The FBI; Inside The World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency--by the Award-Winning Journalist Whose Investigation Brought Down FBI Director William S. Sessions

New York: Pocket Books, 1993. First Pocket Books Hardcover Edition [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 25 cm. xxiii, [2] 492 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Significant Dates. Glossary. Index. Ronald Borek Kessler (born December 31, 1943) is an American journalist and author of 21 non-fiction books about the White House, U.S. Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. Seven of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. From 1970 to 1985, Kessler was an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. In 1972, he won a George Polk Memorial award for Community Service because of two series of articles he wrote-one on conflicts of interest and mismanagement at Washington area non-profit hospitals, and a second series exposing kickbacks in connection with real estate settlements, inflating the cost of buying homes. That Kessler series resulted in passage in 1974 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), which outlaws kickbacks for referral of settlement services in connection with real estate closings. In 1979, Kessler won a second Polk Award for National Reporting for a series of articles exposing corruption in the General Services Administration. Kessler's book, The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, led to the dismissal by President Clinton of Sessions as FBI director over his abuses. According to The Washington Post, "A Justice Department official ... noted that the original charges against Sessions came not from FBI agents but from a journalist, Ronald Kessler. The New York Times said Kessler's FBI book "did indeed trigger bureau and Justice Department investigations into alleged travel and expense abuses. Derived from a Kirkus review: The publisher highlighted how Kessler's revelations here of William Sessions's abuses of office led to the former FBI director's dismissal-but those revelations form only one small part of Kessler's comprehensive examination of how today's FBI emerged from the shadow of J. Edgar Hoover. Sessions granted former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter Kessler unprecedented access to the agency, which Kessler used to gain more than 300 interviews. In the process, while picturing Sessions as a generally decent man who made a point of hiring women and minority agents, Kessler also found him to be an agency cheerleader who disguised personal travel as business trips and turned a blind eye to similar exploitation of power by his wife and assistant. But despite its chiefs' failings, today's FBI, Kessler says, is ``an American success story'' that, unlike the publicity-minded institution of the Hoover era, is willing to zero-in on large targets that may not yield immediate results, such as drugs, white-collar crime, the Mafia, and political corruption. Though occasionally embarrassed-recent years have seen racial-discrimination suits; requests that librarians identify users of scientific and technical information; the first agents caught trading secrets to the Soviets, dealing drugs, and attending a sex club-the FBI retains its cadre of dedicated, well-trained agents. Kessler has gotten agents to open up about the organization's inner workings. Field offices such as L.A. (which combats auto theft, drug-dealing, and celebrity-stalking) and N.Y.C. (which cracked the World Trade Center bombing) are described, as are the famed training and serial-killer ``profiling'' divisions. A revealing glimpse of an American institution in transition.