Kessler, Ronald. The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency. New York: Pocket Books, 1993. 492 pages.

When FBI director William Sessions issued a teletype to all FBI employees requesting their cooperation with author Ronald Kessler, he made the biggest mistake of his career. Kessler blew the whistle on Sessions' administrative incompetence, and on the antics of his wife Alice and longtime assistant Sarah Munford, both of whom were allowed to play ego games at FBI headquarters. Sessions was fired by President Clinton on July 19, 1993. Some of his defenders claimed that Sessions had to go because the FBI was getting curious about the Iraqi loan scandal, but Kessler debunks this theory.

Kessler's unprecedented access to the FBI has produced one of the few books to concentrate on the years since J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972. Although there's a recruitment-poster quality in Kessler's description of hero agents, this book redeems itself by naming plenty of names, and by describing how things work at the FBI's various departments and major field offices. Whatever one thinks about Kessler's "inside" books (he also wrote one on the CIA with the cooperation of director William Webster), at least he's thorough. For this book he interviewed 314 current and former agents and other FBI personnel, had the run of all FBI facilities, and even sat in on training classes, flew with Sessions on the FBI plane, and spent a night at the home of the chief agent in Dallas, Oliver B. (Buck) Revell.
ISBN 0-671-78657-1

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