FBI Foul-Ups

Bungling the Donovan case

The interim report of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee investigating the confirmation of Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan was damaging enough. The 46-page text, which was issued last week, accused FBI Director William Webster and then Executive Assistant Director Francis Mullen of withholding information that raised serious questions about Donovan's fitness for office. As a result, the committee charged, the FBI "usurped the Senate's constitutional responsibility" and "compromised the Senate's ability to inform itself."

But the documents and testimony buried in the report's 885-page appendix are potentially more embarrassing. They directly contradict an internal FBI memo of December 1980, in which Webster revealed that he had assured Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese that the bureau's 60 field offices had run a check on Donovan and turned up no incriminating evidence. In a letter to the Labor Committee dated Sept. 17, 1982, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Robert McConnell said that the FBI had "located no information to suggest that such a check was made in any field office." In his own testimony before the Labor Committee, Mullen also contradicted his boss, saying that at the time of Webster's assertion, the field offices had not been asked about Donovan.

Mullen's testimony cast doubt, as well, on his own statement in January 1981 that the bureau had "no information which would reflect unfavorably upon Mr. Donovan in any manner." This clean bill persuaded the Labor Committee to recommend that Donovan be confirmed. The full Senate approved Donovan in February 1981, but inquiries continued. When a special prosecutor concluded last year that there was "insufficient credible evidence" to indict Donovan, the President proclaimed the case "closed." But evidence that the FBI had withheld information linking Donovan's old firm, Schiavone Construction Co., to organized crime prompted Labor Committee Members Orrin Hatch and Edward Kennedy last July to order an investigation into the handling of his confirmation.

The committee found that significant information was held back not only by the FBI but also by Presidential Counsel Fred Fielding. He produced an FBI memo declaring the investigation of Donovan "favorable and complete" but, according to Hatch, failed to mention a later FBI document describing alleged links between Donovan, Schiavone and the Mob.

The Labor Committee noted a number of specific allegations that the FBI did not pass along to the Senate. These included: six mentions of Donovan picked up by wire taps on the telephone of William Masselli, a reputed member of the Genovese crime family in New York; references to Schiavone Construction in the agency's files on the disappearance of former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa; and reports from FBI informants that Donovan and Schiavone may have had ties to organized crime through the firm's dealings with the Big J Trucking Co.

Mullen, now acting director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, is quoted as lamely saying that the FBI's duty was to pass along its findings on Donovan to the White House and not to the Senate. Webster fares little better. In his 1980 memo he stated that Schiavone showed up a number of times in the bureau's files on the Hoffa case, "but that none of these suggested any criminality or organized-crime associations." Webster has since been unable to find these references and, chides the committee, "has no idea where he got that information. The background investigation of a Cabinet nominee demands greater care than this." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.