Still Wanted

An FBI manhunt continues

Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter strongly suggested that if elected, he would replace FBI Director Clarence Kelley. More than a year after Carter's election, Kelley is still on the job, and a successor has not been found. Says a top official of the increasingly demoralized and disorganized FBI: "It didn't take Stanley much longer to find Livingstone, and those guys were in darkest Africa."

After rejecting five names recommended by a special presidential search committee, Carter in August chose Frank Johnson, a U.S. district judge in Alabama with a reputation for fairness on civil rights and sternness on law-and-order. But a routine physical exam showed that Johnson needed an operation for an aneurysm. After surgery in late August, Johnson seemed to be progressing, when he suffered a relapse. Since then he has been unable to work for more than two hours a day without getting exhausted.

Last week Johnson told U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell that he was "discouraged" and wanted the White House to withdraw his nomination. Bell was left with the humiliating task of asking Kelley to stay on the job until the middle of February. By then, Bell said hopefully, if none too convincingly, a successor would be found.

Any change will be long overdue. A lame duck--and a lackluster one at that--Kelley has not been able to assert control over the many FBI officials who remain loyal to the memory of the late J. Edgar Hoover. They have had few scruples about misleading Kelley and disregarding his authority. For example, they told him that illegal entries into the homes, offices and hotel rooms of extremist groups like the Socialist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan had been stopped in 1966. Later Kelley had to admit in public that the "black bag jobs" continued into the 1970s. Kelley ordered agents to spend less time on such relatively petty crime as thefts on Indian reservations and more time on "quality cases" like organized racketeering across state lines. But his instructions have been ignored by some field offices. Reason: local agents are fearful that if the number of arrests declines, the statistical-minded Hooverites in Washington will be offended.

The longer the FBI's problems continue, the harder it will be to find someone to deal with them. There is speculation that Carter might turn to the federal bench a second time for a director. A frequently mentioned candidate: U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell of Washington, a tough, liberal jurist. "Carter has to make a clean break with the past," says an FBI member. "No one in the bureau now is entirely pure."

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