The Sad Case of William Sessions : Embattled FBI chief is losing ability to run bureau

The saga of William S. Sessions, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, gets sadder and sadder. Any decision by the Clinton Administration about the remainder of his 10-year term ought to be delayed until the new attorney general is in place. But on balance Sessions himself needs to realize that his ability to command the FBI deteriorates almost daily.

The charges against Sessions are serious, though not felonious. In the fashion of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, who arrogantly used government vehicles for personal travel, they involve a misuse of perks over a number of years. The findings against him arose from a meticulous and thoroughly nonpartisan investigation by career FBI agents.

But Sessions has reacted to the charges largely as if there were some sort of personal vendetta against him. That is vaguely possible but not likely. Sessions’ defense of his actions would appear to suggest that somehow the bureau wouldn’t be able to flourish without him. That’s ridiculous, of course.

It is true that the former federal judge--appointed by President Ronald Reagan about five years ago--has worked hard to rid the FBI of institutionalized tendencies to discriminate against minorities. He has done at least as much as any of his predecessors in this regard, and it is not impossible that some FBI oldtimers might have it in for him.

Even so, Sessions’ conduct has raised enough questions that the new President no doubt will want his attorney general to consider whether another qualified person might prove worthy of the post in the event that Sessions, for whatever reasons, leaves. If the director goes, the bureau will have lost a good man who lost his way--but it will not have lost some irreplaceable part.

The FBI is the nation’s leading federal law enforcement agency and in some ways the best in the world. But it must operate in a democracy, under a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, and the bureau’s director can never be--in perception or in reality--above the law, or even slightly insensitive to it.

If President Clinton should decide to replace Sessions, as is his statutory right, he must select someone who is so far removed from partisan politics and so obviously and eminently qualified that the President’s motives for replacing the Reagan-picked Sessions will be utterly above question.