Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301240006
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
FBI CHIEF CALLS REPORT PERSONAL ATTACK BY ATTORNEY GENERAL
FBI Director William Sessions on Saturday dismissed a Justice Department report accusing him of ethical abuses as a "crassly calculated attack" by former Attorney General William Barr.In a 90-minute meeting with reporters, Sessions began a public counteroffensive against the Justice Department report that found he had abused his office for petty financial gain.
The report was the product of "an animus, and an anger and a disaffection by Mr. Barr for Mr. Sessions," the FBI director said. He said Barr "was in league with others Barr who were determined to scuttle the director."
In a telephone interview afterward, Barr dismissed the comments from Sessions. "My assumption is that if he could rebut the facts, he wouldn't have to resort to personal attacks on me," Barr said.
Asked about Sessions at a photo opportunity in the Oval Office, President Clinton said only, "I don't want to talk about it."
Meanwhile, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., suggested it may be time for Sessions to step down.
"While he has a term of office, which is significantly unexpired, I think that there is a sufficient basis to remove him for cause, unless he can come out and exonerate himself," Specter said on CNN's "Newsmaker Saturday."
The 161-page Justice Department report issued Tuesday found, among other things, that Sessions misused his office by taking personal trips aboard FBI planes and billing the government nearly $10,000 for a fence around his home.
The findings, the report said, "raise issues that only the president can resolve" about whether Sessions can continue to serve as FBI director.
Sessions vowed to continue in office but acknowledged that "whether I survive as director of the FBI, the president will decide."
Sessions accused the Justice Department's ethics office of carelessness in the way it conducted the investigation that "was in itself a breach of professional responsibility."
But the director declined to say how the report reflected on the work of FBI agents who conducted much of the investigative work.
"I am not ashamed, my conduct was proper," Sessions told reporters. "My conduct was not unethical."
"It is they who should hang their heads in shame for their conduct," Sessions said of Barr and the Justice Department ethics officials whom he accused of leaking details of the investigation over the last few months.
Sessions disputed a number of findings in the report, including the conclusion that putting an unloaded weapon in a locked briefcase in the trunk of his limousine was a "sham arrangement" contrived to evade taxes on the limousine as a fringe benefit.
But Sessions admitted under questioning that he did not follow the advice of FBI lawyers who said he would have to carry the gun to qualify for the tax exemption for law enforcement officers.
FBI general counsel Joseph R. Davis advised that Sessions should regularly practice firing the gun at a pistol range but the director never did, the report said.
Sessions, however, said he would pay the back taxes as ordered by Barr before he left the attorney general's office Jan. 15.
Sessions also conceded that any FBI agent who used his government car to conduct personal business would be disciplined.