Remarks on the dismissal of FBI Director William Sessions and an exchange with reporters - Bill Clinton speech - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 26, 1993

July 19, 1993

The President. Good afternoon. In recent months, serious questions have been raised about the conduct and the leadership of the Director of the FBI William Sessions. Among other matters, the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has issued a report on certain conduct by the Director. I asked the Attorney General, Janet Reno, to assess the Director's tenure and the proper response to the turmoil now in the Bureau. After a thorough review by the Attorney General of Mr. Sessions' leadership of the FBI, she has reported to me in no uncertain terms that he can no longer effectively lead the Bureau and law enforcement community.

I had hoped very much that this matter could be resolved within the Justice Department. The Attorney General met with Judge Sessions over the weekend and asked him to resign, but he refused. In accord with the recommendation of the Attorney General, with which I fully agree, I called Director Sessions a few moments ago and informed him that I was dismissing him, effective immediately, as the Director of the FBI.

We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the FBI. It is time that this difficult chapter in the Agency's history is brought to a close. The FBI is the Nation's premier investigative and enforcement agency. Law-abiding citizens rely on the FBI to handle a wide array of complex and sensitive matters, to protect our shores against terrorism, our neighborhoods against the scourge of drugs and guns, our public life against white-collar crime, corruption, and crimes of violence. The Agency's brilliant detective work in the wake of the World Trade Center bombing has shown even in a time of difficulty the men and women on the street and in the labs have continued to give their country their best. With a change in management in the FBI, we can now give the crimefighters the leadership they deserve.

Tomorrow, I expect to make an announcement about my nominee to be the next Director of the FBI. In the meanwhile, the Attorney General and I have asked Floyd Clark to serve as Acting Director of the Bureau.

Q. Mr. President, are you - what did he do wrong? And are you confident that there was not an internal vendetta against Judge Sessions because he wanted to broaden the look of the FBI, take in more Hispanics, blacks, and women?

The President. Well, let me answer the second question first. I think that will be remembered as the best thing about his tenure. And he deserves the support and thanks of the American people for trying to broaden the membership of the FBI to make it look more like America and to follow the lead of some other agencies and the United States military.

Now, but beyond that, if you read the report of the Office of Professional Responsibility and you do what the Attorney General did, if you look at that and all of the other circumstances and you assess the capacity of the present Director to lead or the incapacity of the Director to lead, she reached the judgment, which she communicated to me, that he ought to resign. And I fully agreed with that judgment. There are lots of reasons for it.

Q. Mr. President, do you think that this will in any way create the impression that the FBI is being politicized and hurt the longstanding tradition that the FBI not be subject to political pressure?

The President. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, that's one of the reasons we have taken the amount of time that we have. The Attorney General, when she took office, was asked by me to review this matter. Both of us agreed that in the normal course of events, the Director of the FBI should not be changed just because administrations changed. Even when, perhaps even especially when, there's a change of political party in the White House. So the Attorney General was very deliberate, very thorough in this, and I think has gone out of her way to avoid the appearance of political impropriety.

Gays in the Military

Q. Mr. President, won't your new policy on homosexuals in the military require gays in the military to stay in the closet? And do you hope that the courts will take this policy further?

The President. No, it will not necessarily require them to stay in the closet. The policy as written gives people a limited right, obviously, to express their sexual orientation. But if they do so, they are at risk of having to demonstrate in some credible way that they are observing the rules of conduct applied in the military service. That is much more than they had before.

Over and above that, the investigative rules, which are part of the policy, go far beyond anything that was written in law before in terms of respecting the privacy and associational rights of homosexuals in the military service and others, and nonhomosexuals, heterosexuals, in the military.

Q. Mr. President, you said in your speech that you thought you had done what was right. You had earlier said that what was right was lifting the ban. How did you reach the decision not to stick with your guns, go ahead, lift the ban, take the heat? This is going to be decided in the courts anyway. Why not stand by your principles?