Lauded last summer for capturing the Freemen without bloodshed, the FBI is learning that modern heroism has a short shelf life. Now it's criticized daily for letting an Atlanta security guard linger for months as a suspect in the Olympic bombing.
Not long ago, commentators hailed the bureau's quick solution of the World Trade Center bombing, swift arrests in the Oklahoma City bombing and capture of a mathematician-turned-hermit now charged with years of Unabomber attacks.But these days newspaper columnists and television analysts are clucking that the bureau:
- Hasn't solved the June 25 bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia.
- Can't say whether the July 17 explosion of TWA Flight 800 was a crime or an accident.
- Still hasn't arrested anyone in a fatal Amtrak derailment a year ago in the Arizona desert.
Meanwhile, a former FBI headquarters manager has been charged with obstructing justice after the deadly 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, siege. Some Republicans want to oust a top aide to FBI Director Louis Freeh. And rumors have circulated that Freeh himself is on the verge of resigning.
Is something seriously wrong at the FBI?
No, says Ronald K. Noble, former Treasury undersecretary for law enforcement.
"Most big criminal investigations take years. When big cases break quickly, it's because of hard investigative work and a lot of luck," said Noble, now a New York University law professor. "The great success the FBI has had in extraordinary cases has spoiled people into expecting that huge, complex cases can be broken in hours or days."
"This is what I call `television expectations,' " said Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney here. "Some of it is self-inflicted. Perfection is the image the FBI has painted of itself."
"But the bureau is the finest law enforcement agency in the world," diGenova added. "No matter how good you are, you need breaks. They'll get their break in each one of those cases eventually; they'll be solved."
"Each investigation is different," said Lawrence Barcella, who was a federal prosecutor here for 16 years. "A bomb may use unique components that are quickly discovered or common parts that are virtually untraceable."
But these experts, like some FBI agents themselves, are critical of how law enforcement has treated Atlanta security guard Richard Jewell.
Since an unidentified source named Jewell as a major suspect in an Atlanta newspaper July 30, the guard who alerted police to the satchel bomb in Centennial Park has not worked and has been besieged by reporters.
On Saturday, nearly three months since he fell under suspicion, Jewell received a letter from federal prosecutors saying he is no longer a suspect.
The letter, signed by Kent Alexander, U.S. attorney general for northern Georgia, said Jewell "is not considered a target" of the investigation and, "barring any newly discovered evidence, this status will not change."
When Jewell's name first came up, FBI behavioral scientists believed he fit a known pattern: a law enforcement officer or groupie who manufactures a crisis so he can become a public hero by averting the danger.
According to one FBI agent who worked on the case, this made Jewell a suspect before a search for physical evidence tying him to the bomb and before agents saw a videotape that put him in the park too near the time of the blast to have made the warning call.
Last week, U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester referred to Jewell as a "former suspect" and concluded "the Jewell chapter of the . . . investigation has been closed." He intends to unseal the FBI's original Jewell search application on Wednesday.
Justice officials have already returned guns and property seized from Jewell.
But neither the unidentified agent who worked on the case, bureau executives nor outside experts believe the FBI needs to apologize for investigating Jewell. Apologies are rare: The only two in recent years went to people who had been formally charged.
"The FBI was absolutely right to investigate him thoroughly," Noble said. "They owed it to the world."
But the leak is viewed as an FBI problem, whether it originally came from federal, state or local police or someone else.