Webster becomes latest casualty in SEC shakeup

WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director William Webster resigned Tuesday as head of a special accounting oversight board, saying he wanted to avert "new distractions" as the congressionally created agency seeks to rebuild public confidence after a series of business scandals.

The move capped nearly two weeks of speculation regarding Webster's future in a debacle that already has brought the resignations of Bush appointee Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the SEC's head accountant.

Webster declined Tuesday to blame Pitt for not informing fellow SEC commissioners that Webster had headed the audit committee of a company now under investigation for fraud. But he acknowledged that the information should have been shared. Pitt, a Bush appointee, resigned a week ago over that.

"I don't want to put any responsibility on" Pitt, Webster said in an interview on CNN's "Moneyline." "I disclosed a possible problem and they said they'd look into it and they did. But I had no knowledge of what they might decide to do about it."

Asked whether he would agree that the commissioners should have been told, Webster replied: "I think it would help even if the information, in the opinion of those who looked at it, was as unimportant as it appeared to be in my case -- because you never know."