MISSOURI COMMENTARY: ONCE-PERFECT FBI WAS NEVER PERFECT

"Confidence and trust in the nation's premiere law enforcement agency is dwindling." -- Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

"I think the leadership of the FBI has brought the entire organization into question." -- Rep. Bob Livingston (R-Iowa)

Think back to the so-called "good old days" when J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the FBI. No one on government or in the press dared to criticize Hoover. He had "secret" files on politicians, journalists, civil rights leaders, and many others. If you were in "Who's Who," Hoover kept a file on you.

When Hoover went to Congress to testify on the Bureau budget for the upcoming year, a flotilla of limousines arrived at the Capitol building. As the sainted Director emerged from his car, shutters clicked in acknowledgement of the arrival of the great one. When he entered the Appropriations Committee hearing room, the senators stood up so as to recognize the presence of a higher order of person.

On one ever questioned Hoover as to why he needed any particular item in the budget. Whatever he requested he received and, in some years, he was given additional money that he had never even sought.

When the Hoover era ended and as his gilded reputation tarnished, the FBI entered the real world of human behavior. No longer was the FBI untouchable. Rather it was just as susceptible to error as any other governmental agency.

No Director since Hoover has been free of controversy. Each one has had his problems. Each one has been shown to be human. The current Director, Louis Freeh, is no exception. His once stellar relationship with Congress has turned chilly.

The FBI's difficulties under Freeh include Waco, Ruby Ridge, the improvident appointment of a tarnished Deputy Director, his agency's awkward relationship with the CIA, and the handing over of hundreds of sensitive FBI files to the Clinton White House.

The FBI investigation of the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta has been properly faulted and FBI agents are to be punished for trying to trick Richard Jewell into a confession using patently dubious investigative techniques.

The FBI crime lab, once considered the greatest in the world, is a mess and dozens of cases depending on lab results are now in question.

The National Crime Information Center, the database for criminal records, is in need of an upgrade. Police and sheriff departments around the country send in 100,000 or more requests per day for background information. The FBI said the upgrade would cost $73 million. There now is a 150 percent cost overrun. The project is four years behind schedule and there is considerable doubt that the upgrade will ever perform as hoped.

Then there are problems with the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. As planned, there would be a gigantic technological enhancement in the speed with which the FBI could examine and report its findings on fingerprints sent in to the Bureau. If all worked well, policemen in a patrol car could send in the fingerprints and receive almost immediate identification. This project is well over budget and well behind schedule.

Last year, when the Congress considered the FBI budget, one of its major funding requests -- relating to telephone wiretapping -- was flat our rejected. In Hoover's day, such a rejection by Congress would have been treasonous.

Perhaps Freeh's biggest problem is having Attorney General Janet Reno as his nominal superior. As attorneys general go, Reno is truly nominal.

By no means is the FBI in shambles. We no longer live in a world where the biggest deal in town is to capture John Dillinger. We live in an enormously sophisticated, technologically complex world where the jurisdiction and responsibilities of the FBI have grown enormously and where the likelihood of human error likewise grows enormously.

The FBI was not as perfect as Hoover pictured and not as imperfect as its current critics contend. With all its imperfections, it is still the premiere law enforcement agency in the country.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.