Rush for the Exit

In the 48 years that he spent building the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover skillfully made it a national monument, seemingly as solid as the Great Pyramid. In the year since Hoover's death, the FBI has been so riven by internal weaknesses and strife as a result of Watergate that it more closely resembles a disintegrating piece of the Dakota Badlands. Several of its top officials intend to retire in the next four weeks. The bureau's vaunted esprit de corps is in tatters, and the morale of its 8,700 agents has been shattered.

These men fear that their proudly independent agency has become, at least in the public eye, a mere tool of the White House. They privately assert that--especially after the disclosure that the FBI tapped the phones of some Government officials and newsmen for the White House--many Americans will view the FBI as a potential threat to themselves.

For all his faults, Hoover kept the FBI safe from the quadrennial quakes of partisan politics. He played politics impartially with Republicans and Democrats to maintain the independence of his empire. His agents knew this and realized how much they benefited from it. Those who could not stomach some of Hoover's autocratic actions got out of the FBI--but they did not talk. Only in his final years was there a split in the ranks between pro-Hoover and anti-Hoover factions, and this was scarcely visible from the outside.

Fed Up. Last week W. Mark Felt, the FBI's acting associate director, announced his intention to retire June 22.

Felt has been No. 2 man in the FBI since May 1972. With the temporary, pinch-hitting director William D. Ruckelshaus devoting almost all his time to problems raised by Watergate, Felt has been running the show. Only 59, Felt could have stayed on for eleven more years.

Felt's decision follows closely on retirement announcements by two of the twelve assistant FBI directors: Leonard M. Walters, 54, chief of the inspection division, and William B. Soyars, 50, head of the computer-systems division.

Together with the retirement of Assistant Director Dwight Dalby a few months ago, this rush for the exit will leave vacant four of the 13 top posts in the bureau. By a quirk of the FBI retirement law, the three leaving next month will collect an extra cost-of-living retirement bonus, but that is not the main reason for their quitting.

"Those guys are plainly fed up," said a colleague in the command echelon, adding: "I'm fed up, too, but I'm going to stick around for a while. We feel that the President almost wrecked the bureau with the appointment of L.

Patrick Gray as director. Then after Gray was forced out, we were insulted by the President's refusal to look for a new director within the bureau."

On April 30, all of the FBI'S top brass in Washington and all but one of its 59 field-office chiefs sent a telegram drafted by Walters asking Nixon to pick one of the FBI veterans--"among whom there is an inherent nonpartisanship"--as the new chief. Instead, he made the interim choice of Ruckelshaus, who had been the able head of the Environmental Protection Agency, without even bothering to inform Felt, who learned of the appointment from a reporter. The telegram elicited no response.

Bum Rap. "Ruckelshaus may be a fine, independent fellow," said a high FBI man, "but he's only holding the job until the President picks a permanent director. After our bitter experience with Gray, any appointee from outside the bureau will have trouble winning the acceptance of the agents."

The FBI'S Washington headquarters is demoralized. Said a senior field agent:

"There's very little leadership. Decision making? Forget it. There's a vacuum.

The decisions are being made now in the field offices. If you phone Washington with a problem, more often than not headquarters will say: 'Don't bother us with your problems--we've got our own.' " The agents feel that the entire FBI took a "bum rap" because of blunders by Gray and the Department of Justice in the Watergate investigation. Almost to a man, agents argue that Nixon is trying to gain control of the agency for his own purposes and to "politicize" it. Echoing a common sentiment, one high-ranking agent says: "Nobody wants to work for a political hack." And, he adds, the retirements will grow to a mass exodus if the President picks another political appointee to head the bureau.

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