Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1993 TAG: 9301200212
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
FBI HEAD SESSIONS RECEIVED REPRIMAND
The Justice Department on Tuesday issued a scathing report that accused FBI Director William Sessions of repeated abuses of his office and suggested that the president review his fitness to serve.The report by the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility said it found a widespread pattern of misconduct that was "inconsistent with that expected of the head Sessions of the nation's premier law enforcement agency."
Before he left office last week, former Attorney General William Barr sternly rebuked Sessions for repeatedly using FBI aircraft for personal trips and justifying billing the government by arranging to attend functions of "trivial, if any, value to the government."
Barr's letter said he was "most troubled" by Sessions' effort to avoid paying taxes on the use of a government-supplied limousine that takes him to and from work.
Sessions got a law-enforcement exemption to paying the tax by relying on what Barr called a "transparently wrong" legal opinion.
The report said Sessions:
Routinely set up speaking engagements or other official appearances to justify personal trips at government expense.
Improperly billed the FBI nearly $10,000 to build a wooden fence around his house against the advice of bureau experts who said that only one made of wrought-iron would improve security.
Spent nearly eight times the $5,000 limit to redecorate his office without consulting the agency's legal counsel. He ordered bureau technicians to build a cabinet by hand; that took 892 hours.
In his letter disciplining Sessions, Barr said, "The evidence supporting the report's conclusions is overwhelming and your explanations, where provided, are wholly unpersuasive."
Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted Sessions would have difficulty remaining in office. The director serves a 10-year term and can be fired only by the president.
The White House said that it planned to turn the report over to the Clinton administration today.
A defiant Sessions charged that "this process has been conducted without the barest elements of fairness, and marked by press leaks calculated to defame me."
He said he would follow Barr's order to pay the taxes for the use of the limousine "if it is true that the exemption was not warranted."
But department officials described Barr's order as a "final agency action" that Sessions must obey. Barr left little doubt that he regarded the tax exemption was inappropriate, saying: "The notion that you could convert an executive chauffeur-driven limousine into a tactical police vehicle by keeping an unloaded gun in the trunk does not even pass the `red-face test.' "