Interim File

"You can't turn an agency like this on its ear overnight, even if it's needed, and I'm not convinced yet that wholesale change here is either necessary or desirable." So says L. Patrick Gray III after one month on the job as acting director of the FBI. Wholesale they may not be, but some changes have already been made in the post-Hoover era--largely for the better.

Right away Gray let it be known that J. Edgar's rigid rules on agents' appearance were rescinded: "I've no hangup on white shirts," he says. As a result, mod shirts and ties are blossoming. Hair to the collar and sideburns to the bottom of the ear are now permitted. Gray has established a special division to recruit more black, Spanish-speaking and other minority-group agents. The new division will also hear agents' grievances, which should be a boon to bureau morale, and will help in the agency's pioneering recruitment of women agents.

The weeding process of Hoover's longtime cronies in the bureau continues. Last week Joseph J. Casper, 53, assistant director in charge of training and a 31-year veteran, announced his early retirement; he is the fourth man to resign from the top FBI ranks since Hoover's death. Gray has also purposefully made himself visible and accessible, opening the FBI'S doors to the press and patching up relations with those law enforcement officials with whom the aging Hoover had developed feuds.

Gray is revising the agency's investigative priorities. His bureau's main target will be organized crime, he says, followed by domestic subversion, then drugs. Hoover's prime preoccupation was radicals.

The change in emphasis is the more remarkable since in many of his private views Gray is not that distant from Hoover. A former Navy submarine commander, the acting director, at 55, is a firm believer in military-style discipline and old-fashioned American values. He attends Mass every morning and has told friends that the U.S. is suffering sure signs of moral sickness--mainly because of drugs, draft resisters and the New Left.

His only gaffe thus far was the naive assertion, two days into the job, that "the FBI has no political dossiers or secret files on anyone." Having discovered that indeed the bureau does, he is systematically reading through them, and says he has so far found none unwarranted. He contends that the FBI's main files are opened "only after express jurisdictional authority requirements are met," but since the agency has authority in 185 different types of cases, that means exceptionally broad power to gather data.

Adds Gray: "When I became acting director I didn't ask to see my own personal file, but it was brought to me. There were two sections: my main file, including investigations done on me in connection with my military and Government jobs, and a cross file about three inches high, with little white slips of paper indicating references to me in other files. It didn't offend me at all."

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