Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Monday, June 17, 2002

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seem anxious to call Freeh as a witness in the continuing congressional probes into the genesis of the September 11 attacks. He's the unseen, unheard, witness who ran the FBI during the very period that the U.S. seems to have been looking the other way while Osama bin Laden was planning 9-11 and otherwise creating havoc around the globe.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted, Robert Mueller, the man who took Freeh's place and was in office a scant week before 9-11 has been called before congressional panels and grilled until he's beyond being well-done.

But Louis Freeh, who was replaced by Mueller last June after seven years on the job, has thus far had some kind of unspoken immunity from Congressional subpoenas.

"I don't think anyone should have a free pass, and there won't be any free passes," Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the lead Senate Republican on the intelligence panel told the Journal. "I see no reason that he wouldn't" be invited to testify eventually.

Others, however, see a good reason for Freeh's absence from the witness table: Democrats fear pushing him too hard and risking hearing things about the Clinton administration's culpability in ignoring the evidence that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were not only planning attacks against the U.S., but actually committing them all around the world.

Freeh's Stand Against Reno

Republicans, on the other hand, all but deified Freeh for taking stands against then-Attorney General Janet Reno's stonewalling in the face of demands for probes of Vice President Gore's fundraising activities and other Clinton scandals.

Kris Kolesnick, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center and a former staffer to one of the FBI's chief critics, GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, told the Journal that congressional Republicans would find it difficult to criticize Mr. Freeh now without conceding, in effect, that they hadn't provided sufficient oversight of the agency.

Republicans haven't been calling for him despite the fact that he was a Clinton appointee. They liked Freeh's defiance of the president and Janet Reno. He was a frequent star witness at congressional hearings to testify about how he unsuccessfully recommended to Reno that an independent counsel investigate Clinton's and Gore's White House sleazy fundraising.

Implications

Democrats, on the other hand fear that by spotlighting any of Freeh's lapses risks implicating Ms. Reno, now a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Florida, and, ultimately, Mr. Clinton.

The Journal reports that Senate Democrats have talked about Freeh's role in private, but have yet to decide if they want to haul him before the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee, sources told the Journal.

According to the Journal, former members of the Clinton administration have little good to say abut Freeh "What happened at the FBI we had no control over," one ex-Clinton staffer told the Journal.

Nobody doubts that Freeh has a lot to offer to the congressional probers. "This doesn't have to be about criticizing him," a GOP congressional staffer close to the investigation told the Journal. "If anyone should have hindsight on what went wrong, it would be the man who was trying to put things into place. He truly would be in a position to know and possibly help."

Politicized

All of this speculation, however, ignores the fact that under Freeh, the FBI became thoroughly politicized and took an active part in cover-ups in a number of the Clinton administration's shadiest activities, including Waco, the downing of TWA 800, and the death of Vincent Foster. It could well be that Democrats fear that the specter of these Clinton scandals might somehow be raised and publicly aired.

Freeh, after all, knows where the bodies are buried. And the Clinton Democrats were the grave diggers.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Clinton Scandals
DNC
Janet Reno
TWA 800
Waco
War on Terrorism

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