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Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001.
Graduated from Rutgers University and New York University School of Law, Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.
Freeh was an FBI Special Agent from 1975 to 1981 in the New York City field office and at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1981, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as an Assistant United States Attorney. Subsequently, he held positions there as Chief of the Organized Crime Unit, Deputy United States Attorney, and Associate United States Attorney. He was also a first lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve.
As a youth, Freeh became an Eagle Scout in 1963 and in 1995 was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America.
Vance was assassinated on December 16, 1989, at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama, when he opened a package containing a mail bomb sent by serial bomber Walter Moody. Vance was killed instantly; his wife Helen was seriously injured. Moody had mistakenly thought Judge Vance had denied his appeal of another case.
The Department of Justice charged Moody with the murders of Judge Vance and of Robinson, a black civil-rights attorney who had been killed in a separate explosion at his office. "Roy" Moody was also charged with mailing bombs that were defused at the Eleventh Circuit's headquarters in Atlanta and at the Jacksonville office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
In 1991, Moody was sentenced to seven federal life terms, plus 400 years. He was subsequently tried by the state in 1996 for the murders and was executed by the state of Alabama in 2018 when he was 83 years old. Alabama executes Walter Moody, the oldest inmate put to death in the modern era, Washington Post, Mark Berman, April 19, 2018. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
In May 2000, he reached an agreement with Rep. José Serrano, then Puerto Rican Independence Party Senator Manuel Rodríguez Orellana, and then Puerto Rico Senate Committee on Federal Affairs chairman Kenneth McClintock to release FBI files on Puerto Rican political activists. More than 185,000 pages were released and catalogued by the Office of Legislative Services of Puerto Rico.
In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Freeh said that the widespread use of effective encryption "is one of the most difficult problems for law enforcement as the next century approaches". He considered the loss of wiretapping to law enforcement (as a result of encryption) to be dangerous and said that the "country would be unable to protect itself" against terrorism and serious crimes.
Freeh was not censured for alleged managerial failures in the investigation of the incident, although a Justice Department inquiry had made such a recommendation.
In the attack, 19 US military personnel and a Saudi local were killed and 372 wounded, making it the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans abroad since the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.
Louis Freeh said in his book My FBI that he felt the deepest sadness about the Khobar Towers investigation. It was not until his last day in office, June 21, 2001, that a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia returned a 46-count indictment against 14 defendants charged with the Khobar Towers attack. The indictments came just before some of the counts would have expired due to a five-year statute of limitations. In his book, Freeh maintains that he was obstructed by the Clinton Administration for political reasons in investigating the bombing and bringing the terrorists to justice.
Subsequently, FBI agents blocked attempts by the NTSB to interview witnesses, according to a copy of a safety board report obtained by Aviation Week & Space Technology. One month after the explosion, chemists at the FBI crime laboratory in Washington found traces of PETN, an explosive component of bombs and surface-to-air missiles. Nevertheless, on November 18, 1997, the FBI closed its investigation by announcing that "no evidence has been found which would indicate that a criminal act was the cause of the tragedy of TWA flight 800."
Almost three years later, in August 2000, the NTSB published its final report which stated that "the probable cause of the TWA flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank."
According to Lee's book, the FBI quickly figured out that the information which had improperly been passed on had not been available to Lee, as the design data the PRC had obtained could not have come from the Los Alamos Lab, since it related to information that would only have been available to a "downstream" contractor, i.e. someone involved in the final warhead production process, and this information was only created after the weapon design left the Los Alamos Lab where Lee had been employed.Wen Ho Lee, Helen Zia (2001), My Country Versus Me: The first-hand account by the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy, Hyperion
Ultimately, Lee pled guilty to one of the fifty-nine counts brought against him, after which he was freed from prison. At Lee's sentencing hearing, District Judge James A. Parker scolded the US government for its treatment of Lee, saying that the top decision makers in the case "have embarrassed this entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it" and that they had been "led astray" by US government officials.
Parker apologized to Lee, saying, "Dr. Lee, you were terribly wronged by being held in pretrial custody in demeaning and unnecessarily punitive conditions. I am truly sorry."
A Justice Department report of the investigation of Lee said that Director Freeh was not fully informed about the investigation until over a year after it began, and that the FBI as a whole "bungled" the case.
The following month, Freeh testified before Congress that his investigation into campaign finance irregularities of the 1996 U.S. presidential and Congressional campaigns was not focusing on individual criminal acts, but on a possible conspiracy involving China.
Later that year, Freeh wrote a memorandum to Attorney General Janet Reno calling for an Independent Counsel to investigate the fundraising scandal. In his memo he wrote: "It is difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing an Independent Counsel"."Freeh Says Reno Clearly Misread Prosecutor Law", Neil A. Lewis, New York Times June 12, 2006 Reno rejected his request.
Freeh was accused of malpractice several times during his time at the FBI. In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, Freeh failed to hand over 3,000 pages of evidence to Timothy McVeigh's lawyers. Freeh also received backlash for not looking into whether Moscow had recruited someone in the FBI, despite being warned by senior investigator Thomas Kimmel. It would later come out 2 years later in 2001 that Robert Hanssen had been recruited by the Russians to be a spy for them. In 1994 after it was discovered that Aldrich Ames was a spy for the Russians, Freeh was advised to require routine polygraph tests for FBI agents; no action was taken by him.
In 1997 FBI agent Frederic Whitehurst was suspended by Freeh not long after making allegations that FBI lab techniques resulted in contaminated evidence. Just days after Whitehurst was put on administrative leave, a report was delivered to the FBI that supported Whitehurst's claims that evidence in cases may have been contaminated. On March 5, Freeh was called before Congress, he said that he suspended Whitehurst on recommendations from Inspector general Michael Bromwich. But Bromwich said that he never made such a recommendation. Freeh admitted that his testimony was incomplete, but denied he deliberately misled congress. Whitehurst would later accuse Freeh of covering up mistakes made by forensic analysts.
Attorney general Janet Reno testified that information that could have prevented the September 11 attacks was mishandled by the FBI at the time Freeh was the director of the FBI.
In September 2001, Freeh was appointed to the board of directors of credit card issuer MBNA; he also served as the bank's general counsel, as well as corporate secretary and ethics officer. Likewise, Bristol-Myers Squibb elected him to its board of directors.
Freeh is also a member of the board of consultants of the Gavel Consulting Group, formed by current and former federal judges and high-ranking government officials to provide advice and counseling to the private sector.
Beginning in 2004 Freeh began teaching as an adjunct law professor for Widener University School of Law. Drawing on his years of experience, he has taught White Collar Crime.
In 2007, Freeh formed Freeh Group International Solutions, a consulting and investigative firm headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware with regional offices in Washington, D.C., and New York. Affiliated firms include Freeh Group Europe and the law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP. The latter firm includes Eugene R. Sullivan, a retired federal judge in Washington, D.C., and Eugene R. Sullivan II amongst partners, and Stanley Sporkin as senior counsel. Sporkin is a retired federal judge who earlier served as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement and as general counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency. "Our People", FSS webpage. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
In 2009, Louis Freeh was hired by Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan as his legal representative on issues surrounding the Al-Yamamah arms deal, appearing April 7, 2009, on the PBS series Frontlines episode "Black Money".
In late May 2011, Freeh was retained as an independent investigator by the FIFA Ethics Committee in the bribery scandal centering on Mohammed bin Hammam and Jack Warner. However, the Court of Arbitration of Sports subsequently rejected Freeh's report as consisting of little more than speculation.
On February 10, 2013, a report authored by former United States Attorney General and former Governor of Pennsylvania Dick Thornburgh, whom the Paterno family retained to conduct its own investigation, concluded that the Freeh report was "seriously flawed, both with respect to the process of its investigation and its findings related to Mr. Paterno". Graham Spanier is suing Freeh for defamation and tortious interference and Penn State University for breach of contract.
The Freeh Report had far-reaching outcomes for Penn State. The NCAA used the Freeh Report in lieu of its own investigation to impose sanctions on the Penn State football program. On July 23, 2012, the NCAA imposed a $60 million fine, four-year postseason ban, scholarship reductions, and vacated all victories from 1998 to 2011. These sanctions were considered to be among the most severe ever imposed on an NCAA member school. NCAA President Mark Emmert stated that the sanctions were levied "not to be just punitive, but to make sure the university establishes an athletic culture and daily mindset in which football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people." The Big Ten Conference subsequently imposed an additional $13 million fine.
An investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who was retained by the Paterno family to review the Freeh report, concluded that the report that placed so much blame on Penn State and Paterno was a "rush to injustice" that could not be relied upon. In January 2013, state senator Jake Corman and state treasurer Rob McCord launched a lawsuit against the NCAA to overturn the sanctions on Penn State on the basis that Freeh had been actively collaborating with the NCAA and that due process had not been followed. In November 2014, state senator Corman released emails showing "regular and substantive" contact between NCAA officials and Freeh's investigators, suggesting that the Freeh conclusions were orchestrated. As part of the settlement, the NCAA reversed its decision on January 16, 2015, and restored the 111 wins to Paterno's record.
In 2019 Freeh and his friend Alan Dershowitz lobbied the U.S. government of behalf of Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler. Gertler was accused of corruption by the U.S. government and was facing sanctions by the Trump administration for his business deals with the Dominican Republic. In the last days of Trump's presidency, the sanctions were lifted. The sanctions were reinstated by the Biden administration on 8 March 2021. It was reported in October 2023 that the US was considering dropping sanctions against Gertler.
On February 5, 2013, Freeh was named Chair of the law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP. He resigned the chairmanship earlier than slated, in October 2014.
In 2005, Freeh (with Howard Means) published a book about his career in the FBI entitled My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.With Howard B. Means. My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. It is highly critical of both President Clinton and former counter-terrorism advisor Richard A. Clarke. On October 19, 2005, Freeh made an appearance on The Daily Show to promote the book. A New York Times review called it "A strangely shallow offering by a man who is anything but...".
Freeh acquired Italian citizenship on October 23, 2009.
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