FBI

Washington Times|Dec 2019|Louis Freeh is the real culprit in the Richard Jewell story

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By Ronald Kessler – – Wednesday, December 18, 2019

If you want to know what really happened in the controversial case of Richard Jewell, who was a suspect in the 1996 bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta, don’t watch the new movie produced by Clint Eastwood.

Gripping though “Richard Jewell” is, it wrongly blames FBI case agents for bullying Jewell and leaking his name to the press as a suspect. The real culprit, whose misguided intervention and stubbornness led to the Richard Jewell debacle, was Louis Freeh, then the FBI director.

When a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, the FBI became interested in Jewell, a security guard who had alerted police to a suspicious green backpack. Jewell appeared on TV to describe how he tried to evacuate the area before the bombing, which killed two people and injured over 100.

Citing unnamed sources, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a story saying Jewell was a suspect in the FBI’s investigation. That afternoon, FBI agents Don Johnson and Diader Rosario drove to Jewell’s apartment and asked him to come to the field office. If Jewell could clear up questions to the agents’ satisfaction, they planned to drop their interest in him.

Jewell agreed. But as the agents were reviewing Jewell’s background with him, Mr. Freeh called David W. “Woody” Johnson Jr., the FBI’s special agent in charge in Atlanta. Mr. Johnson was in his office down the hall from the room where Jewell was being questioned. With him were other SACs and Kent B. Alexander, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta.

Mr. Freeh said the agents should read Jewell his Miranda rights.

Any fresh agent out of the FBI Academy at Quantico knows that, based on a long line of court rulings, a suspect must be read his Miranda rights if he is in custody or is about to be arrested. Yet in Jewell’s case, neither was true.

As revealed in my book “The Secrets of the FBI,” Mr. Johnson pointed this out to Mr. Freeh, and Mr. Alexander told Mr. Freeh on the speaker phone he agreed with Mr. Johnson. But the director was adamant.

Robert M. “Bear” Bryant, who was about to be named deputy director under Mr. Freeh, was with the director when he made the call. A lawyer, Mr. Bryant also made the point to Mr. Freeh that Miranda rights were not required. Mr. Freeh wouldn’t listen and demanded that agents read Jewell his rights.

Woody Johnson walked down the hallway and pulled out the two agents who were successfully interviewing Jewell. He passed along Mr. Freeh’s instruction. The agents went back to the conference room and read Jewell his rights. Jewell said he would like to call an attorney, and that ended the interview.

“If we could have continued with Jewell, we could have confirmed what he told us and cleared him more quickly,” Woody Johnson told me.

Not until seven months after the incident did Mr. Freeh acknowledge in congressional testimony his own role in the fiasco. Pointing out that he had been a federal judge, Mr. Freeh said, “It is a matter of legal speculation whether a court would have ruled that Miranda warnings were required in Mr. Jewell’s case.”

…

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Washington Life|Dec 2005|Agent´s book party

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LAW ENFORCEMENT LEGEND
Dick and Patricia Carlson hosted a party on October 20th to celebrate “law enforcement legend” Louis Freeh’s new bestselling book“My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton and Fighting the War on Terrorism.”

[Story features photos of attendees including Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov, who now serves as a top adviser to Vladimir Putin]

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Guardian|July 2015|Psychologist accused of enabling US torture backed by former FBI chief

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by Spencer Ackerman

A prominent psychologist ousted from the leadership of the the US’s largest professional psychological association for his alleged role in enabling and covering up torture has enlisted a former FBI director to fight back.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Louis J Freeh, Bill Clinton’s FBI director, rejected an independent report begrudgingly embraced by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a politicized smear job.

The report, which leaked on Friday, is a “gross mischaracterization” of the “intentions, goals and actions” of former ethics chief Stephen Behnke, Freeh said. He threatened unspecified legal retaliation on Behnke’s behalf.

“Dr Behnke will consider all legal options in the face of this unfair, irresponsible and unfounded action by a select few APA board members,” Freeh said.

…

But through Freeh – whose presence on Behnke’s team is likely to be interpreted as an attempt to get the Justice Department to stay out of the imbroglio – Behnke, “a distinguished and dedicated APA senior staffer”, has now gone on the offensive.

Freeh painted Kaslow as a hypocrite, saying the “chairwoman of the so-called ‘special committee’” voted with the APA’s other leaders to “adopt and implement these policies over a series of years with full knowledge of Dr Behnke’s role in the resolution drafting process”.

In the statement, Freeh does not offer any specific denials of the facts Hoffman marshalled. Instead, he portrays the APA as complicit, self-servingly sacrificing Behnke as a convenient scapegoat. Freeh’s statement does not use the word “torture”.

 The APA seeks to wash its hands of Behnke and the organization’s interrogations era, Freeh charged, by way of the Hoffman report.
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Los Angeles Times|Apr 7, 2009| Former FBI chief defends flow of money to Saudi ambassador

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By Tom Hamburger and Josh Meyer

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh says $2 billion that flowed from a British arms manufacturer to U.S. bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the U.S., was not a bribe, but was instead part of a complex barter involving the exchange of Saudi oil for British fighter jets.

The transfer of funds to accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., has come under scrutiny as the Justice Department continues an international corruption investigation involving British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. Freeh, who is now a lawyer and consultant for Bandar, made his comments to the Public Broadcasting Service for a “Frontline” documentary to be broadcast this evening. Bandar is now a national security advisor to the Saudi king. He has denied any wrongdoing, as have other Saudi officials.

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House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime | July 1997 | THE ACTIVITIES OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, PART III

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    Today the subcommittee holds the third and final hearing in a series of oversight hearings concerning the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    One year ago, on July 27, 1996, a bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia at approximately 1:20 a.m. One person was killed by the blast. Another person died as a result of the commotion following the explosion. And more than 100 people were injured.
    Coming, as it did, in the middle of the summer Olympics, the explosion drew international attention. Despite the efforts of hundreds of Federal, State and local law enforcement officials, this crime remains unsolved.

    On January 16 and February 21 this year, two other bombings occurred in Atlanta. Federal officials now believe that one or more persons may have been responsible for all the bombings. Yet these other crimes also remain unsolved.

    One year ago today, the news media, first in Atlanta and then across the Nation, named Richard Jewell as a prime suspect in the bombing. Mr. Jewell had been employed as a private security guard during the Olympics and discovered the green knapsack which contained the bomb. Mr. Jewell reported the knapsack to authorities and helped to move spectators in the park away from the site where the bomb when it blasted occurred.

    There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Jewell’s actions saved the lives and helped to significantly reduce the number of persons who were injured by the bomb blast. Despite his actions, information provided to the FBI by a number of sources caused agents to decide to investigate Mr. Jewell further and then to seek to interview him. That interview was held at the Atlanta office of the FBI.

    During the course of the interview, it appears that the agents used what has now been referred to as a ruse or a ploy to induce Mr. Jewell to agree even to the interview itself or at least to agree to the taping of the interview. During the course of the interview, Director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, gave an order to supervisors in Atlanta that Miranda warnings were to be given to Mr. Jewell. The manner in which the agents gave those warnings to Mr. Jewell has been the subject of much discussion and speculation, and is a key aspect of our hearing today.

    Specifically, the subcommittee has a number of questions which it will put to the witnesses before it.

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Foreign Policy | May 2015 | To Catch the Devil

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By Trevor Aaronson

…

In another case, Craig Monteilh—the bodybuilder turned con man, and the informant in the American Civil Liberties Union’s 2011 case—spent months spying on mosques while pretending to be a convert to Islam named Farouk al-Aziz. In December 2007, police in Irvine, California, charged him with stealing $157,000 from two women as part of a scam to buy and sell human growth hormone. Monteilh later claimed FBI agents instructed him to plead guilty in order to protect his cover; in exchange, the charges would eventually be removed from his record. In a 2010 lawsuit against the FBI, however, Monteilh alleged that the bureau reneged on its promises. He later dropped the suit after agreeing to what he terms a “confidential settlement.”

The FBI often seems quick to wash its hands of trouble that informants cause or allegations they raise. But no matter how murky or embarrassing an informant’s involvement in a case is, it rarely hampers an agent’s or handler’s career. Steve Tidwell, who supervised Monteilh’s operation, retired from the bureau and is now a managing director for former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s private security firm.

…

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Burlington Free Press Aug 2014 | Silence guards Freeh condition at Dartmouth Hospital

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Former FBI director Louis Freeh remained hospitalized at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on Wednesday, two days after he crashed his SUV in southern Vermont.

Freeh, 64, of Wilmington, Del., was admitted under armed guard to the intensive care unit of the Lebanon, N.H., hospital following the 12:15 p.m crash Monday on Vermont 12 in Barnard.

The bureau put the armed protection in place due to Freeh’s past work on terrorism while serving as FBI director from 1993 to 2001, the authorities said.

The special protection was established by the FBI in cooperation with New Hampshire State Police.

The Vermont State Police initially said Freeh was seriously injured in the crash. The agency said Wednesday there is no indication Freeh’s car was tampered with. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. The police did say there is no evidence that drugs or alcohol were a factor in the wreck.

Because of the nature of the single-car crash, the state police accident reconstruction team was not called in, said Lt. William Jenkins, station commander at the Royalton barracks.

An unidentified FBI agent, believed to be off-duty, happened to be among the first people at the crash scene, police said.

FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. said it had nothing new to add to the one-sentence statement issued Monday evening. A spokeswoman said calls were being directed to the FBI Boston office.

Representatives of the FBI in Boston refused Wednesday to transfer phone calls to Special Agent Vincent Lisi, who supervises four New England states, or any of his five assistant special agents in charge.

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DOJ OIG July 2014 | An Assessment of the 1996 Department of Justice Task Force Review of the FBI Laboratory

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This is the third review by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) since 1997 related to alleged irregularities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Laboratory (Lab).2 The first two OIG reports focused on alleged FBI Lab deficiencies, the conduct of individuals brought to our attention by a whistleblower, and remedial actions the FBI took in response to our recommendations. This report addresses how the Criminal Division Task Force (Task Force), created by the Department in 1996 and whose mission was redefined in 1997, managed the identification, review, and follow-up of cases involving the use of scientifically unsupportable analysis and overstated testimony by FBI Lab examiners in criminal prosecutions. We analyzed the Task Force’s review of cases involving 13 FBI examiners the Task Force determined had been criticized in the 1997 OIG report. We included in our review a close examination of cases handled by 1 of the 13 examiners, Michael Malone, the Lab’s Hairs and Fibers Unit examiner whose conduct was particularly problematic.

Although the Task Force made a diligent effort to manage a complex review of thousands of cases, we found the following serious deficiencies in the Department’s and the FBI’s design, implementation, and overall management of the case review process.

First, despite some effort by the Task Force to segregate for priority treatment cases involving defendants on death row, the Department and the FBI did not take sufficient steps to ensure that the capital cases were the Task Force’s top priority. We found that it took the FBI almost 5 years to identify the 64 defendants on death row whose cases involved analyses or testimony by 1 or more of the 13 examiners. The Department did not notify state authorities that convictions of capital defendants could be affected by involvement of any of the 13 criticized examiners. Therefore, state authorities had no basis to consider delaying scheduled executions.

As a result, one defendant (Benjamin H. Boyle) was executed 4 days after the 1997 OIG report was published but before his case was identified and reviewed by the Task Force. The prosecutor deemed the Lab analysis and testimony in that case material to the defendant’s conviction. An independent scientist who later reviewed the case found the FBI Lab analysis to be scientifically unsupportable and the testimony overstated and incorrect. Two other capital defendants were executed (Michael Lockhart in 1997 and Gerald E. Stano in 1998) 2 months and 7 months, respectively, before their cases were identified for Task Force review as cases involving 1 or more of the 13 examiners. Although we found no indication in the Task Force files that the Lab analyses or examiners’ testimony were deemed material to the defendants’ convictions in these cases and, according to the FBI, the OIG-criticized examiner found no positive associations linking
Lockhart or Stano to the crimes for which they were convicted and executed, the Task Force did not learn this critical information before the executions so that appropriate steps could have been taken had the analyses or testimony been material to the convictions and unreliable.

Another capital defendant (Joseph Young) died in prison of natural causes in 1996 before the 1997 OIG report was published. However, the Task Force did not refer his case to the FBI for review by an independent scientist even though the prosecutor had deemed the FBI Lab analysis and testimony to be material to the conviction. It is not known whether the outcome of this defendant’s trial or his sentence would have been different without the examiner’s testimony, which in other cases was deemed scientifically inaccurate, exaggerated, and unreliable. In all, the Task Force referred only 8 of the 64 death penalty cases involving the criticized examiners for review by an independent scientist. We found evidence that the independent scientists’ reports were forwarded to capital defendants in only two cases. The Department should have handled all death penalty cases with greater priority and urgency.

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Washington Post July 2014 | Watchdog report faults FBI laboratory probe

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WASHINGTON — The FBI and Justice Department didn’t move quickly enough to identify the cases handled by 13 FBI crime lab examiners whose work was found to be flawed, meaning defendants sometimes were never notified that their convictions may have been based on bad science, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The report from the department’s inspector general said it took the FBI nearly five years to identify the more than 60 death-row defendants whose cases involved analysis or testimony from one or more of the 13 examiners.

At least three inmates were executed before a Justice Department task force, created in 1996, had identified their cases for further review. In one of those cases, the 1997 execution of Benjamin H. Boyle in Texas, an independent scientist later determined that the FBI lab analysis was scientifically unsupportable, the report said.
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BloombergBusinessweek July 2014 | Watchdog Faults Justice Department Review of FBI Lab Work

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The Justice Department’s internal review of faulty FBI lab work had “serious deficiencies,” including the failure to make death penalty cases a priority, the department’s inspector general concluded.

In a 138-page report released today, the Office of the Inspector General said the Justice Department didn’t review all of the cases by a “problematic” FBI examiner whose work was known to be faulty and whose “scientifically unsupportable” testimony contributed to the conviction of an innocent defendant.

The report also found that the department failed to ensure that defendants learned their convictions may have been tainted, and it didn’t tell prosecutors it was important to swiftly alert defendants to the problems, especially in death penalty cases.

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