The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; New FBI Director

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Robert MacNeil is on vacation. Frank Minis Johnson, Jr. -- until yesterday it was a name familiar mostly to George Wallace, other residents of Alabama and students of the civil rights movement. But that`s about to change in a very big way, because U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson of Montgomery, Alabama is going to be the new director of the FBI. President Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell made the announcement yesterday, ending a six-month search for someone to replace the current FBI director, Clarence Kelley.

It was a search that ended right back where it began. Bell and Carter had offered the job to Johnson in January, but the Judge declined. A high- powered search committee then went on to screen 250 applicants. They carne up with five possible nominees, but the President and Bell went back to Johnson and this time he accepted. Johnson still has to be confirmed by the Senate, but thus far, at least, there`s been hardly a peep of opposition. Even George Wallace, who once called Johnson "an integratin`, carpetbaggin`, scalawaggin`, race-mixin`, bald-faced liar", issued a statement of relative good cheer yesterday. Some Southern Senators may object to Johnson, though. But how vigorously they will fight the appointment remains to be seen.

Tonight, with two men who know him well and another who knows the FBI well, a look at this man Frank Johnson and at what kind of FBI director he`s liable to be. The bare-facts biography on John son reads like this: he`s fifty-eight years old and a Republican. Born in an Alabama county which refused to secede from the Union in the Civil War. Graduate of the University of Alabama Law School, where George Wallace was a classmate. Commanded an infantry outfit that went ashore at Normandy in World War II. Appointed a federal district attorney in Alabama by President Eisenhower in 1953, elevated to the federal district bench two years later and at thirty- seven became the youngest federal judge in the country. His life was continually threatened and his mother`s house bombed as a result of civil rights and civil liberties decisions he`s made, and they include: ordering the city buses of Montgomery and the public schools of Alabama integrated; the abolition of the state poll tax; reapportionment of the state`s voting districts and restructuring its tax structure; upgrading conditions for prisoners and inmates of Alabama prisons and mental hospitals; and putting women on juries. These and other decisions have caused some people to call him "the real governor of Alabama."

His wife was one of the first whites to teach in the black schools of Montgomery; they live in an integrated Montgomery neighborhood, and belong to no all-white country clubs.Frank Johnson drinks bourbon and occasionally chews tobacco.

Let`s go to Montgomery now to put some flesh on those bare bones, and first to Ray Jenkins, who as a reporter has covered most of Judge Johnson`s public career. Mr. Jenkins is now the editor of the editorial page of the Montgomery Advertiser, and he`s in the studios now of Alabama Public Television Network in Montgomery.

Mr. Jenkins, some of that material I used in that biography I stole out of a story you did for the New York Times this morning, and I hope you don`t mind.

RAY JENKINS: I thought I`d recognized it.

LEHRER: Right. Well, look, there was one incident in your story that I did not mention. You said that a lawyer in Montgomery, upon hearing of this FBI appointment, said, "God pity the Mafia." What does that mean?

JENKINS: I think he was indulging in a bit of hyperbole when he said that, but only a bit. You see, there are really two sides to Frank Johnson: the one which is generally known to the public, particularly the public outside Alabama, is Johnson the civil rights activist who has rendered all these decisions which you mentioned in your introduction. But in reality the civil rights cases, he once told me, constitute never more than about ten percent of his docket -- of his judicial activities; the other ninety percent are just workaday, routine cases involving the trial of bootleggers and car thieves and other people who violate the federal laws. And he is extremely tough on these people. He could hardly, by any stretch of the imagination, be called what critics in this part of the country call soft- hearted or soft-headed judges.

LEHRER: Can you give me an example of that?

JENKINS: Well, an example, let`s see ... well, the best example, of course, would be when a public official comes before him, which is fairly frequently in Alabama, I`m afraid -- I believe at the moment there are three state legislators that are serving prison sentences which were given by Judge Johnson -- and in particular, if a public official comes before him on an income tax violation or any other kind of charge that involves to the slightest degree an abuse of public trust, he almost certainly is going to get a prison sentence out of it.

LEHRER: You know, around all courthouses judges tend to get labeled as either being pro-prosecutor or pro-defense. What label do they put on Judge Johnson in Montgomery?

JENKINS: I`d be a little disinclined to put either label, although one might say that he was a very zealous prosecutor when he was district attorney in Birmingham for the two years before he came here as district judge. But he most assuredly, when it comes to criminal cases, would be called a law-and-order judge, for whatever that means.

LEHRER: The civil rights days -- I mentioned some of them in the biographical data. How rough a time was that for him?

JENKINS: It was quite rough indeed. He had only been on the bench for approximately one month, even less, when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on the bus and thereby touched off the Montgomery bus boycott. And it was only a short time later that he was one of a three-judge panel who rendered the decision which declared the Montgomery bus segregation ordinance unconstitutional. And it`s been tough ever since then.

LEHRER: Tough in what way?

JENKINS: Well, in the sense that he did get a great many threats to his life or by mail, by telephone, what have you, to such an extent that it was found necessary to maintain a twenty four-hour guard around his house for quite a long while. There was a cross burned on the lawn of his house one night, and this guard was maintained really up until about the past two or three years. And as recently as 1967, as you mentioned, because they couldn`t penetrate the security of his own house, someone set off a dynamite charge outside his mother`s home, which was short distance away -- no one was hurt, but the case has never been solved.

LEHRER: All right, thank you, Mr. Jenkins. Another man there in Montgomery who knows Frank Johnson well from a legal as well as a personal perspective is Reginald Hamner, Executive Director of the Alabama State Bar Association. How do lawyers feel about Judge Johnson, Mr. Hamner?

REGINALD HAMNER: They think he`s one of the fairest men to ever sit on a bench. He`s a great taskmaster in a courtroom, and I think any lawyer is a better lawyer when he leaves one of Judge Johnson`s courtrooms than perhaps when he went in. He brings the best out in you. He does not engage in the banter that you usually find in courtroom, and when a lawyer goes before Judge Johnson in behalf of a client he knows that he`s there on business, and it`s an entirely business atmosphere.

LEHRER: Among lawyers what is his reputation as far as being pro- prosecution or pro-defense?

HAMNER: I wouldn`t label him either; he`s eminently fair.

LEHRER: Fair to whom, fair to all lawyers, fair to defendants, fair to the law...?

HAMNER: He`s fair to all litigants, and most of all, he applies the law of this country to the facts of the particular case. If an individual is before him and the facts do not justify conviction or do not justify a severe sentence, that probably would not be given, but as Mr. Jenkins indicated, if the facts do justify severity it will be given. But it`s tempered.

LEHRER: You heard what Ray Jenkins said, that he in many ways would be considered a law-and-order judge even though his civil rights decisions, under most interpretations -- in fact, all interpretations -- would be considered liberal. What is your legal opinion of his decisions through the years? Would they fall in a conservative or a liberal category?

HAMNER: I think it`s in the eye of the beholder. The people who would view his civil rights decisions, there was change going on and there was more change going on in our section of the country, and they would have to be judged as liberal. By the same token, he would be a conservative when it does come to law and order.

LEHRER: Let me ask you both now, gentlemen, federal judges are sometimes known to grow arrogant after a few years on the bench. How would each of you rate Judge Johnson on the arrogance scale -- Mr. Jenkins?

JENKINS: I find the man -- he`s of course a personal friend, and I have never seen a trace of arrogance in the man. In fact, I think, if anything, he stands in great humility in the presence of the law, as you might say. His most significant characteristic is an almost obsessive faith that problems can be resolved through the legal process.

LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mr. Hamner?

HAMNER: I do indeed.

LEHRER: Another concern has been that he`s been a judge for twenty-two years and judges necessarily live in relatively isolated environments. Could he have trouble making the transition to a more public, even political life as head of the FBI? What do you think, Mr. Jenkins?

JENKINS: That`s one thing that I have given a great deal of thought to, and in fact when his name first surfaced as a potential high-ranking employee, either as deputy Attorney General or as head of the FBI, as far ago as last December, when he talked to President Carter personally and he tried to sign him aboard for this, and at the time I wrote -- and later Judge Johnson told me that he agreed with this -- that there was a considerable amount of doubt in his mind as to whether a person who had operated in the protected environment of the judiciary, in the sense that the judiciary is free of political influence, could function effectively in the political atmosphere of Washington. And I think he`s resolved those doubts, and yes, he`s a flexible man; he`s not a fanatic in any sense, so

I do believe that he can function very well.

I might say along that line, I understand that this question was raised more or less by the Washington Post as well in an editorial today, which sort of questioned his administrative ability, whether he could manage to bring this giant bureaucracy under control, and this, that and the other. But let me say for certain that Frank Johnson is not lacking in administrative skills and know-how. When you say that he`s been the real governor of Alabama for the last ten years, what that means is he has sort of filled the void which exists down here, and there is no state agency, from the Board of Cosmetology right on up to the state prison system, which has not at one time or another made reports to him. And he has functioned to a very large extent in an administrative capacity, and very well. Most people say that when Johnson gets hold of a department it comes out for the better as a result of his intervention.

LEHRER: Mr. Hamner, what`s your view of this administrative thing?

HAMNER: I think that he is eminently qualified. Judge Johnson`s court here in Montgomery has had a tremendous case load; it`s one of the busier district courts in the country, and I told a friend the other day that the speedy trial act was not passed for the middle district court of Alabama. Judge Johnson has served in the higher echelons of the Judicial Council of the United States, he has served on committees that have been intimately involved in the administrative processes, both of the courts themselves and of some of our rules of court. And the people who work for him, I think, are the best example of the type of administrator he is. His clerk`s office here in Montgomery is and has been staffed by extremely capable people; and as I said earlier, he brings out the best in people. I don`t think his- transition from judge to director of the FBI will be difficult at all, coupling his administrative abilities in a very approachable and a very warm personality.

LEHRER: Mr. Hamner, are his decisions predictable? In other words, if it`s a civil rights case and it`s coming before him can you usually figure out beforehand how he`s going to come down, no matter what the facts are?

HAMNER: I think not. I think that would be contrary to his sense of fairness. I don`t think that any person can stereotype the decisions of Judge Johnson. I think that each case goes on its merits. The lawyers of Alabama, and particularly those who have tried a number of cases before him, know that the decision will be fair.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, you`ve make a couple of things very clear: number one, both of you like this man very well. Who doesn`t like him in Alabama? Mr. Jenkins?

JENKINS: Well, Robert Shelton, the head of the Ku Klux Klan, I believe didn`t like him. You would find a certain number of lawyers -- well, fewer lawyers than anyone else, but a great many people still feel, of course, a certain resistance toward the school desegregation decisions and toward the other `civil rights decisions, and I think there`s certainly a residue of hostility among a certain group of people here.

LEHRER: Do you agree, Mr. Hamner?

HAMNER: I do. Change does not come easy, and he has been at the focal point of the change. But I would amplify one thing: I have never known a lawyer who practiced before him at all who did not respect the man and who did not like the man.

LEHRER: Including defense lawyers to whose clients he gave stiff sentences?

HAMNER: I worked very closely with the former president of the state bar, who has tried perhaps as many cases before him representing defendants, and on several occasions he`s told me that he does like to try a case before Judge Johnson because he knows that the judge knows as much about the case as he does, and those are the type that he likes to participate in.

LEHRER: All right, gentlemen, thank you. We`ll be back in a moment. Now let`s look at it from the other direction, from the FBI`s point of view. Sanford Ungar probably knows as much about the FBI as any outsider can. He`s the Washington reporter who wrote the book FBI, published last year, and he`s written extensively about the Bureau, its past and its current problems, for the Atlantic Monthly and other publications. How`s the immediate reaction shaping up within the FBI to the Johnson appointment, Sandy?

SANFORD UNGAR: Jim, I think the first thing is that agents in the FBI are relieved to have somebody named as director. They`ve been waiting now for about six months. Clarence Kelley has clearly been a lame duck, and there`s been a sense of drift in the FBI, not knowing what was going to happen; and agents have been restless about this. They say they need somebody who`s going to give the Bureau firm direction, who will undertake to understand the average agent in the street, his needs, and than lay down some strict rules about what the Bureau`s going to do in the future and what the discipline is going to be like inside the FBI. From that standpoint, I think a lot of people are glad it`s a federal judge, somebody who`s used to issuing orders and having them followed. Judge Johnson, of course, won`t be able to hold agents in contempt of court himself any more if they don`t follow his orders, but I think that many agents are glad with the idea of somebody coming in who might take firm control.

LEHRER: All right. Attorney General Bell said yesterday in making this announcement that he felt that the younger agents in the Bureau would particularly welcome the appointment of Judge Johnson. Do you agree with him, and why?

UNGAR: Jim, that`s probably true, because the younger agents in the Bureau are very sick of the -- well it`s kind of called the "headquarters syndrome" -- you know,-there is a great standoff in the FBI between those people who are assigned to FBI Headquarters here in Washington -- that`s about one out of ten agents -- and the others, who are out in the fifty- nine field offices around the country. And the younger agents feel that headquarters doesn`t understand the realities in the field. They`re still acting as if...

LEHRER: And they feel that Johnson will, having been out there.

UNGAR: Johnson`s coming in from out in the field, he has seen agents in court -- he`s had a chance to see them at work in that way -- and I think to some extent they`re hoping that he`ll clean house at FBI Headquarters.

LEHRER: Well, then, it would follow that the older people in headquarters obviously would not look forward to Judge Johnson`s coming, is that correct?

UNGAR: I think the older people in headquarters, Jim, don`t like the idea of anyone outside the FBI becoming a director. As far as they`re concerned, anyone who has not been schooled in the ways, the methods and the folklore of the FBI can`t possibly understand the Bureau.

LEHRER: Is his strong civil rights record going to be seen as a liability or an asset within the FBI?

UNGAR: Well, it`s an interesting question. I think that many agents will be a little bit worried about that. They feel that the FBI may have gone a little too far on civil rights cases. You know, the FBI...

LEHRER: Gone too far which way?

UNGAR: Too far in prosecuting civil rights cases. You know, the FBI gets an awful lot of the credit for all the cases it solves, but the fact is that an awful lot of times -- maybe one out of two times -- the FBI couldn`t solve the criminal cases it`s working on without the help of local policemen. Well, who are the targets of most civil rights cases but local policemen? And particularly in the South. So that many agents feel that this has gone a little bit too far, that the FBI should go a little bit easier on the police forces. The militant civil rights era is over, and the FBI should sit back and redirect its forces elsewhere. So they may be worried about that.

LEHRER: Sandy, another thing: apparently what the press has been saying -- at least, the last couple of days -- about Frank Johnson within the FBI is that there is also a fear that he is a very close friend to Attorney General Bell and that he will not be an independent operator as head of the FBI. Is that a general feeling within the Bureau?

UNGAR: I think one of the names that`s conjured up in the Bureau, Jim, is that of L. Patrick Gray III, who, you will remember, was the acting director of the FBI for fifty-one weeks, after J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. Mr. Gray was a capable administrator in many ways, but his undoing was that he was a politician who was closely tied to the Nixon administration. He was an old friend and follower of Richard Nixon. He isn`t now, by the way, but he was at that point. And many people feel that that hurt the Bureau -- when Mr. Gray destroyed some of the evidence in the Watergate case FBI agents all over the country were ashamed; they felt that they themselves had been hurt.

LEHRER: So consequently they`re concerned for the same reason, because of the closeness that exists, apparently, between Bell and Johnson.

UNGAR: They`re worried also that this means that the FBI will be run much more out of the Justice Department than it has been in a long time -- which, by the way, it may need to be. But they`re worried that it may happen.

LEHRER: Let`s go back to Montgomery. Mr. Jenkins, what about this independence from Bell question? Based on your knowledge of Frank Johnson the man, how do you think he`ll handle that?

JENKINS: Well, I was listening to Mr. Ungar with some interest, and the thought occurred to me at that time -- it occurred to me before, actually - - that knowing the man as I do, I feel reasonably sure that he got the most iron-clad assurances that he would have independence to run the Bureau as he saw fit. I think that he would have particularly strong assurances that there would be no political interference. I couldn`t conceive of him tolerating or countenancing the use of the FBI in a political way at all. I think you would not have him in the position very long if even the slightest bit of pressure were brought upon him to use it in this fashion.

And by the same token, somewhat along the same line, his dedication to the law is such that it is inconceivable to me that he would countenance any violation of the law whatever on the part of the FBI. And I`m thinking in terms of wiretaps and illegal surveillance of one kind or another.

LEHRER: That, of course, is one of the crucial questions, is it not? I mean, that`s one of the things that`s caused the FBI all its problems, Sandy, is all the revelations of the wiretaps and all of that, and the Kearney case, the indictment that`s now pending against the former head of the office in New York. Is that going to be Johnson`s number one problem, to get around and get over that kind of hurdle that is now holding the FBI`s image problem back?

UNGAR: I think, Jim, that the morale of the Bureau is probably lower than it`s ever been before in the FBI`s history, and that is a very serious problem. I think one of the problems is that there`s a great need to put an end to the Superman myth about the FBI, this notion that FBI agents never do anything wrong, they always solve all cases -- perpetrated, by the way, by J. Edgar Hoover.I might say that listening to the gentlemen from Alabama describe Frank Johnson, it sounds almost like the way FBI agents used to describe J. Edgar Hoover...

LEHRER: Superman car two.

UNGAR: Without human failings, and I hope that somewhere along the line, if Judge Johnson has some, they`ll be brought out so that agents can realize that they don,`t have to believe that the director is perfect and that...

LEHRER: Yeah, but let`s go to the specific question of the Kearney case and what that`s doing to morale and the image of the FBI. What does a new director -- we`re talking about Frank Johnson, but it could be anybody -- what does he need to do to get over this big hurdle?

UNGAR: I think, Jim, the main feeling inside the Bureau is that Mr. Kearney was singled out as one man to be prosecuted. Some people in the Bureau compare him to William Calley in the Me Lei trials, that one person who was in the middle of the chain of command was singled out. Now, what they expect of a director in this instance is, I think, to go to the Attorney General and say, "Are you indicting anyone else, and if you`re doing it do it right away so that I can tell the people in the Bureau what`s happening. And if you`re not indicting anyone else, drop this case because it`s unfair to single one person out."

LEHRER: All right, Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Hamner, I`m going to really put that one on you. I realize it`s a difficult question, but based on your knowledge of the man, can you shed any light at all as to how Frank Johnson is liable to handle that problem? Mr. Jenkins?

JENKINS: This particular problem -- I`m simply not familiar enough with it to know, but I feel reasonably sure -- in fact, I know, just based on my personal experience -- that he`s not one to throw to. the wolves some sacrificial goat, so to speak. If something goes wrong, he`s going to get to the bottom of the thing and the person who is responsible for it, and woe unto the person who is responsible.

Just to respond to Sanford Ungar`s comment about sounding as if we`re canonizing Judge Johnson, no, not at all. I think perhaps that he is going -- surely he will make certain mistakes and what have you, and the big misgivings that I have are that, yes, he might have some difficulties in adapting to a political climate. Because the FBI director certainly feels political pressures.. But I`m simply saying that among his weaknesses are certainly not spitefulness and vengefulness and pettiness and personal glorification of any kind.

LEHRER: Mr. Hamner, anything you want to add to that?

HAMNER: Well, Judge Johnson is aware of the morale problem in the FBI, he`s aware of the views of the citizens in this country and the recent revelations, and in conversations with him he has indicated that this will be one of his problems and one of his priorities, and that is to give the FBI a clean bill of health and show by his personal example that a new wind is blowing in the FBI and that past transgressions or past mistakes shouldn`t inhibit the future of this country and the future of an institution that has performed admirably in this country, even though it has had its faults.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, do either one of you have any feel for why Judge Johnson changed his mind on this? Six months ago he said no, and then the other day he said yes.

HAMNER: I think some personal" situations within his family; his mother was quite ill at the time he was approached in December. Her condition has stabilized, and I think that Mrs. Johnson is no longer teaching school and I think it`s a challenge to the two of them. The man has a great sense of public service, and I think he actually feels that he can do something for this country and at the same time do something for the FBI.

LEHRER: Mr. Jenkins?

JENKINS: I agree pretty much with that. I think it is a new challenge to him, and he may not like me saying this, but I think chances are that he`s perhaps is rather bored with his job down here. He`s been doing this twenty-two years now, and he would like something new to do. He`s a man of a great sense of public service.

HAMNER: He also is a great worker. He enjoys work.

JENKINS: Oh, yes, he`s been described as workaholic. When he goes home at night he builds grandfather clocks and refinishes furniture and things like that. That`s after a fourteen-hour day.

LEHRER: What do you think, Sandy, finally? You`ve heard these two men describe the new director. In a word, from your knowledge of the FBI, is he the medicine the FBI needs?

UNGAR: I think, Jim, he`s probably very good medicine for the FBI and probably what it needs. I hope that when he comes to Washington he`s careful. He`ll find people shining his shoes and polishing his car and praising him as the most wonderful person in the world even before they know him, because that`s the FBI`s way of handling its director. I hope he`ll be careful of the folks around him.

LEHRER: All right. Thank you, Sandy, and thank you, gentlemen in Montgomery. A point of clarification from last night`s program on the Panama Canal treaty: based on a published report I said in a question that Senator Barry Goldwater was not opposing ratification of the treaty. Senator Goldwater`s office said today the Senator has not yet made up his mind one way or another. Tomorrow night, other news permitting, we`ll look at the argument over what route that proposed natural gas pipeline from Alaska should take. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.