Sins of Omission: Not unlike the memoirs of his nemesis, Bill Clinton, Louis Freeh's book is selective and self-serving in its telling
Smith, I.C.
"Sins of Omission" Not unlike the memoirs of his nemesis, Bill Clinton, Louis Freeh's book is selective and self-serving in its telling.
...And I actually—to be honest with you, I got tired of reading other people's books...
...Louis Freeh's FBI reflected his New York provincialism (a provincialism not unlike that captured in Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover): if information didn't involve New York itself, it was of diminished significance...
...Freeh responded, "Well, you know Tim, it's mystory...
...Given their past histories, that's not a difficult contest to win...
...But Freeh writes that Clinton made only a half-hearted approach...
...Kelley had been intimately involved in the investigation and unmasking of Felix Bloch, the State Department official who, while never charged with espionage, is generally considered to have escaped prosecution only because of the intervention of a mole within U.S...
...He even quotes Little Rock Federal Judge Susan Webber-Wright, though he misspells her surname...
...But he couldn't stop there, and just as he does in his book proceeded to point the finger elsewhere...
...On that morning, members of the radical group Hezbollah detonated an explosive-laden tanker truck near a housing complex known as Khobar Towers...
...If Freeh didn't use "secondhand sources," that presumably means the information came from someone in the room when the conversation occurred...
...FREEH'S STATEMENTS ON THIS SUBJECT are interesting on several levels...
...He gave the KGB the names of three KGB officers recruited by the FBI...
...Meanwhile, the FBI ignored the advice of several counterintelligence professionals within its own ranks who insisted Kelley was not the right person...
...On October 16 of this year, Freeh appeared on Meet the Press...
...And, of course, it was Hanssen who had provided the Soviets with details of the Bloch investigation...
...Then, almost whining, he said, "They got $1 billion after 9/11...
...I wanted to tell the story about the FBI because I'm so proud of them...
...DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27 SINS OF OMISSION firm, Kelley began to receive some help...
...With typical hyperbole, Clinton called Freeh at his nomination announcement a "law enforcement legend...
...Sprinkled throughout are gratuitous and silly asides...
...Russert: "Were they in the meeting...
...The incompleteness of some stories and the actual omissions of important events are simply disappointing...
...In an audacious move emblematic of Freeh's relationship with Clinton, Freeh reached out to former President George H.W...
...And another reason explains it: the information did not originate in New York itself...
...He became, in effect, a non-person...
...He writes that "here's what I remember about Dick Clarke: almost nothing of significance...
...Freeh leaves the matter hanging...
...On July 20, 1993, the day Clinton introduced Freeh to the public, FBI agents were prepared to search David Hale's office in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the Whitewater investigation...
...and his family...
...Freeh takes issue with Clarke regarding FBI agent John O'Neill, who left the FBI and took a security job at the World Trade Center and died in a tower on 9/11...
...He had been an FBI agent, assigned to New York, near his home and family, for about six years...
...Why Freeh bothered to write such an incomplete book is perplexing to me...
...He was transferred to FBI Headquarters where he resigned in a snit, according to accounts...
...SMITH 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 TOUTS FREEH, who has been virtually silent since his resignation as director of the FBI on June 25, 2001, finds his voice, of sorts, in My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (St...
...He fails to mention the scandals involving the FBI's organized crime program in Boston...
...This reference to the "source" contradicts the implied references made by Freeh to multiple sources, i.e., "sources," "people," and "them...
...But it is clear that the KGB knew where Hanssen worked...
...She was told her father was a spy for the Russians...
...Freeh immediately traveled to Saudi Arabia and learned a valuable lesson: one can have jurisdiction, expertise, and will, but without host country cooperation, no investigation can be successful...
...Certainly the Saudis made a large contribution to Clinton's library, but Freeh's attributing that gift to the White House conversation between Clinton and Abdullah is troublesome...
...Freeh, though, omits the fact that he once tried to return to the FBI before the Nussbaum call...
...never again would he occupy the positions of trust and confidence he enjoyed in the past...
...That evening, Vince Foster was found dead at Marcy Park...
...his home was bugged and his house was searched...
...This disgraceful act, which included a law enforcement witness observing Williams taking documents from Foster's office to the Clintons' living quarters, is never mentioned by Freeh...
...THEN THERE IS THE ESPIONAGE investigation of Robert Hanssen, the FBI employee who spied for the Soviet Union (and, after it crumbled, Russia...
...Freeh centers the importance of his story on an incident involving Bill Clinton—a curious one that pits Freeh's credibility against Clinton's...
...Freeh commented that he would have never spoken to the press as freely as Felt had with his Deep Throat revelations...
...The FBI could not imagine it had another spy among its own...
...Freeh admitted as much when he stated on Russert's show that "it's what we would call circumstantial evidence...
...These heavy-handed tactics were followed with other family members, including his siblings and even, his ex-wife...
...I find such omissions startling...
...That same evening, Nussbaum, Patsy Thomasson, and Maggie Williams were observed going through Foster's White House office, while denying FBI and Park Police investigators access to continue their investigation...
...Freeh also admits a "sin of omission" by not revealing his contact with Bush when he testified before the Joint Intelligence Committee in October 2002...
...The result is a book that is not unlike that of his nemesis, Bill Clinton...
...In the shadowy world of intelligence, compartmentalization is practiced as a way of life and a source's identity is not kept with the information that is being provided...
...The FBI lost the sense that terrorism could occur in the U.S...
...The problem with his book, though, isn't so much the stories he tells but the ones he doesn't tell...
...Freeh basically blames the FBI's failures on a lack of "technological sophistication," and says in another understatement that "we let what could have been vital intelligence get trapped in the bureaucracy...
...They've got you saying things you never said...
...Those he promoted in the FBI's Legal Counsel Division made the erroneous legal decisions that denied the FBI a search warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui's computer until after the 9/11 attacks...
...This sentence is consistent with a statement Freeh made at the time of Hanssen's arrest that "the FBI learned of his true identity before the Russians...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 C . SM TH Freeh doesn't mince words about Richard Clarke, the former White House National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism...
...To determine Freeh's source wouldn't be difficult if one knew exactly the list of people in the room...
...He then lists all of his cronies at the FBI...
...But Freeh said Clarke was wrong when he asserted that O'Neill "didn't quit the FBI in disgust over our alleged temerity in fighting terrorists...
...SMITH by FBI personnel, then it is increasingly likely they would have known his actual identity...
...Freeh is obviously a moral man with strong Catholic beliefs...
...Initially, the investigation proceeded rather well, but was stalled by the Saudis' refusal to allow FBI personnel direct contact with various suspects in Saudi custody...
...Kelley was cleared only after Hanssen's arrest and months after receiving the documents from the former Soviet Union...
...Russert retorted, "But you have in this book...
...He even lists by name more than 40 members of MBNA's senior management team, though they had nothing to do with the book...
...Kelley had toiled at the CIA after a distinguished career in the Air Force and quickly developed a reputation as a knowledgeable and hardworking employee in the shadowy world of counterintelligence...
...Besides Clinton, Abdullah, and a translator, others present likely included Sandy Berger and Prince Bandar and a couple of other people...
...Hanssen provided voluminous information to the KGB and its successor, the SVR...
...itself...
...On one occasion, in an apparent attempt at humor while giving a speech, he joked about Hoover wearing a dress, an allegation that is discredited...
...During the Russert interview, he said, "We had an abysmal information technology system and I take a lot of responsibility for that...
...Through former CIA Director Jim Woolsey's law Freeh owed his nomination to Nussbaum, then White House counsel and Bill and Hillary Clinton confidante, whom Freeh described as having a "welldeserved reputation as both a brash and brilliant litigator and a man of the highest integrity...
...But Novak (and other news accounts) have also reported that former President Bush, too, received a gift of at least $1 million from the Saudis for his library, which is not noted by Freeh in his book...
...BY I.C...
...But his moral sense does not override his unwillingness to admit his mistakes...
...I Tow COULD FREEH have been so easily distracted from the multiple warnings of a mole within his own ranks...
...Not only had Hanssen provided information that clearly identified him as an FBI employee, he even wrote to the KGB about promotions, transfers, and other such information that would, if properly scrutinized, have identified Hanssen himself...
...Finally, on September 24, 1998, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah (now King Abdullah) visited Clinton at the White House...
...While the FBI was interviewing Kelley, his daughter, who also worked at the CIA, was being confronted by FBI agents at CIA Headquarters...
...But Freeh does not note that the FBI failed to analyze the reams of crucial information Philippine authorities provided in the Ramzi Yousef investigation...
...it's very powerful circumstantial evidence...
...When Freeh left the FBI in June 2001, public confidence in the agency, according to a CBS News poll reported in the New York Times, had plummeted to 24 percent, down from 43 percent a year earlier...
...But the exploits he outlined in his book are not the stuff of legends...
...Freeh is obviously a moral man with strong Catholic beliefs...
...They did not, however, go so far as to interview Kelley's ailing mother in the nursing home, but only after repeated pleas by family members...
...I decided to write My FBI to tell the story of very special heroes: the men and women of the FBI," he writes in the preface...
...There is much more that Freeh chose to ignore at the time, which he also neglects to mention in his book...
...Freeh has "tremendous respect for Al Gore...
...Freeh never understood the value of predictive analyses, especially in handling intelligence related to investigations...
...Freeh's old friend and colleague, the colorful Jim Kallstrom, is mentioned on only one page and the mammoth TWA 800 investigation that Kallstrom headed is noted only in passing...
...Senator Pat Leahy is "one of the finest leaders" in Washington...
...He does not explain why he withheld that crucial bit of information...
...I didn't write my story and you can't tell your story when you are a public official...
...Instead, he had his deputy director, Tim Pickard, write a tepid response that stated, "I acknowledge and regret the impact of this investigation on the life of [Kelley...
...Kelley was polygraphed under a subterfuge...
...will confirm the information about the source...
...Freeh dismantled a great deal of the expertise at FBI Headquarters, and this ended up costing the agency hugely in the Wen Ho Lee case...
...This information came to Freeh "from 'usually reliable sources,' as they say in Washington...
...The fact that Hanssen's actual identity was not included in the documents that the Russian source gave to the FBI and CIA that kicked off the investigation should not be surprising...
...Freeh writes that Bush agreed and in a few weeks, permission was granted for FBI agents to have direct access to the suspects...
...He was right and the FBI suffered from his inability to look beyond the Hudson River with any regularity...
...OWHERE IN FREEH'S BOOK is there any mention of Coleen Rowley and the Minneapolis investigation, the Phoenix memo, the San Diego informant, and other information that has come to light since 9/11...
...Still, the story is unsettling...
...As related to me by Joe Davis, former head of the Legal Counsel Division, Freeh, as a prosecutor, wrote that he would return to the FBI and the Legal Counsel Division, but only in a senior position...
...I did confirm it with them after the book came out because some of the questions, and I feel very confident on their information...
...Agents interviewed his friends and when they didn't get the answers they wantedaccused them of covering up for Kelley...
...OURCIU tNifiSTKAtiON 1 DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 25 SINS OF OMISSION fee for traveling to Saudi Arabia in January of that year, but also returned with a "hefty pledge for his presidential library...
...The explosion killed 19 American servicemen and wounded scores more...
...His advice was ignored by his successors, who knew very little about either China or Chinese counterintelligence...
...Because he had his sights set on the CIA's Brian Kelley...
...he was followed by surveillance teams...
...Freeh rightly points to many successes on his watch relating to international terrorism...
...Smith, a retired Special Agent-in-Charge for the FBI in Arkansas during the Whitewater investigation, is the author of Inside: A Top G-Man Exposes Spies, Lies, and Bureaucratic Bungling in the FBI...
...Before becoming director, Freeh's experience with the FBI was narrow...
...The FBI asked Clinton to press Prince Abdullah on the issue...
...Freeh writes, "Even though the information [Hanssen] provided was very good, it offended their professional pride not to know who they were dealing with...
...He does not acknowledge that one of the single most accomplished agents in dealing with Chinese matters, who had been caught up in Freeh's ill-advised reduction program, had warned investigators not to concentrate on Lee alone...
...Attorney John Moustakas wrote a letter to Freeh, asking that Freeh, personally, issue a letter stating that the allegations leveled against Kelley "have proved to be unfounded and that he has been exonerated unconditionally...
...You know, they've got you in meetings you never attended...
...But there were plenty in the FBI who did not consider the charges ridiculous and were simply concerned at the perception, if not the fact, that Shapiro, an outsider to the FBI, was currying favor at the White House and with Nussbaum...
...Freeh became fixated on it, not only because he felt deeply about the loss of life, but also because he believed a successful investigation would result in an expansion of the FBI's jurisdiction abroad...
...Near the end of the interview, Russert was discussing Mark Felt...
...There was much more, but even a mediocre intelligence service, and the KGB wasn't a mediocre intelligence service, would have easily figured out where Ramon Garcia, the nom de guerre Hanssen used in communicating with his handlers, was employed...
...A reading of the book does not allow one to reach that conclusion...
...They're not hearsay people...
...And in my view, as well as a number of seasoned counterintelligence professionals, it is likely that the KGB had a good idea of his identity...
...Not since the era of James Jesus Angleton whose paranoia destroyed careers at the CIA has the government of this country gone after one of its own with so little evidence...
...DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29...
...The bureaucracy that failed was the one Freeh created...
...Freeh, not getting anywhere with Clinton, asked Bush to raise the issue of access to suspects with Abdullah...
...But someone decided that Kelley himself was the mole who had tipped off Bloch and the full weight of both the FBI and the CIA came down upon him...
...We believe that you are the correct government official to issue such a statement...
...his telephone was tapped...
...he writes of sharing a hymnal with Hillary Clinton and "Condi was a breath of fresh air...
...Powerful or not, it remains circumstantial and that is unsettling...
...Having known Kimmel for years, I have no doubt that he wrote the letter, though I have no way of knowing if it actually made its way to Freeh himself...
...In effect, Freeh, ducked the question...
...It has its beginnings on June 25, 1996, in Saudi Arabia...
...For example, Freeh never mentions Gary Aldrich's book, Unlimited Access, though that book caused a very real crisis early in Freeh's tenure...
...But his moral sense does not override his unwillingness to admit his mistakes...
...It was another several months before he was allowed back into the CIA...
...Further, if Hanssen began to provide his handlers with information from his five-year assignment to the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions, a position openly known to the diplomatic community in Washington as being held 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2005/JANUARY 2006 I.C...
...he told them of the tunnel the FBI had for years been digging under the Soviet embassy in Washington...
...But no call was forthcoming from Freeh (who later stated he had no recollection of the communication from Kimmel...
...Freeh became a prosecutor in New York and then was appointed to a federal judgeship, again in New York, by President George H.W...
...I was not one of Freeh's cronies, but I have no doubt that he believes the tale and has some basis for it...
...He begins with unabashed praise for the owners of MBNA, the credit card giant, which hired him after he resigned from the FBI...
...I asked beginning in 1993 for millions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, which we never got," he said...
...One would think information as explosive as this would have been confirmed before the book was published...
...I.C...
...There is no mention at all of Michael Kehoe, the agent Freeh promoted to head the Jacksonville, Florida FBI office and who later served a prison sentence for his role in the Ruby Ridge debacle...
...Freeh writes about the episode obtusely...
...What Freeh didn't say is that throughout his tenure monies budgeted for the purchase of computers and other technical projects went to other purposes...
...Freeh did not respond...
...Host Tim Russert immediately bored in on Freeh's claims...
...Subsequent news reports confirmed that the Saudis made a contribution to the Clinton library...
...It doesn't tell the full story and is, in its own way, equally self-serving...
...Bush...
...Congressman Bob Livingston complained about that and four other such issues that involved Bernard Nussbaum, also at the White House...
...For instance, a senior FBI agent, Tom Kimmel, alerted Freeh to the possibility of a mole besides Earl Pitts (an agent convicted of espionage...
...Martin's Press...
...Glaring omissions and mistakes pepper Freeh's account of this investigation...
...Finally, Freeh noted he had confirmed the information with "them" after the "book came out...
...Instead, Freeh laments Nussbaum's departure from the White House, noting that none of his successors had Nussbaum's "depth and high integrity...
...This is a story about Louis Freeh, both incomplete and selective in its telling...
...Freeh had a brief career as an FBI agent and a somewhat longer stint as a prosecutor...
...After a couple years, he was approached by Nussbaum about the FBI job...
...Make no mistake, this is not a book about the exploits of "special heroes" in the FBI...
...The result is a book that is not unlike that of his nemesis, Bill Clinton...
...Freeh acknowledges that Clarke and O'Neill were close...
...They're not second-hand sources...
...A more revealing motive was exposed in his interview with Tim Russert...
...Freeh treats these complaints as ridiculous...
...In the following days, as Nussbaum continued to block the office, Philip Heyman, the deputy attorney general, called Nussbaum and asked, "Bernie, are you hiding something...
...That is ironic, for it was Clinton who uttered the words most often associated with Freeh...
...Freeh's request was rejected by Davis, and when Freeh did return as FBI director, one of his first acts was to eliminate Davis's position...
...Freeh admitted, while referring to Clinton, "I had insufficient appreciation for the nuanced life of southern politicians," and added, "I never learned to do good ol' boy...
...When she said her father could not be a spy, one agent banged on a table, yelling that they knew what he did...
...Aldrich submitted the book for pre-publication review to the FBI, but Freeh's chief counsel, Howard Shapiro, the first non-agent to hold that position, provided White House Counsel Jack Quinn a copy of Aldrich's manuscript, with Freeh's approval...
...Beyond relatively minor incidents, Freeh cannot bring himself to admit his failures...
...counterintelligence...
...Freeh also commented in the Russert interview that "Dale Watson, the head of my counterterrorism division...
...After the interview in which Kelley continued to deny being a spy, he was placed on leave and for the next 18 months was barred from returning to his office at the CIA...
...Bush, who also was meeting with Abdullah...
...He filled the hole with Howard Shapiro...
...Freeh merely says, "we made mistakes of our own along the way...
...Freeh, throughout his tenure as director (and in his book), seldom had anything good to say about J. Edgar Hoover...
...That information from FBI offices in Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Oklahoma City went unnoticed isexplained by Freeh's emphasis on expanding FBI jurisdiction abroad...
...FREEH CONCLUDES HIS BOOK with chapters that are uncomfortable reading...
...Freeh: "I'm not going to identify my sources, obviously, but I think you have to look beyond that September...
...Clinton told the prince that he "certainly understood" the Saudis' reluctance to cooperate and then, according to Freeh, "hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the still-to-bebuilt Clinton presidential library...
...Columnist Robert Novak reported in October 2002 that Clinton had received a $750,000 speaking BRINGING DOWN the MAFIA, INVESTIGATING BILL CLINTON, and WAGING WAR on TERROR LOUIS J. FREEH let f EDI ItAt...
...Finally, agents subjected Kelley to a confrontational interview and when Kelley resisted their allegations of spying for the Russians, they threatened to interview members of his family, including his ailing mother who was living in a nursing home...
...Freeh: "Well, the usual reliable sources in this case, Tim, are very senior people who had firsthand knowledge of the meeting, who have identity with the principals at the meeting...
...FREEH'S MORAL REPUGNANCE for Clinton jumps out at the reader...
...So why did O'Neill retire...
...Instead of laughing at him, Freeh should have taken his sage advice—advice inscribed on a wall in the courtyard of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building: "The FBI can be effective only as long as it has the trust and confidence of the American people...
...he gave them copies of FBI budget requests, FBI Office of Inspection reports, and FBI human and technical surveillance procedures...
...Freeh owed his nomination to Nussbaum, then White House counsel and Bill and Hillary Clinton confidante, whom Freeh described as having a "well-deserved reputation as both a brash and brilliant litigator and a man of the highest integrity...
...Russert: "Who are these 'usually reliable sources...
...In fact, one of Director Bob Mueller's first acts was to dismantle a useless analytical division at FBI Headquarters that Freeh had foolishly set up...
Vol. 38 • December 2005 • No. 10
