Why Not Just Fire Him?

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

Ever since she took her job, Janet Reno has suffered from having a lame duck on her team. A noisy, balky one. The head of the FBI, William Sessions, has been discredited in the job and has lost the confidence of his agents, but refuses to leave. Reno has met with Sessions several times in the past few weeks, apparently to show him the door, but without immediate success. And President Clinton, who is the only one who can fire the FBI director, has not done so. As a result, morale among FBI agents has plummeted at a time when the agency's resources are strained by the battle against terrorism and other insidious crime. "We're leaderless. We're literally the walking wounded," says an FBI agent in a field office. "He's a decent man. But there comes a point when one has to do the honorable thing."

In the past few weeks, however, Sessions has managed only to worsen the situation. The latest agency nickname for him is "H.G.," for "His Goofiness." Sessions has managed to be AWOL from his command post during crisis moments at the agency. Last month he went to San Antonio, Texas, for his son's wedding, an understandable absence but irritating to colleagues since it occurred just as crucial decisions were being made to arrest suspects in planned bombing attacks on New York City. The following weekend, as Clinton weighed evidence gathered by the FBI and the CIA in his decision to attack Iraq and as Reno assembled a task force to track down a serial bomber, Sessions went to San Francisco to give a speech on health-care fraud.

Clinton inherited the FBI director from the Reagan and Bush administrations, but also received a ready-made excuse to fire him. On his last day in office, Attorney General William Barr issued a report sharply criticizing Sessions for abusing the privileges of his job by, among other things, using limousines and government flights for personal business. Sessions made himself look all the worse by publicly accusing his deputy, respected career officer Floyd Clarke, of plotting a coup. Sessions' wife Alice joined the fray. Last month she told a San Antonio newspaper that Clarke was among "10 to 12 people who are bent on" driving her husband from the FBI.

Sessions publicly insists that he will not resign, but in private he gives the White House signals that he will do so under certain conditions. At one time he said he wanted to stay in office until the end of 1993, thereby increasing his pension income $5,000 a year. Sessions told Justice officials he would resign once his successor is confirmed by the Senate, a move that would deny his nemesis Clarke a shot at being interim director. In an interview with TIME last Friday, Reno was poker-faced on Sessions even as other members of the Administration were growing weary of trying to persuade him to leave. "I am not negotiating," Reno said. But does she expect a resolution soon? "Yes," she added.

The White House has stepped up its search for a successor. One of the top candidates is Louis Freeh, a federal judge in New York. Freeh, a former FBI agent who later prosecuted the "pizza connection" heroin ring, is seen as a popular choice because of his experience with the agency. Another candidate is Lee Colwell, a former FBI official and current Clinton adviser who lives in Little Rock. No quick replacement is at hand, however, because the confirmation could take months, especially since the Senate will be tied up with the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Supreme Court Justice.

It won't be soon enough for FBI agents. Even top officials on the agency's seventh floor have given Sessions the freeze-out. "It's so cold up there you can hang meat," said one agent. He's no help outside the building either, alumni agents contend. Says former senior bureau official Tom Kelley: "He is dragging down the reputation of the organization every day he stays there." You wouldn't have to be an FBI agent to get the hint.

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington