http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-04/04/085r-040400-idx.html FBI Chief Hunts for Private-Sector Job Facing Financial Pressure, Freeh Wants to Leave This Year By David A. Vise and Lorraine Adams Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, April 4, 2000; Page A01 Intermediaries are seeking higher-paying jobs in the private sector for FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, who expects to leave the bureau during the last several months of this year because of mounting financial pressures, sources familiar with Freeh's plans said yesterday. Freeh's 10-year term as FBI director runs until 2003, but the father of six boys--including one approaching college age--needs more income after 25 years of earning public service salaries far below amounts he could command in the private sector, sources said. Freeh is assessing his employment options in the same way he operates as FBI director: in secrecy. Private-sector associates of the FBI director have been contacting senior officials at financial services and legal firms in Washington and elsewhere, asking whether they would be interested in hiring Freeh. The 51-year-old Freeh also has been approached by several firms and offered jobs with seven-figure salaries, sources said. Freeh has not accepted an offer but hopes to make a decision in time to leave before the end of the year. Freeh has presided over dramatic growth of the FBI and a renewed emphasis on discipline after a period marred by FBI missteps and scandals. Despite heightened tensions with senior Justice Department officials, Freeh has enhanced the FBI's credibility on Capitol Hill. In the aftermath of fiery and bloody finishes to FBI standoffs near Waco, Tex., and at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, before his arrival, Freeh instituted new policies for the bureau's hostage rescue team that are credited with ending other standoffs peacefully. But Freeh was at the helm of the FBI when 168 people died in a terrorist attack at the federal building in Oklahoma City. With a mortgage exceeding $400,000 and a salary as FBI director of $141,300, Freeh recently quipped that he asks his wife, Marilyn, each week whether he has permission to return to work at the bureau. "Mrs. Freeh has a lot to say about that," the FBI director said. Freeh began his public-sector career as an FBI agent and served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and a federal judge before becoming head of the FBI in 1993. Sources said Freeh is deeply concerned that he could compromise the independence of the office by creating a vacancy about the same time that a new president is sworn in. The FBI director, who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, serves a 10-year term to minimize the role of politics in his job. At the same time, Freeh is reluctant to leave the bureau too many months before Clinton departs because he does not want the bureau to be in limbo and doesn't trust the president not to dismantle programs important to him, sources said. Although Clinton appointed Freeh, the two have become bitter rivals and have made disparaging remarks about each other. Freeh has been accused of playing partisan politics on Capitol Hill by catering to Republicans and making his distaste for Clinton well known. Freeh turned in his White House pass soon after he took the post and let it be known that he disagreed with Attorney General Janet Reno's decision not to seek an independent counsel to probe Clinton's political fund-raising activities. Freeh has privately told members of Congress and others that Clinton's philandering has degraded the office of the presidency and embarrassed the nation. Freeh's generation is slowly leaving the FBI. Freeh's longtime friend and colleague, Lewis D. Schiliro, recently left as head of the FBI's New York office to work for credit card giant MBNA America, where a number of senior-level FBI alumni are employed. Freeh and Schiliro graduated from the FBI training academy at Quantico together in 1975 and have remained close ever since. In Washington, Freeh is known for protecting himself and the bureau, sometimes at the expense of the attorney general, to whom he reports. "My continuing commitment for the FBI" is that it "remain free from inappropriate political interference and all attempts to politicize its work," Freeh said recently. � Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company
