Word: webster
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week Webster, 53, was thinking about it. Seven weeks after Johnson withdrew his candidacy for health reasons, Webster was asked by President Carter to become the third director in the FBI's 43 year history, and he accepted. Explaining why he would give up his judgeship for the bureau's top post, he said: "I'm an old Navyman. I heard the bosun's pipe and the words 'Now hear this...
...Webster was chosen from an original list of 117 prospects that was narrowed down to two after Bell consulted with lawyers, judges and law-enforcement officials. He and the other finalist, Federal Judge Frank McGarr of Chicago, met with Carter last week. Bell noted that both are Republicans; the Administration has been under heavy fire lately for partisanship in its appointments of federal judges and prosecutors. Bell suggested that Carter's decision might have turned on a simple affinity of temperament. "McGarr is a trial lawyer and has a more dominant personality," said the Attorney General. "Webster is given...
...assume the directorship, Webster must first be confirmed by the Senate, but there appears to be little doubt about that. Scarcely a negative word was uttered about Webster after his nomination, and the only possible problem might be his membership in St. Louis' Veiled Prophet Society and the Noonday Club, two exclusive groups that have no black members. Bell noted that he had studied Webster's court decisions and found him to be a "moderate person" who "reasons well...
Those familiar with his work in the Eighth Circuit agree. One liberal St. Louis lawyer claims that Webster tends to uphold the rights of police more readily than those of defendants, but concedes that he is a "better than average" judge. Other civil rights advocates describe him as fair, and conservatives are pleased by the fact that he has let a number of criminal convictions stand despite alleged minor mistakes in trials...
While his integrity is unquestioned, the test for Webster will be how well he can-with limited administrative experience-run an agency with 19,000 employees, a $500 million annual budget and a lot of problems. Dominated by cliques and thoroughly demoralized, the FBI has suffered one severe blow after another to its public image since the death of J. Edgar Hoover...