Louis Freeh
Louis Joseph Freeh is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001.
Graduated from Rutgers University and New York University School of Law, Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.
Early life and career
Freeh was born January 6, 1950, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of an Italian-American mother named Bernice, a bookkeeper, and a German-American father named William Freeh Sr., a real estate broker. Freeh, a native of North Bergen, graduated from Saint Joseph of the Palisades High School in West New York, New Jersey in 1967. He then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers University–New Brunswick with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971, and received a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1974 and a Master of Laws degree in criminal law from New York University School of Law in 1984.Freeh was an FBI Special Agent from 1975 to 1981 in the New York City field office and at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1981, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as an Assistant United States Attorney. Subsequently, he held positions there as Chief of the Organized Crime Unit, Deputy United States Attorney, and Associate United States Attorney. He was also a first lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve.
As a youth, Freeh became an Eagle Scout in 1963 and in 1995 was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America.
"Pizza Connection" case
A notable case Freeh was associated with was the "Pizza Connection" investigation, in which he was lead prosecutor. The case, prosecuted in the mid-1980s, involved a drug trafficking operation in the United States by Sicilian organized crime members who used pizza parlors as fronts. After a 16-month trial, 17 of 19 defendants were convicted, of which 16 were sentenced. The "Pizza Connection" case was, at the time, the most complex criminal investigation ever undertaken by the U.S. government.Walter Moody trial
Another notable case Freeh was associated with was the murder trial of Walter Moody, accused of the pipe bomb assassination of federal judge Robert Smith Vance in Birmingham, Alabama and attorney Robert E. Robinson in Savannah, Georgia. Freeh was appointed Special Prosecutor in the case alongside Howard Shapiro.Vance was assassinated on December 16, 1989, at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama, when he opened a package containing a mail bomb sent by serial bomber Walter Moody. Vance was killed instantly; his wife Helen was seriously injured. Moody had mistakenly thought Judge Vance had denied his appeal of another case.
The Department of Justice charged Moody with the murders of Judge Vance and of Robinson, a black civil-rights attorney who had been killed in a separate explosion at his office. "Roy" Moody was also charged with mailing bombs that were defused at the Eleventh Circuit's headquarters in Atlanta and at the Jacksonville office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In 1991, Moody was sentenced to seven federal life terms, plus 400 years. He was subsequently tried by the state in 1996 for the murders and was executed by the state of Alabama in 2018 when he was 83 years old.
Federal judicial service
Freeh was nominated by President George H. W. Bush on April 9, 1991, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by Judge Richard J. Daronco. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 24, 1991, and received his commission on May 30, 1991. His service terminated on August 31, 1993, when he resigned to direct the FBI.Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1993–2001)
Shortly before and during Freeh's tenure, the FBI was involved in a number of high-profile incidents and internal investigations. In 2011, Reuters wrote that Freeh "faced widespread criticism for a series of high-profile blunders" during his tenure as FBI Director.Civil liberties
Among other Justice Department officials, Freeh was named a co-defendant in Zieper v. Metzinger, a 1999 federal court case. The American Civil Liberties Union assisted the plaintiffs who sued due to the FBI's conduct in investigating "Military Takeover of New York City", a short film made in October 1999 that discussed riots and a military takeover of Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1999.In May 2000, he reached an agreement with Rep. José Serrano, then Puerto Rican Independence Party Senator Manuel Rodríguez Orellana, and then Puerto Rico Senate Committee on Federal Affairs chairman Kenneth McClintock to release FBI files on Puerto Rican political activists. More than 185,000 pages were released and catalogued by the Office of Legislative Services of Puerto Rico.
In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Freeh said that the widespread use of effective encryption "is one of the most difficult problems for law enforcement as the next century approaches". He considered the loss of wiretapping to law enforcement to be dangerous and said that the "country be unable to protect itself" against terrorism and serious crimes.
Ruby Ridge
An investigation of the August 1992 incident at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in which an FBI sharpshooter killed the wife of Randy Weaver, was ongoing when Freeh joined the FBI as its director. An FBI unit, the Hostage Rescue Team, was present at the incident; Freeh later said that had he been director, he would not have involved the HRT. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi was later charged with manslaughter; Freeh said that he was "deeply disappointed" at the charges, filed by a county prosecutor and later dropped.Freeh was not censured for alleged managerial failures in the investigation of the incident, although a Justice Department inquiry had made such a recommendation.
Waco
An investigation of the events of April 19, 1993, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms special agents served a warrant on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, was ongoing during Freeh's tenure. While the event had taken place before he became Director, a highly controversial investigation ensued during Freeh's tenure, similar to the Ruby Ridge situation, which had also preceded Freeh's time at the FBI. There were allegations of a cover-up by the FBI in the Waco investigation, which led to tensions developing between Freeh and Janet Reno, then-Attorney General. Reno, who had herself been blamed for mishandling of the confrontation and investigation at Waco, sent United States Marshals to FBI headquarters to seize Waco-related evidence. Freeh took a neutral position during the investigations to distance himself from the tide of criticism.Khobar Towers bombing
Shortly before 10 a.m. on June 25, 1996, members of a terrorist group detonated a truck bomb outside building 131 of the King Abdul Aziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The building was almost exclusively occupied by members of the US Air Force, who were there to patrol the southern Iraqi no-fly zone enacted after the Gulf War.In the attack, 19 US military personnel and a Saudi local were killed and 372 wounded, making it the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans abroad since the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.
Louis Freeh said in his book My FBI that he felt the deepest sadness about the Khobar Towers investigation. It was not until his last day in office, June 21, 2001, that a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia returned a 46-count indictment against 14 defendants charged with the Khobar Towers attack. The indictments came just before some of the counts would have expired due to a five-year statute of limitations. In his book, Freeh maintains that he was obstructed by the Clinton Administration for political reasons in investigating the bombing and bringing the terrorists to justice.
TWA Flight 800
On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 persons on board. The following day, the FBI commenced a parallel investigation in spite of the National Transportation Safety Board having "priority over any investigation by another department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government", as stated in.Subsequently, FBI agents blocked attempts by the NTSB to interview witnesses, according to a copy of a safety board report obtained by Aviation Week & Space Technology. One month after the explosion, chemists at the FBI crime laboratory in Washington found traces of PETN, an explosive component of bombs and surface-to-air missiles. Nevertheless, on November 18, 1997, the FBI closed its investigation by announcing that "no evidence has been found which would indicate that a criminal act was the cause of the tragedy of TWA flight 800."
Almost three years later, in August 2000, the NTSB published its final report which stated that "the probable cause of the TWA flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank, resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank."