBI do not only involve amending old rules and widening jurisdiction. The agency is also interweaving itself with the rest of the national security establishment." Now being created at the FBI is "a unified system of intelligence gathering that blends top-of-the-line federal law enforcement, military, civilian intelligence and local resources." In addition to the domestic security implications of these changes, the FBI's overseas presence has been expanded by acquiring jurisdiction over transnational crimes and establishing 23 new FBI offices around the world. In essence, "the legal wall that separated the FBI's domestic law enforcement work from the military and the intelligence community" has been eroded.

McGee, Jim, and Roberto Suro. "Losing Confidence in the G-Men: The FBI Faces Congressional Criticism after Management Misfires and Computer Cost Overruns." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 24 Mar. 1997, 29.

North, Mark. Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1990.

Athan G. Theoharis is probably the most widely published, best known, and persistent critic of the FBI and Hoover. In his review of this book, Theoharis, WPNWE, 23-29 Dec. 1991, concludes: "Because of the author's research deficiencies, we are presented with a book based on tortuous reasoning and unsupported speculation. To offer this as evidence of Hoover's 'role' in the Kennedy assassination requires a leap of faith that only the most cynical will make."

Ottaway, David B. "Frustrating the FBI." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 24-30 Jul. 1995, 32.

A 29-month manhunt for Mir Aimal Kansi, who allegedly killed two and wounded three CIA employees outside CIA Headquarters on 25 January 1993, has been slowed by geography and Pakistani politics. At the end of March, the FBI reclassified Kansi as a suspected international terrorist. This move allowed the use of the State Department's Counter-Terrorism Rewards Program to raise the reward offered for information leading to the arrest of Kansi to $2 million. See Pierre Thomas and Roberto Sura, "Going Global to Get Their Man," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 23 Jun. 1997, 31, for a report on Kansi's capture on 15 June 1997.

Palmer, Elizabeth A. "Conferees Agree on Bigger Role for FBI in Spy Cases." Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 24 Sep. 1994, 2706.

House and Senate conferees completed work on the fiscal 1995 intelligence authorization bill on 22 September 1994. The conference committee "decided to clip the wings of the CIA, effectively placing the FBI in charge of all counterespionage investigations.... In return for the House's agreement to the FBI provision, Senate conferees dropped their objections to a satellite project backed by House members."

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