Andrew Kent, Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn
Section 203 of the Crime Control Act of 1976 restricts the FBI director to a single ten-year term and prohibits the reappointment of an incumbent. Below is an examination of what the legislative history and political context reveal about Congress’ motives in passing that law. It is clear that Congress viewed the operation of the statute as both a ceiling and a floor: a limit on the president and a limit on the director. It’s also clear that Congress viewed political influence on specific FBI investigations as violative of important norms developed to prevent the recurrence of dangerous abuses.
Congress first considered a law to require Senate confirmation and term limits for an FBI director in the closing years of J. Edgar Hoover’s directorship. Hoover was the FBI’s first director and was appointed by the Attorney General and not the president. He served 48 years until his death in 1972. Congress approached the issue in the context of Hoover’s extraordinarily long tenure, during which he consolidated control of the FBI and carried out substantial abuses of power.
In one sense, limiting an FBI director’s tenure to a single ten-year term should be understood as a check on the director’s power. Congress’ was concerned with the rise of another unscrupulous and excessively powerful director, and term limits were one way to prevent that. There is simply less one can do in ten years than in forty-eight, be it amassing influence or violating civil liberties.
In another sense, the term limit acts as a check on presidential power. Congress passed the ten-year term limit in the shadow of the abuses of President Richard Nixon and White House aides. The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearing on FBI oversight and a bill to establish a ten-year term in March 1974, the same month a federal grand jury indicted the “Watergate Seven” and named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator. Nixon’s acting FBI Director and nominee for the permanent post, L. Patrick Gray, had resigned in 1973 after it was revealed that he was giving the White House daily briefings on the FBI’s Watergate investigation and that he destroyed documents relevant to the inquiry.
Congress wanted to address the Scylla and Charybdis of Nixon and Hoover: the risk of political interference in FBI investigations, and use of the Bureau for political purposes, on the one hand, and on the other, the danger of an imperial FBI director whose long tenure–and the secrets and political chits accumulated during that tenure–allows him to act without accountability.
When recommending enactment of the ten-year term, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a comprehensive report of its rationale, including:The purpose of this bill is to achieve two complementary objectives. The first is to insulate the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from undue pressure being exerted upon him from superiors in the Executive Branch. The second is to protect against an FBI Director becoming too independent and unresponsive.
It is the great value of the FBI as a criminal investigative agency, as well as its dangerous potential for infringing individual rights and serving partisan or personal ambitions, that makes the office of FBI Director unique....The position is not an ordinary Cabinet appointmentvwhich is usually considered a politically oriented member of the President's "team."
