William Sessions, former FBI director.
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The first of the sieges under his watch occurred in 1992, when for 11 days the F.B.I.’s hostage rescue team surrounded a fugitive white separatist and others holed up in an isolated cabin on Ruby Ridge, near the Canadian border. After a United States marshal and the fugitive’s wife and son were killed by gunfire, a public furor arose questioning that use of deadly force. Mr. Sessions was not directly involved in the episode or accused of any wrongdoing, but the F.B.I.’s reputation was tarnished.
His agency again faced heavy criticism in 1993 over another violent standoff. This one began when four agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and six members of a cult called the Branch Davidians were killed in a gun battle at their compound near Waco, Texas. After a 51-day F.B.I. siege, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, fearing mass suicide, authorized a tear-gas assault on April 19. The compound caught fire. At least 75 people died, including many children.
By then, F.B.I. morale was abysmal and Mr. Sessions, a Republican stranded in a Democratic limbo, was under pressure to resign. His critics said he had failed to redefine the F.B.I.’s crime-fighting and domestic counterintelligence missions after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 during the administration of President George Bush. Some associates called him disengaged, a director who relished the trappings of high office but not the grind of bureau business.
But most damaging to Mr. Sessions was an internal Justice Department report — issued late in the Bush administration but pursued by the Clinton administration — accusing him of ethical violations, including using F.B.I. planes to visit relatives and friends around the country, often taking his wife; using agents to run personal errands; and having a $10,000 fence built around his Washington home at federal expense.