-Caveat Lector-
New Yorker
May 14, 2001
Pg. 68
Annals Of Politics
Louis Freeh's Last Case
II.
The F.B.I. director's office is on the seventh floor
of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, on Pennsylvania
Avenue, a few blocks from the White House.
Bright-colored drawings and paintings made by Freeh's
six children line almost the full length of one wall,
and they are framed by photographs of some of Freeh's
heroes: Giovanni Falcone, the Sicilian magistrate who
was the Mafia's most fearless foe, and who was
assassinated in 1992; U.S. District Court Judge Frank
M. Johnson, Jr., whose mother's house was firebombed
after Johnson ordered the desegregation of Southern
public schools, and who swore Freeh in; and Elie
Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize
winner. (Freeh once travelled to Auschwitz and
Birkenau, against the wishes of the United States
Ambassador to Poland, and delivered a speech about how
the abuse of police power contributed to the
Holocaust; last year he began requiring new agents to
study the subject at the Holocaust Museum.)
By the time he leaves, at the end of June, Freeh, who
is fifty-one, will have completed nearly eight years
on the job. He has overseen the largest expansion of
the F.B.I. in the agency's history, and assured its
central role in national-security issues, very
possibly becoming more powerful than J. Edgar Hoover.
But there have been major embarrassments, most
recently the discovery that Robert Hanssen, a
longtime, trusted F.B.I. agent, had spied for the
Soviet Union and Russia for fifteen years. The
F.B.I.'s judgment was questioned after the Bureau
fingered an Atlanta security guard, Richard Jewell, in
connection with a bombing during the 1996 Summer
Olympics; serious problems were uncovered in its once
famed laboratory; and Freeh was active in pressing for
the indictment of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese scientist
accused of mishandling nuclear secrets, in an
investigation that a federal judge later said
"embarrassed our entire nation." Freeh also had a
number of public squabbles with the Clinton
Administration, most notably over his pursuit of an
independent counsel to investigate possible
fund-raising abuses in the 1996 Presidential election.
These conflicts demonstrated tenacity on Freeh's part
but also a rigidity that troubled his critics, who
regarded him as self-righteous and sanctimonious,
unable to grasp the nuances of governing. Freeh has
said that his battles with the Administration
established a critical independence, but he was always
aware of his power. "They are terrified of me," he
once confided to an associate.
Over the course of a year, I talked with Freeh eight
times-in his office, on the phone, in transit to New
York, and during a trip to Italy, where he attended a
memorial service for his friend Giovanni Falcone. I
also spoke with his critics in the Administration and
with his friends, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
who knew Freeh from his New York City days as a fabled
F.B.I. agent, federal prosecutor, and federal judge.
"I would describe Louis very quickly as the
straightest guy I know," Giuliani said. Giuliani, an
opera buff, said Freeh was a cross between Mario
Cavaradossi, the painter and political idealist in
"Tosca," and the warrior Radamès in "Aida." Giuliani
went on, "Louis is a very sensitive guy, very, very
decent. Very nice man. Very gentle. But about what he
does he can be very determined and passionate."
Freeh was undoubtedly at his most determined in the
Khobar barracks investigation. And in pursuit of the
bombing case he became a skilled politician, enlisting
allies in Washington and elsewhere. Freeh believes
that personal relationships are a key to good
investigative work, and says, "The statutory
authorities and the resources and all the other
factors are significant, but my experience is that
none of them are as important as those relationships."
When Freeh began to believe that the Clinton
Administration wasn't fully committed to investigating
the attack, he started to cultivate an outsider:
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the
United States and the nephew of King Fahd.
Prince Bandar has long been known in Washington as a
bon vivant who lives extravagantly, hiring the likes
of Roberta Flack for private entertainment, flying on
his private jet to Dallas to watch a Cowboys game, or
to Aspen. He is fifty-two years old and has been in
Washington nearly twenty years; he seems to travel in
a cloud of cigar smoke, walks with the swagger of a
Saudi fighter pilot (which he was for seventeen
years), and likes to engage in naughty gossip,
laughing uproariously as he does so. Bandar sometimes
joked that Freeh was "too hygienic." But Bandar, like
Freeh, is skilled at cultivating people to get things
done. Unlike other ambassadors, who exist on the
ceremonial fringe, Bandar has real power. He was
extremely close to President George H. W. Bush, and
during the Reagan and Bush Administrations he was
consulted regularly on foreign policy. In March,
Bandar met privately with the younger Bush. "Happy
days are here again," one of Bandar's close associates
said of that meeting.
Freeh began to court Bandar shortly after the bombing,
visiting him in his heavily guarded mansion in McLean,
Virginia, or inviting him to his office, where Bandar
was the only person allowed to smoke cigars. Bandar,
for his part, loved the gamesmanship of Washington,
and considered Bill Clinton his only equal at it. But
he thought that President Clinton had not been well
served by his foreign-policy team and in private he
mocked what he saw as their view of the Saudis: "
'Just a bunch of ragheads who torture people to get a
confession and then chop their heads off before anyone
can check if what they said was true.' " Freeh,
however, seemed respectful of Arab culture, and his
foreign-policy views appeared closer to those of the
Reagan and Bush Administrations. At first, Bandar
wondered if Freeh's solicitude was merely a seduction
ritual, but after several meetings he concluded that
Freeh was as honestly determined as he appeared.
In a series of conversations in the first months after
the bombing, Bandar and Rihab Massoud, his top aide on
Kho-bar, discussed with Anthony Lake, the
national-security adviser, and Sandy Berger, who was
then his deputy, the implications of an Iranian
connection. In retrospect, it is clear that the Saudis
were far more certain of the Iranian role than they
let on at the time, and that they were beginning what
would become a drawn-out diplomatic game with the
White House. Berger told me, "Bandar would always say,
'Tell me what you are going to do with the information
if we share it with you.' I wouldn't play that game. I
knew if we said we were going to whack the shit out of
Iran we would never get anything from the Saudis-plus
we had not made a decision about what we were going to
do." Bandar, for his part, apparently feared that if
he gave up hard evidence that led the United States to
take military action against Iran, Iran would
retaliate against its neighbor Saudi Arabia.
Bandar, ever the gamesman, tried a different tack with
Freeh, pulling him aside during one of his early
visits to Saudi Arabia. "Listen, we have the goods,
God damn it. But I'll be honest with you. Politically,
we don't want to pursue this. We don't want to be
accused of pushing you to go to war." Freeh said that
he was a policeman and his job was to gather the
facts. The policymakers would make any decisions about
the use of military force.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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