Wes Vernon
Saturday, March 3, 2001

We don’t know the answer to that question because the White House won’t tell us. Presidential spokesman Jimmy Orr simply referred NewsMax.com to the president’s Feb. 22 news conference.

The first questioner that day asked the president what, if any, responsibility Freeh should bear "for this breach of national security."

Bush’s answer was that he has confidence in Freeh. "I think he does a good job.

"I am deeply concerned about the spy case, as is Director Freeh," the president added. "I am pleased that they caught the spy."

Which, of course, does not answer my later telephoned question about whether Bush had prior knowledge of the "breach in security" when he decided Freeh would stay on.

"So you're saying 'no comment,' " I said.

"No," replied the White House spokesman. "Again, I would refer you to the president's news conference of February 22."

Bottom line: The very genial and polite Orr was telling me, without really spelling it out, that the White House did not want to answer the question.

Some key Bush supporters are not the least bit sanguine about Freeh, a Clinton appointee, remaining in his post.

"If Louis Freeh has a shred of dignity or integrity, he will resign today," whistleblower Notra Trulock told a conference last month.

Why? NewsMax.com later asked.

At which point Trulock, the former director of intelligence at the Department of Energy, enumerated, just for starters, the bungling of the Chinagate investigation, scientist Wen Ho Lee, Ruby Ridge, and the FBI treatment of whistleblowers, a matter with which Trulock himself has had firsthand experience.

Last July, after Trulock had testified to Congress about security problems at nuclear laboratories, Louis Freeh’s FBI agents "visited" his home and, without a search warrant, went to his bedroom and downloaded his desktop computer while asking accusatory questions. (See Trulock: Security Still Lax at Nuclear Labs.)

In an interview with NewsMax.com, and in his own writings for the Free Congress Foundation, Trulock says, "Of course, everyone knows what happened [in the Hanssen case]. People did not do their job." Practically every national security scandal of the past decade, in Trulock's view, "can be traced back to denial, complacency, managerial incompetence, arrogance or all four combined."

Trulock is miffed at Freeh's presuming to lecture other agencies about taking adequate security measures when spies have been found to have operated right under his nose in his own agency.

'Something Really Bad'

Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM), confronted Carl Rove, senior adviser to the president, about Freeh. Rove replied that the FBI director had the president's confidence and would remain, "unless we find he does something really bad."

"Well, here's something 'really bad,' " Irvine said as he presented Rove with a copy of his AIM report.

That document, titled "Free Us of Freeh," contained a list of "really bad" things attributed to the director, including:

1. He has failed to live up to his own promise, upon taking the office in 1993, to "resist any effort from any source to impair the integrity of the FBI."

2. After censuring his friend Larry Potts for handling the Ruby Ridge, Idaho, siege in a way that resulted in the killing of Randy Weaver's wife, Freeh turned right around and tried to promote Potts to deputy director. That backfired and sent Potts into retirement.

3. Freeh tried to get into the FBI three of his friends with whom he had worked as assistant U.S. attorney, even after a polygraph test showed they were deceptive in answering questions about the use of drugs.

4. Under Freeh, FBI files on 900 individuals in the Reagan and senior Bush administrations flowed freely into the Clinton White House. Bad mistake, admitted Freeh. But no one was fired.

5. When longtime FBI agent Gary Aldrich sent his superiors an advance copy of his book "Unlimited Access," exposing the deplorable security lapses at the Clinton White House, Freeh ran interference for the Clintons. The FBI gave the Clintons a heads up, which in turn enabled them to develop the infamous "White House spin" to try to discredit the book before it hit the bookstores.

I had Aldrich as a guest on my radio interview program at the time, but only after having to set the record straight with producers who had seen the hatchet job the Washington Post had done on Aldrich and "Unlimited Access." The White House had more success with other broadcasters in blocking Aldrich's TV and radio appearances, thanks to Louis Freeh's "heads up."

6. Freeh’s FBI agents went to agent Dennis Sculimbrene's home and questioned him because, they later told Congress, they were investigating a possible crime by Sculimbrene. The crime? Three years before Filegate figure Craig Livingstone became a household name, Sculimbrene had filed a report that White House counsel Bernie Nussbaum had told him Hillary Clinton had insisted that Livingstone be hired. The possible "crime" was the filing of a false report, which, of course, would be giving the first lady’s denial all the benefit of the doubt.

7. The Chinagate probe was bungled by Freeh's FBI. Trulock watched with dismay as Freeh handled the probe in an "abysmal" manner.

8. Freeh has dismantled the FBI's counterintelligence division. That alone is good reason to give the man his walking papers, in Trulock's view. This weakness probably had much to do with the "breach of security" that enabled Hanssen to carry on his spying for the Soviets, and later the Russians, for as long as he did.

9. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, with a doctorate in chemistry, was another FBI whistleblower. He exposed bad management and corruption in the FBI crime lab.

10. Irvine, in particular, is concerned about FBI efforts to discredit witnesses in the investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800 and what he says are false reports by FBI agents in the death of White House aide Vincent Foster.

The "Freeh must go" movement among conservatives is getting additional impetus from America’s Survival Inc.

Collaborating With Russia

That group's president, Cliff Kincaid, says the ability of an FBI agent such as Hanssen to spy for Russia for 15 years without getting caught "may lie in FBI Director Louis Freeh's policy of working with the Russians for the last several years and turning the bureau's attention to global and U.N. issues that have spread its resources thin."

In a 1997 speech to Russian police officials in Moscow, Freeh declared that "we are truly comrades" and that U.S. and Russian law enforcement agencies would work together to "help us protect our nations and our peoples."

Under Freeh, the FBI has opened numerous offices abroad, including a legal attaché in Moscow, and has supplied dozens of FBI agents to assist the United Nations in what Kincaid calls "dubious 'war crimes' investigations." The deployment of 82 agents and 61 support employees in 30 nations around the world is, as Kincaid sees it, "a massive waste of scarce resources "

The America's Survival leader marvels that right after Director Freeh patted himself on the back for finally catching Hanssen, he promised the FBI would continue to "work very closely with the [Russian] Ministry of Interior" on criminal matters and the Russian internal security agency on counterterrorism.

Under Freeh, the FBI has been hosting seminars in Russia for Russian police officers, with Russian police coming to the U.S. to work "side by side with FBI agents. Some Russian agents have even graduated from the FBI's National Academy."

The irony of this is a bit much for Kincaid, who says, "We teach the Russians our law enforcement techniques so they can catch our spies and fool us with their own spies."

Cliff Kincaid does not suggest this as possible fodder for an article in Mad magazine, probably because this is real and it's not funny. But he adds, "Louis Freeh has made the FBI into a laughingstock."

With this record, most of which is not unknown inside the Bush White House, why does President Bush have "confidence" in Freeh?

This can perhaps be explained by the FBI director's bureaucrat-like ability to work both sides of the street.

Former senator Bob Kerrey recently said ex-President Bill Clinton had named Freeh as one of the five people with whom he worked that he liked the least.

As Trulock tells NewsMax.com, "He [Freeh] goes up to Capitol Hill and gives Senators Kyle, Hatch and Shelby the impression that he’s fighting the fight from the inside, trying to hold back the barbarians from the gates."

Freeh did get into a high-profile disagreement with ex-Attorney General Janet Reno on the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign scandals. Freeh urged the appointment of a special prosecutor in the case, as did others within the Justice Department. And Reno mildly but explicitly and publicly rebuked him for that.

Then the word got out that the FBI was not sharing information on the security angles of that scandal with the White House, with a hint that that would hinder the investigation.

And Freeh once refused an invitation to attend a White House showing of a movie because he indicated he did not want to get in a social situation with people he might have to investigate.

All of this is window-dressing, as most whistleblowers see it. But it has been enough to win Freeh key backing on the Hill from such conservatives as Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz. Things such as this can influence a new administration.

But the White House has the information on Freeh. What they do with it is another matter.

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Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Hanssen Case
Clinton Scandals
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