Sad and Sorry Chapter for the FBI

Three former top officials are indicted for illegal acts

In the early 1970s, U.S. campuses were boiling with protest against the Viet Nam War. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched on Washington. The Weatherman organization and other extremist groups set off bombs in Madison, Wis., San Rafael, Calif., and New York City, causing the deaths of at least four people. It was a time of sad and sorry crisis for the country, and the FBI was under intense pressure from both the Nixon White House and the public to stop the violence. As is now known, the bureau used illegal wiretaps, burglaries and mail thefts in searching for evidence against the radicals. The overzealous effort netted few suspects and resulted in widespread fears that the FBI was out of control, that it had lost sight of its role in a free society.

Last week Attorney General Griffin Bell sought to end the debate over the FBI and close this tarnishing chapter in the bureau's history. In the process, he shook the pillars of the FBI as never before in its 70-year history by announcing the indictment of three former top officials for "conspiracy against rights of citizens." The three:

>L. Patrick Gray III, 61, a career naval officer who served as acting FBI director from May 1972 to April 1973, when he returned to his law practice in Groton, Conn., after withdrawing his name from nomination as J. Edgar Hoover's successor because of growing opposition in the Senate. The chief reason: Gray had destroyed evidence in the Watergate scandal.

>W. Mark Felt, 64, a 31-year FBI veteran and for more than a year the agency's No. 2 man. For a time, Felt was also a possible successor to Hoover. He retired in 1973.

>Edward S. Miller, 49, an agent for 24 years and the FBI's assistant director in charge of intelligence from 1971 until he retired in 1974.

The indictment, based partly on evidence that FBI officials had hidden for years, charges that the trio conspired to "oppress citizens of the United States who were relatives and acquaintances of Weatherman fugitives" by violating their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the indictment, Gray, Felt and Miller explicitly assigned the illegal actions on their own. Two years ago, Felt publicly acknowledged authorizing two break-ins. But last week he called the indictment a "tragic mistake." All three defendants denied that they had done anything illegal or improper, but did not elaborate further. Indeed, only days before the indictment was announced, they turned down Justice Department offers to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges.

Bell has been uncomfortably mulling over the FBI cases ever since he took office and found out about the bureau's misdeeds. They were being investigated by Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger, but he was making little progress because of a stubborn cover-up within the FBI. Pottinger had begun his probe in 1976 by recruiting a team of twelve FBI agents, which was later expanded to 24, all of whom were chosen on the basis of their known integrity and loyalty to the U.S. Government rather than to the FBI establishment.

In June 1976, one of the team members has disclosed to TIME, they swooped down on Washington's J. Edgar Hoover Building, "virtually with guns drawn," in hopes of seizing evidence before it could be hidden or destroyed. The raiding party took control of a number of rooms, and "we combed the place." Nonetheless, they came away emptyhanded. By granting immunity to 53 FBI agents in exchange for information, Pottinger eventually built a case against members of the FBI's Squad 47, based in the bureau's New York office, which spearheaded the Weatherman investigation.

Bell reviewed this evidence last April and approved an indictment against the supervisor of Squad 47, John Kearney, 55, on five counts of illegal wiretapping, intercepting mail and conspiracy. That action drew a storm of protest from the FBI's ranks. By Bell's estimate, letters ran 100 to 1 against his decision. Some agents took the unprecedented step of even picketing the FBI's New York headquarters. Morale sagged in FBI offices across the country.

The Attorney General promised further prosecutions. But, obviously reluctant to pursue the case further, he delayed on the chance that the judge in any Kearney trial would throw out the indictment. Instead, Kearney's lawyer, famed Washington Defense Attorney Edward Bennett Williams, went to court and demanded so much information from the FBI that the trial was repeatedly postponed.

In December, Bell decided to concentrate on tracking down the FBI decision makers who had ordered the illegal actions. When he announced the indictments of Gray, Felt and Miller, he dropped the charges against Kearney. According to Bell, his problem was that while trying to investigate the FBI, he also had to run it. Said he: "I have to consider what's good for the FBI."

Bell's strategy of prosecuting only high-level officials kicked up another storm: four of the Justice Department attorneys involved in the investigation resigned in protest. Said Stephen Horn, one of the four: "There were a whole lot of agents stonewalling us. We could not investigate. Everybody knew it."

TIME has learned that the cover-up included not telling investigators immediately about documents stored for five years in a filing cabinet in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Among them were memos from Mark Felt--dubbed "one-liners" by investigators--giving Edward Miller explicit orders for break-ins and other illegal activities. The cabinet, say FBI sources, was tucked away in a corner of a little-used public room of the building and only came to light when a low-level employee suggested that it was an eyesore and should be thrown out. But it was opened first--and lo, the much-sought-after evidence was inside. Justice Department officials find the FBI's story bizarre to the point of incredibility--one calls it a "fairy tale." The investigators believe that someone stashed the documents in the cabinet to hide them, that the "discovery" was actually a result of pressure from their probe and that whoever hid the documents apparently decided that they could no longer be safely withheld.

Bell ordered newly appointed FBI Director William Webster to investigate the hiding of the documents and take disciplinary action, ranging from reprimands to dismissals, against 68 agents who had carried out illegal acts under orders from Gray, Felt and Miller.

After Bell's announcement, many Americans raised questions about the propriety of striking so hard at high law-enforcement officials who were trying--however misguidedly--to do their job in a crisis situation. Similar reservations were raised when former CIA Director Richard Helms was charged with two misdemeanor counts for, in effect, lying to a Senate committee in denying that his agency had tried to stop Salvador Allende Gossens' 1970 election as President of Chile. Helms pleaded no contest but justified his actions on national security grounds.

Moreover, many FBI agents remain unhappy at the disciplinary measures faced by their colleagues. Some were particularly upset with Bell's treatment of J. Wallace LaPrade, 51, an assistant FBI director and head of the bureau's New York office. According to investigators, he was vulnerable to perjury charges for denying to a grand jury in January 1977 that the FBI had acted illegally in the Weatherman cases. Bell stripped LaPrade of his New York command and called on him to resign, but LaPrade refused, hired a lawyer and took his case to the public.

LaPrade charged that the FBI, with Carter's approval, is still conducting "warrantless investigations" similar to those of the early 1970s. Asked LaPrade: "Will another political power in Washington desire to prosecute today's actions five years from now?" LaPrade would not elaborate on his charges, but a Department of Justice spokesman indicated that he was referring to "warrantless investigations [that] are only directed against foreign intelligence or agents of foreign powers"--which is legal.

Meanwhile, the Society of Former Special Agents has begun collecting $100 from each of its 7,200 members, all of them ex-FBI agents, to help pay defense costs in the court trials ahead.

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