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My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror
A spectacular New York Times and Washington Post bestseller, My FBI is the definitive account of American law enforcement during the Clinton years and in the run-up to September 11. Louis Freeh is clear eyed, frank, the ultimate realist, and he offers resolute vision for the struggles ahead.
Bill Clinton called Freeh a "law enforcement legend" when he nominated him as the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director. The good feelings would not last. Going toe-to-toe with his boss during the scandal-plagued ‘90s, Freeh fought hard to defend his agency from political interference and to protect America from the growing threat of international terrorism. When Clinton later called that appointment the worst one he had made as president, Freeh considered it "a badge of honor."
This is Freeh's entire story, from his Catholic upbringing in New Jersey to law school, the FBI training academy, his career as a US District attorney and as a federal judge, and finally his eight years as the nation's top cop. This is the definitive account of American law enforcement in the run-up to September 11. Freeh is clear-eyed, frank, the ultimate realist, and he offers resolute vision for the struggles ahead.
"[Freeh] comes off as the real deal, an honorable, hard-working man, a devoted public servant and father, a gifted lawyer and onetime federal prosecutor."--- The New York Times
Bill Clinton called Freeh a "law enforcement legend" when he nominated him as the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director. The good feelings would not last. Going toe-to-toe with his boss during the scandal-plagued ‘90s, Freeh fought hard to defend his agency from political interference and to protect America from the growing threat of international terrorism. When Clinton later called that appointment the worst one he had made as president, Freeh considered it "a badge of honor."
This is Freeh's entire story, from his Catholic upbringing in New Jersey to law school, the FBI training academy, his career as a US District attorney and as a federal judge, and finally his eight years as the nation's top cop. This is the definitive account of American law enforcement in the run-up to September 11. Freeh is clear-eyed, frank, the ultimate realist, and he offers resolute vision for the struggles ahead.
"[Freeh] comes off as the real deal, an honorable, hard-working man, a devoted public servant and father, a gifted lawyer and onetime federal prosecutor."--- The New York Times
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 3, 2005
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May 12, 2010
For nearly a dozen years, Louis J. Freeh has been pointedly silent about the man who appointed him director of the FBI. That moratorium ends officially and loudly with the publication of Freeh's My FBI, a scorching account of his relationship with Bill Clinton and of leading the bureau at a time when, as Freeh writes, the president's "scandals . . . never ended."
To understand the depth of Freeh's antipathy, consider this one anecdote: Sometime after he resigned in 2001, Freeh ran into the former White House counsel who had recommended Freeh for the job. The lawyer reported that Clinton had just complained to him that the worst advice the lawyer ever gave him was to appoint Freeh. "I wear it as a badge of honor," Freeh writes. And that's just the second chapter.
How did it come to this? A president's relationship with an FBI director should be a mixture of hands-off and hands-on. Unlike cabinet members, who serve at the pleasure of a president, directors are now given 10-year terms -- in part to avoid another 48-year reign like that of J. Edgar Hoover, and in part to provide insulation from political pressure. A potentially secret police force constitutes a great opportunity for abuse by presidents and a threat to be used against them. But even if an FBI director cannot expect to be best friends with the president, he should, as Freeh writes, "be able to go directly to the president, sit down with him and say You should know about this." In Freeh and Clinton's case, there were vital issues to discuss and collaborate on. But the problem for Freeh was that he never could get to those hands-on moments. "There was always some new investigation brewing, some new calamity bubbling just below the headlines ." By the time Freeh resigned, he had met with Clinton at most three times.
My FBI is no ordinary Washington memoir. To be sure, Freeh tells a number of engaging stories about his rise from FBI street agent -- one undercover assignment entailed parading around nude in the locker room of a local health club frequented by a prominent mobster -- to his mob-busting days as a federal prosecutor in the famed Southern District of New York.
There are a few too many gratuitous bromides bestowed on colleagues and even neighbors. But these accolades serve the purpose, intended or not, of contrasting starkly with Freeh's portrait of Clinton as a man whose only moral compass is political expediency. When a judge cited Clinton in 1999 for contempt for lying in the Paula Jones case, Freeh describes it as a disgrace equal only to Richard M. Nixon's. If it had been him, Freeh writes, "I would be so devastated that I might never show my face in public again. The ex-president, however, seems to suffer no such pangs of conscience."
In retrospect, it should have been clear to both men that this was a doomed relationship. Could there be two more different people? Freeh, a former altar boy and a moralist at his core, always carried a worn prayer book in his suit jacket. But Freeh was impressed with the breadth of Clinton's questions in their first meeting, and by the time Clinton assures Freeh there will be no political interference if he takes the job, Freeh has joined the legions of the charmed. When Clinton sits down, without prompting, to write a birthday greeting to Freeh's 7-year-old son, the deal is sealed.
Freeh acknowledges making mistakes in the relationship. He lacked tact in trying to distance himself. He turned down an early dinner invitation to the White House with the Clintons and Tom Hanks; he even sent back his White House pass with a terse note, indicating he would sign in every time he came calling. "It was seemingly a declaration of open hostility on my part," he writes. But, he argues, "I was the nation's top cop," and just a few months into his tenure, Clinton was already the subject of a criminal investigation in what became known as Whitewater. "Until the matter was sorted out," Freeh writes, "I had to be accountable for every trip I made to the building where the president worked and lived."
The final stake through the relationship's heart, however, was the president's response to the June 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, an American military facility in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 Americans were killed. It is fitting that Freeh opens My FBI with Khobar Towers; there was no case he cared more deeply about or pursued more relentlessly. It became his Moby-Dick. Only hours after the bombing, Clinton dispatched the FBI to track down the perpetrators, promising the nation they would not go unpunished. Freeh personally oversaw the case, and when it soon began to appear that top Iranian government officials might be behind the attack, Freeh says the investigation stalled: "Where I found myself most stymied [was:] not halfway around the world on the Arabian Peninsula but at home, a half dozen blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue." The problem, in Freeh's view, was that in May 1997 an Iranian moderate, Mohammad Khatami, had been elected president and seemed to be the United States' best hope of normalizing relationships. "The Khobar Towers investigation was not going to get in the way of that," Freeh writes.
The tale of duplicity Freeh tells is complicated, but the basic outlines are these: The Saudis, who had suspects in custody, had communicated in a limited way their findings of Iranian involvement to the FBI and the White House. To put a legal case together, however, the bureau needed access to the suspects, and Freeh was told by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, that this would happen only if the president and his top aides exerted pressure on Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto leader. The Saudis, however, said they were receiving U.S. signals to back off, not to bull ahead with the investigation. Clinton and his aides denied this to Freeh, but in the end, Freeh came to believe the Saudis' version.
Among the most telling incidents for Freeh was a meeting that occurred in September 1998 between the crown prince and the president at the Hay Adams hotel in Washington. Freeh was assured by Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, that Clinton had pressed Abdullah for U.S. access to the Saudi-held suspects, but others present told Freeh that Clinton barely raised the subject and sympathized with the Saudis' reluctance to cooperate. Clinton, Freeh writes, then promptly asked Abdullah for a contribution to his presidential library. (I learned through my own reporting at the time that Freeh later secretly referred Clinton's library request for grand jury investigation, but he does not reveal this here, presumably because of grand jury secrecy rules.) Frustrated, Freeh then made an extraordinary out-of-chain of command pitch to former president George H.W. Bush, who also was scheduled to visit with Abdullah. Freeh called Bush, much favored in Saudi Arabia due to the 1991 Gulf War, and asked him to make the request that Clinton wasn't making. The former president agreed, and two days later, Abdullah told Freeh that the suspects would be made available. "I have no doubt that, but for President Bush's personal intervention, we would never have gotten access," Freeh writes. Six weeks later, the information from the interviews and other evidence turned over by the Saudis showed incontrovertibly that the attack had been funded, Freeh writes, by senior Iranian officials. He adds that, after he reported these findings, Berger convened a meeting in the West Wing's Situation Room to discuss them. But instead of dealing with the evidence of Iranian complicity, Freeh writes, the meeting focused on how to deal with the press and Congress should the news leak. (A "Script A" and a "Script B" had been prepared.) No other moment in his eight years matched the disappointment of that meeting: "We had the goods on them, cold, yet the Clinton administration miserably failed to seek any redress," Freeh writes. The case limped along until the new President Bush took office. Six months later, a grand jury indicted 14 defendants, mostly the active participants in the plot, and accused the Iranian government of directing the attack -- though no Iranian officials were indicted, a fact that Freeh curiously fails to explain.
Freeh devotes a scant two chapters to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, explaining that enough newsprint and news hours already have been dedicated to what went wrong without his rehashing the details. This will be too little for many; critics have blasted Freeh for pursuing his Khobar Towers obsession while his FBI missed the gathering al Qaeda plot at home. Though Freeh resigned three months before Sept. 11, the plot was assembled on his watch, as was the FBI counterterrorism apparatus that failed to thwart it. But he has a few points about Sept. 11 that he is determined to make. While acknowledging "many shortcomings" of his own, Freeh blames Congress for the much-reported antiquated state of the FBI's computer system, pointing out that the bureau begged Congress for funds that were not forthcoming. He complains that from 2000-02, the bureau asked for 1,900 new employees for its counterterrorism program and got only 76.
But the heart of Freeh's complaint is that until Sept. 11, terrorism was viewed by both the Clinton and Bush administrations as a law enforcement issue -- sifting through bomb sites looking for evidence, as the FBI did with Khobar Towers -- and not as an act of war, as he now argues that it should have been. "I don't know an agent who thought that was sufficient to the cause, or anyone who believed that a criminal investigation was a reasonable alternative to military or diplomatic action," he writes. The United States had gone after Osama bin Laden with a few Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998 in retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the CIA had made covert attempts to get bin Laden; and the State Department had harangued his Taliban patrons. But these attempts were all lame, Freeh argues, because the United States lacked the political spine to put its full force behind the efforts. Freeh points out that the FBI had helped secure indictments against bin Laden in 1998 and 1999 and, along with the CIA, missed nabbing Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the Sept. 11 plot's mastermind, in Qatar in 1996 when he was apparently tipped off by a Qatari official. In 2000, Freeh flew to Pakistan and personally appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to pressure his Taliban allies to arrest bin Laden. "If [the U.S.:] government had a different mind-set, the secretaries of state and defense would have been in Lahore with me, or instead of me," Freeh writes. This negligence, he argues, emboldened the terrorists. "The image of a lumbering giant stumbling around with a sign on its back reading 'Kick Me' was not lost on our enemies," he notes.
My FBI is ultimately a sad tale, and it's clear Freeh saw it this way, too. He had planned to resign before the end of Clinton's term but held off until the president left office because he worried that Clinton might replace him with someone who would damage the FBI. "Not only was he actively hostile toward me, he was hostile to the FBI generally," Freeh writes. "My departure might be one last opportunity for retaliation."
To understand the depth of Freeh's antipathy, consider this one anecdote: Sometime after he resigned in 2001, Freeh ran into the former White House counsel who had recommended Freeh for the job. The lawyer reported that Clinton had just complained to him that the worst advice the lawyer ever gave him was to appoint Freeh. "I wear it as a badge of honor," Freeh writes. And that's just the second chapter.
How did it come to this? A president's relationship with an FBI director should be a mixture of hands-off and hands-on. Unlike cabinet members, who serve at the pleasure of a president, directors are now given 10-year terms -- in part to avoid another 48-year reign like that of J. Edgar Hoover, and in part to provide insulation from political pressure. A potentially secret police force constitutes a great opportunity for abuse by presidents and a threat to be used against them. But even if an FBI director cannot expect to be best friends with the president, he should, as Freeh writes, "be able to go directly to the president, sit down with him and say You should know about this." In Freeh and Clinton's case, there were vital issues to discuss and collaborate on. But the problem for Freeh was that he never could get to those hands-on moments. "There was always some new investigation brewing, some new calamity bubbling just below the headlines ." By the time Freeh resigned, he had met with Clinton at most three times.
My FBI is no ordinary Washington memoir. To be sure, Freeh tells a number of engaging stories about his rise from FBI street agent -- one undercover assignment entailed parading around nude in the locker room of a local health club frequented by a prominent mobster -- to his mob-busting days as a federal prosecutor in the famed Southern District of New York.
There are a few too many gratuitous bromides bestowed on colleagues and even neighbors. But these accolades serve the purpose, intended or not, of contrasting starkly with Freeh's portrait of Clinton as a man whose only moral compass is political expediency. When a judge cited Clinton in 1999 for contempt for lying in the Paula Jones case, Freeh describes it as a disgrace equal only to Richard M. Nixon's. If it had been him, Freeh writes, "I would be so devastated that I might never show my face in public again. The ex-president, however, seems to suffer no such pangs of conscience."
In retrospect, it should have been clear to both men that this was a doomed relationship. Could there be two more different people? Freeh, a former altar boy and a moralist at his core, always carried a worn prayer book in his suit jacket. But Freeh was impressed with the breadth of Clinton's questions in their first meeting, and by the time Clinton assures Freeh there will be no political interference if he takes the job, Freeh has joined the legions of the charmed. When Clinton sits down, without prompting, to write a birthday greeting to Freeh's 7-year-old son, the deal is sealed.
Freeh acknowledges making mistakes in the relationship. He lacked tact in trying to distance himself. He turned down an early dinner invitation to the White House with the Clintons and Tom Hanks; he even sent back his White House pass with a terse note, indicating he would sign in every time he came calling. "It was seemingly a declaration of open hostility on my part," he writes. But, he argues, "I was the nation's top cop," and just a few months into his tenure, Clinton was already the subject of a criminal investigation in what became known as Whitewater. "Until the matter was sorted out," Freeh writes, "I had to be accountable for every trip I made to the building where the president worked and lived."
The final stake through the relationship's heart, however, was the president's response to the June 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, an American military facility in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 Americans were killed. It is fitting that Freeh opens My FBI with Khobar Towers; there was no case he cared more deeply about or pursued more relentlessly. It became his Moby-Dick. Only hours after the bombing, Clinton dispatched the FBI to track down the perpetrators, promising the nation they would not go unpunished. Freeh personally oversaw the case, and when it soon began to appear that top Iranian government officials might be behind the attack, Freeh says the investigation stalled: "Where I found myself most stymied [was:] not halfway around the world on the Arabian Peninsula but at home, a half dozen blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue." The problem, in Freeh's view, was that in May 1997 an Iranian moderate, Mohammad Khatami, had been elected president and seemed to be the United States' best hope of normalizing relationships. "The Khobar Towers investigation was not going to get in the way of that," Freeh writes.
The tale of duplicity Freeh tells is complicated, but the basic outlines are these: The Saudis, who had suspects in custody, had communicated in a limited way their findings of Iranian involvement to the FBI and the White House. To put a legal case together, however, the bureau needed access to the suspects, and Freeh was told by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, that this would happen only if the president and his top aides exerted pressure on Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto leader. The Saudis, however, said they were receiving U.S. signals to back off, not to bull ahead with the investigation. Clinton and his aides denied this to Freeh, but in the end, Freeh came to believe the Saudis' version.
Among the most telling incidents for Freeh was a meeting that occurred in September 1998 between the crown prince and the president at the Hay Adams hotel in Washington. Freeh was assured by Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, that Clinton had pressed Abdullah for U.S. access to the Saudi-held suspects, but others present told Freeh that Clinton barely raised the subject and sympathized with the Saudis' reluctance to cooperate. Clinton, Freeh writes, then promptly asked Abdullah for a contribution to his presidential library. (I learned through my own reporting at the time that Freeh later secretly referred Clinton's library request for grand jury investigation, but he does not reveal this here, presumably because of grand jury secrecy rules.) Frustrated, Freeh then made an extraordinary out-of-chain of command pitch to former president George H.W. Bush, who also was scheduled to visit with Abdullah. Freeh called Bush, much favored in Saudi Arabia due to the 1991 Gulf War, and asked him to make the request that Clinton wasn't making. The former president agreed, and two days later, Abdullah told Freeh that the suspects would be made available. "I have no doubt that, but for President Bush's personal intervention, we would never have gotten access," Freeh writes. Six weeks later, the information from the interviews and other evidence turned over by the Saudis showed incontrovertibly that the attack had been funded, Freeh writes, by senior Iranian officials. He adds that, after he reported these findings, Berger convened a meeting in the West Wing's Situation Room to discuss them. But instead of dealing with the evidence of Iranian complicity, Freeh writes, the meeting focused on how to deal with the press and Congress should the news leak. (A "Script A" and a "Script B" had been prepared.) No other moment in his eight years matched the disappointment of that meeting: "We had the goods on them, cold, yet the Clinton administration miserably failed to seek any redress," Freeh writes. The case limped along until the new President Bush took office. Six months later, a grand jury indicted 14 defendants, mostly the active participants in the plot, and accused the Iranian government of directing the attack -- though no Iranian officials were indicted, a fact that Freeh curiously fails to explain.
Freeh devotes a scant two chapters to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, explaining that enough newsprint and news hours already have been dedicated to what went wrong without his rehashing the details. This will be too little for many; critics have blasted Freeh for pursuing his Khobar Towers obsession while his FBI missed the gathering al Qaeda plot at home. Though Freeh resigned three months before Sept. 11, the plot was assembled on his watch, as was the FBI counterterrorism apparatus that failed to thwart it. But he has a few points about Sept. 11 that he is determined to make. While acknowledging "many shortcomings" of his own, Freeh blames Congress for the much-reported antiquated state of the FBI's computer system, pointing out that the bureau begged Congress for funds that were not forthcoming. He complains that from 2000-02, the bureau asked for 1,900 new employees for its counterterrorism program and got only 76.
But the heart of Freeh's complaint is that until Sept. 11, terrorism was viewed by both the Clinton and Bush administrations as a law enforcement issue -- sifting through bomb sites looking for evidence, as the FBI did with Khobar Towers -- and not as an act of war, as he now argues that it should have been. "I don't know an agent who thought that was sufficient to the cause, or anyone who believed that a criminal investigation was a reasonable alternative to military or diplomatic action," he writes. The United States had gone after Osama bin Laden with a few Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998 in retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the CIA had made covert attempts to get bin Laden; and the State Department had harangued his Taliban patrons. But these attempts were all lame, Freeh argues, because the United States lacked the political spine to put its full force behind the efforts. Freeh points out that the FBI had helped secure indictments against bin Laden in 1998 and 1999 and, along with the CIA, missed nabbing Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the Sept. 11 plot's mastermind, in Qatar in 1996 when he was apparently tipped off by a Qatari official. In 2000, Freeh flew to Pakistan and personally appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to pressure his Taliban allies to arrest bin Laden. "If [the U.S.:] government had a different mind-set, the secretaries of state and defense would have been in Lahore with me, or instead of me," Freeh writes. This negligence, he argues, emboldened the terrorists. "The image of a lumbering giant stumbling around with a sign on its back reading 'Kick Me' was not lost on our enemies," he notes.
My FBI is ultimately a sad tale, and it's clear Freeh saw it this way, too. He had planned to resign before the end of Clinton's term but held off until the president left office because he worried that Clinton might replace him with someone who would damage the FBI. "Not only was he actively hostile toward me, he was hostile to the FBI generally," Freeh writes. "My departure might be one last opportunity for retaliation."
August 23, 2007
What a snoozer ! A writer He isnt . Lots of endless ramblings about how wonderful he is and how he kept his distance from Bill Clinton due to all the funny business going on over at the White House. I felt it was pretty much, I made a few mistakes in my career , but for the most part Iam a boy scout .
It had a few interesting sections that filled in a few gaps with regard to terrorists, but , for the most part it was all over the board . I hate that I just cant stop and toss a book once I have started. I finish it, then gripe about the wasted time .
For some reason, everyone thinks you are interested in the mundane childhood and life at home with the wife and kids as well as how much fun it was to work with everyone and then go on to list them all.
The book is titled MY FBI, so write about the FBI, not, whats happening with the kiddies.I would have liked to hear more about going after the spy Robert Hansen.
I will drop this one off at the assisted living home unless anyone wants to read it .
It had a few interesting sections that filled in a few gaps with regard to terrorists, but , for the most part it was all over the board . I hate that I just cant stop and toss a book once I have started. I finish it, then gripe about the wasted time .
For some reason, everyone thinks you are interested in the mundane childhood and life at home with the wife and kids as well as how much fun it was to work with everyone and then go on to list them all.
The book is titled MY FBI, so write about the FBI, not, whats happening with the kiddies.I would have liked to hear more about going after the spy Robert Hansen.
I will drop this one off at the assisted living home unless anyone wants to read it .
June 7, 2008
Interesting perspective on things like building a case against the Unabomber, fighting terrorism, and the limitations of the FBI. According to himself, Freeh is full of integrity and did a great job as director. He convinced me, but I'd be curious to hear other opinions about him.
March 28, 2022
Actually, this is really an autobiography of Louis J. Freeh despite the title, though he does tell of his years as FBI director as well. He does not get into great detail about everything that happened under his watch, which arguably would have made the book too long, and he proves that he is hardly a conservative, being a friend and supporter of liberals as well as conservatives, and he attacks politicians on both sides.
He describes the FBI and how it is smaller and less powerful than people think, and how it has been saddled by lack of resources, obsolete information systems, and outdated laws based on past technology and an older world order, but also points out that while Islamist terrorism is still the big threat, there are also lesser actors such as the Unabomber and Eric Rudolph who can do major harm in their own right, even without backing from outside help.
He basically praises most of the people he had dealt with, but makes the case that Bill Clinton was a sleazier man than even his detractors have said and dismisses Richard Clarke as a lying fraud claiming to have been Paul Revere. Unfortunately as a prophet, he proved not so good, thinking Iran and Syria would move toward democracy, and predicted Osama bin Laden would be found and put on trial-obviously that was not the case. Still an interesting book.
He describes the FBI and how it is smaller and less powerful than people think, and how it has been saddled by lack of resources, obsolete information systems, and outdated laws based on past technology and an older world order, but also points out that while Islamist terrorism is still the big threat, there are also lesser actors such as the Unabomber and Eric Rudolph who can do major harm in their own right, even without backing from outside help.
He basically praises most of the people he had dealt with, but makes the case that Bill Clinton was a sleazier man than even his detractors have said and dismisses Richard Clarke as a lying fraud claiming to have been Paul Revere. Unfortunately as a prophet, he proved not so good, thinking Iran and Syria would move toward democracy, and predicted Osama bin Laden would be found and put on trial-obviously that was not the case. Still an interesting book.
December 22, 2019
A very interesting perspective with parallels to the current president While I could not stand Bill Clinton-I find him even more repugnant after reading this book. That he would sell US lives down the river to deal with Iran is absolutely criminal. The fact that he thought he was above the law is morally unconscionable and I look back now at the senators who refused to remove him from office and wonder what the public needs to do to finalize hold these people accountable for their idiocy and failure to uphold those ideals for which they were elected. I look at this book as a call to arms for those of my generation who "trusted" their elected officials to do the right thing.
September 9, 2017
Just finished reading this. Mr. Freeh was my first Director and I had the chance to spend time with him on several occasions. He like to bust my chops, which I was good with. What is interesting (reading this years later), is the foreshadowing of the Mueller and Comey successions, as well as the non-stop and on-going Clinton issues. Freeh addresses remaining apolitical as FBI Director and did a great job of doing so (even with the Clintons' antics). Makes you wonder if Comey actually read his book. A recommended read.
September 26, 2023
Do you want to live an outstanding, accomplished life despite all of the incompetent and misguided people around you? Write an autobiography and it will sure seem that way. Mr. Freeh grinds his axes and sets the records straight - from his perspective - while providing the reader with the occasional soupçon of insight into the inner workings and external political pressures of the bureau. There were a few things that went wrong during and just after his tenure but, spoiler alert, none of it was his fault. At least it’s short.
March 13, 2017
This was not for me. I was interested in the history and the politics but there was a lot of flattering of all the people mentioned - not that I thought that they should be insulted - just that I thought pausing to say how great, smart, gorgeous, etc everyone was cut into the flow of the story and made me lose interest. I didn't finish it. Also the guy reading had a strange pace and inflection. I will try this book in print rather than audio CD so I can skim over the flattery.
May 17, 2017
I was enjoying it until the huge editing error. Mr. Freeh talks about a date that should be seared in every American's mind. A date like December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001. He says we should remember April 19, 1996.... what.... no the Oklahoma City bombing happened in 1995. How could that slip by editing? Really detracts from the point Mr. Freeh is trying to make by using the wrong date. I just couldn't believe it and it was in the print book and the audio version.
Face palm.
Face palm.
January 16, 2021
This book takes some of the most interesting events in recent American history....and somehow makes them uninteresting. The writing is non-linear and disorganized. Almost a stream of consciousness but without the skill. And it's really not about the events themselves; it's about the author's thoughts, feelings, and experiences around these events. Overall disappointed.
May 5, 2020
Great book about Louis Freeh's tenure at the helm of the FBI - insightful.
May 12, 2024
A little disorganized, at times a bit cocky.
March 10, 2017
This book was more interesting than I thought it would be. I had more questions than answers when the book finished. Freeh did point out that essentially Washington is a very ego driven vindictive place where people care more about themselves and their own position in the power plays than the problems the country faces. Of course he exempted himself and a few others, but, after reading this I think all of the players in D.C. probably feel the same way, as if the other guy is the narcissistic "I'm better, I know better" player and they are the "good guys doing what is right". Pretty sad.
February 23, 2017
I couldn't put this book down! It was fascinating. I have utmost respect for Freeh's integrity and leadership.
November 29, 2008
Interesting look at what went on behind the scenes during Louis Freeh's time as FBI Director - investigating Bill Clinton for the Whitewater deals, finding spies like Bob Hanssen and domestic bombers like Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, & Walter Leroy Moody. A look at overseas terrorist attacks on the US at Khobar Towers, the Cole, and others. Also a backward look at Ruby Ridge and Waco. As well as his time as a judge and prosecutor and FBI agent. I learned, as I thought was the case, that the media is not always responsible or accurate in it's reporting and often goes overboard in some instances, blowing things out of proportion. After 9-11 there was much in the media about how the FBI, CIA and other security agencies did not talk, did not get along. That simply is not true. The problems they had were mainly with Congress not funding the technology needed to keep abreast of what terrorists were doing. Louis Freeh strikes me as a highly moral, unselfish man of great integrity. We were fortunate indeed to have him in the positions he was in.
August 11, 2019
Louis Freeh provides an interesting look into the world of the FBI. The book takes an overview approach with specific vignettes of his time at the organization and how it evolved (or lack thereof) over the years. Freeh was director during a turbulent time when trust in the FBI was at a low and worked one of the toughest cases in its history with the Kohbar towers investigation. This investigation is the focal point of the book and done very well. He also covers a lot with the Bob Hansen treason as well as other stories. The main problem with the book is that it is light on details and the chapters often ramble on without focus. The book would have been better off from an organizational standpoint with shorter chapters more pointed towards the topics. I would like to have seen lesser stories but the ones told in greater detail. Overall it is a useful primary source but not the definitive history of his role in the FBI during those years.
August 10, 2015
This book is written by Louis J. Freeh, he headed up the FBI from 1993 to 2001. He has been a an FBI agent, a prosecutor, and a federal judge. When he took over the FBI in 1993 the country was still in shock about the destruction at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. At that time the FBI was not catching up with the technological times. For eight years he would fight to turn the FBI around. He was a very hands on director. This book is also a book about the very special heroes, the men and women of the FBI. The FBI's primary responsibility are domestic but they have been expanding their global presence. he frequently clashed with Bill Clinton over his unwillingness to go after top Iranian officials responsible for the deaths at Khobi Towers in Saudi Arabia. After the 9/11 attacks he said the government could no longer look away because now America had been attacked by terrorist that he had been warning us about. He says we would finally have to step up and do something.
September 21, 2008
This book read like a children's book after reading Charlie Wilson's War. This book didn't go into detail about any of the cases during Freeh's tenure; it was more of an overview of the cases during his time as head of the FBI. I didn't know much about him before reading this book and he seems like a good guy, but there was tons of material he could have written about instead of talking about how his jogging routine and commute changed and lavishing praise on everyone he worked with. Bryan Burrough wrote a review I read in the NY Times and I agree with most of it except the last line: "But that can't obscure the fact that in the end Freeh's best wasn't good enough, and neither, sadly, is his book." I agree that his book wasn't good, but Freeh doesn't deserve the brunt of the blame for 9/11. I would have given the book 2.5 stars just because I like reading anything about the FBI.
December 21, 2007
Mr. Freeh really went after President Clinton in this book. I wish he would have provided a lot more details about this. I understand that he had to investigate him and how terrible it was that the president put him in that situation but it seemed way more personal. He highlights good things that happened in his time at the FBI but didn't really get into it too much. He got into things did wrong even less. I just expected so much more from him. He appears arrogant on TV and does in the book also. He talks about how he was thwarted with money issues by Congress and couldn't bring the FBI into the 21st century. Just disappointing. Information is there but the explanation isn't.
February 26, 2008
Pretty good book (actually I listened to this one). Freeh was the FBI director for about 8 years in the 1990s, almost entirely during the Clinton administration. He gives an interesting account of the war on terror pre-9/11, including the attacks on Kovar towers around 1996. Freeh definitely isn't complementary of the Clinton administration. It's an interesting read for anyone looking for info on the government's failures in preventing the 9/11 attacks. As critical as Freeh is of Clinton, he makes Bush sound a lot better - very decisive and willing to take action where Clinton was more concerned with politics.
June 13, 2010
This memoir reflects the outstanding career of Louis Freeh, who was appointed the top cop position during the Clinton administration. Freeh is a man of high integrety and his actions and decisions during his time as the Director showed this. At times it seems like he is tooting his own horn. However, I don't think that him doing this is gloating. I believe that he is simply defending his actions in the face of criticism.
Freeh's decisions during tough investigations show how to run an agency with integrety and honor. This book should be required for managers and supervisors in any line of work.
Freeh's decisions during tough investigations show how to run an agency with integrety and honor. This book should be required for managers and supervisors in any line of work.
August 24, 2014
My FBI is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It gives great insight to the major events in law enforcement though the Clinton administration through 9-11.
Before reading it just know that it has a conservative bias to it but I don’t think that gets in the way of most of the facts discussed. Louis Freeh is very hard on presidents Clintons stance on law enforcement and he does not sugar coat his feelings towards him. However he does speak highly of Hilary Clinton and Al Gore that’s why I don’t feel that book is written in a bias way just a one very experience mans opinion.
Before reading it just know that it has a conservative bias to it but I don’t think that gets in the way of most of the facts discussed. Louis Freeh is very hard on presidents Clintons stance on law enforcement and he does not sugar coat his feelings towards him. However he does speak highly of Hilary Clinton and Al Gore that’s why I don’t feel that book is written in a bias way just a one very experience mans opinion.
November 1, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. Its hard to say exactly why but, it might be in part because of admiration for Judge Freeh. It was refreshing to see someone who was true to moral values and principles rise to an office of high standing in our government with no other motive than to do a good job. It doesn't read like an action novel but if you stick it out you will be rewarded by admarition for the service Louis Freeh gave to our Country.
January 21, 2009
Louis Freeh gives an informative and fascinating account of what it's like to be the director of the FBI. Most fascinating to me was the insight on why Mr. Freeh took some of the positions he did, and why he followed some of the methods he chose. He certainly dealt with a multitude of issues during his service for the FBI, from organized crime, to domestic terrorists, to presidential scandal. Well worth the time to read!
February 12, 2009
Very interesting point of view from the former head of the FBI. Unfortunately, it felt like there was a lot of information that he wasn't able to tell us, but there was some candor on his part on how he felt towards President Clinton and his leadership ability (or possible lack thereof). I came away with the feeling that Louis Freeh is a very principled man who wanted to get some things off his chest.
Want to read
July 19, 2007I gave this book as a birthday gift to ... errrr ... well, someone close at heart. Why? Because it's close to what he's doing.
But I have to ask him what he thought about the book before I have anything to say here. The only thing I can say after scan read the book is that it was a Pretty interesting book, really. Reveals many stories behind a closed FBI door.
But I have to ask him what he thought about the book before I have anything to say here. The only thing I can say after scan read the book is that it was a Pretty interesting book, really. Reveals many stories behind a closed FBI door.
February 3, 2014
Read many parts of this book and enjoyed the read. It seemed somewhat one-sided, but very interesting.
Discusses Khobar Towers, the fact that Louis Freeh did not care for Pres. Clinton and issues he had to deal with during Clinton's presidency. Also discusses the Mafia and issues leading up to 911 and the War on Terror.
Discusses Khobar Towers, the fact that Louis Freeh did not care for Pres. Clinton and issues he had to deal with during Clinton's presidency. Also discusses the Mafia and issues leading up to 911 and the War on Terror.
May 23, 2013
The FBI is one of my favorite subjects to read about so this novel was an easy choice. I found it informative and well written but at times it seemed self serving. Nonetheless I enjoyed the novel and was able to see some interesting views on major political and historical events through the perspective of a man who directed the FBI through these times.
August 13, 2008
I just finished this book but it took me a loooong time to get through. I thought that the history parts were interesting, but it was really just Freeh giving shout outs to all of his poilitcal friends. Boooring...
December 2, 2009
This book is a very interesting perspective on the national law enforcement agency actions during a very significant period in US history. Freeh brings a professionalism and nonpartisan perspective that is admirable. I found the book well worth the reading!
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