THE DOGGED PURSUER

"I told all of you for the last year and a half that we were going to catch them, but nobody believed me." With those uncharacteristically exuberant words, Special FBI Agent Charles William Bates, 55, celebrated last week's capture of Patty Hearst and her ragtag radical comrades. As chief of the FBI office in San Francisco, Bates doggedly led the nationwide hunt for 19 frustrating months. He had coolly endured newspaper complaints that the investigation was being badly run. Bates never responded publicly to the criticism, but repeatedly expressed confidence that his agents would crack the case.

The case capped a 34-year career that began soon after the Texas-born Bates graduated in 1941 with a major in government from Southern Methodist University, where he had met his first FBI agent. Recalled Bates: "He was a sharp young fella and he carried a gun, which impresses any young man." So he joined up too. After assignments in Newark and Washington, Bates worked for seven years in the U.S. embassy in London as liaison with Scotland Yard. Returning to the U.S. in 1965, he became chief of the FBI office in Omaha and later had similar assignments in Cleveland, San Francisco and Chicago. Once, the lanky, 6-ft. 2-in. Bates was almost killed: in 1968, when he went after a kidnaper in a building in Aptos, Calif. Says Bates: "He had his gun at the hostage's head, turned and pointed the gun at me. I fired and killed him."

He earned the high esteem of fellow career agents because of the backbone he exhibited as chief of the FBI General Investigative Division in Washington, where he was in charge of the bureau's initial digging into the Watergate scandal in 1972. He and several other agents wanted to conduct an aggressive investigation that might well have led them to the White House officials who ran the Watergate coverup. But Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray was reluctant to push the probe, especially after the CIA, at the instigation of White House aides, urged him to restrict the inquiry, ostensibly to protect U.S. intelligence activities in Mexico. At Bates' suggestion, Gray asked the CIA to put the requests in writing, and the CIA officials backed off. Instead of rewarding Bates and his colleagues for being right, Gray banished one agent to St. Louis and retired another. Avoiding a similar fate, Bates asked to be transferred back to San Francisco.

During the hunt for Patty Hearst, Bates, who earns $36,000 a year, customarily rose at 5:30 a.m. each day. For lack of time, he gave up hunting and cut back on weekend golf. Says his wife: "The Hearst case has just consumed our life. This removes a 50-pound weight." Now Bates can return to his normal routine, unless he decides to take one of several job offers in private business. But he may well stay on in the FBI. Explains Bates, who habitually wears on a gold chain four service pins for 10, 20,25 and 30 years with the bureau: "It's an extremely frustrating job, but you see the results more than other people do. I came in when I was 21, and I'd certainly do it again."

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