Beware Agents Bearing Gifts

A $105 easy chair. A $95 walnut table. An $84 clock. A $60 set of stack tables. Plywood valances worth $45 but requiring some $290 in labor to correct faulty installation.

Even if such items had been acquired illegally, they would not add up to much, considering the potential for corruption in official Washington. In fact, the items were merely gifts that FBI Director Clarence Kelley has admitted receiving from some of his subordinates. Nevertheless, one Justice Department official has urged that Kelley be fired for accepting them; another has suggested that he be publicly reprimanded. President Ford has asked for a report from Attorney General Edward Levi, who submitted it at week's end.

Kelley, who is widely liked in the bureau and whose honesty is unquestioned, is expected to survive these revelations of what seems, at most, his bad judgment. But he has been acutely embarrassed, to say the least. "These things are not very serious as matters even for administrative action," one Ford Administration official observed. "But this penny-ante stuff is crippling him."

Kelley's problem is compounded by his handling of more serious allegations of wrongdoing within the FBI. When the House Select Committee on Intelligence last year aired charges that FBI officials may have accepted kickbacks in the purchase of electronic equipment, Kelley's in-house investigation produced a wishy-washy report claiming that only bad judgment had been involved. Attorney General Levi ordered a new investigation, which apparently is on the verge of indictments.

Hobby House. The gifts to Kelley came to light as the Levi-ordered investigation probed the activities of the FBI's exhibit section, which prepares courtroom mock-ups of crime scenes. Dubbed "the Hobby House" or "Freeload Inc." by some agents, it had long provided minor home improvements for top FBI officials. As agents told of this work, John P. Dunphy, the head of the section, agreed to talk freely to the Justice Department about more serious misuse of Government funds and services. In return, the Justice Department permitted him to plead guilty to the minor indiscretion of having his section build a birdhouse for his home. Kelley then had little choice but to fire Dunphy. It was Dunphy who mentioned the Kelley valances to investigators.

Kelley's explanation sounds valid enough. He said that the valances at his Bethesda apartment had been installed by exhibit-section craftsmen without his knowledge. According to an FBI source, Kelley's wife, who died of cancer last November, had asked Kelley in 1973 to get the valances. Preoccupied, Kelley told his driver, Agent Thomas Moten, to take care of the matter. Having served on Hoover's personal staff, Moten did as he had done in the past: asked the exhibit section to help out. When Kelley asked Moten how much the valances cost, the chauffeur replied: "What the hell, boss, it was only scrap lumber--forget it." Until last week, Kelley did.

The other gifts were presented to Kelley by the FBI'S "Executive Conference" on his birthday and on the anniversary of his appointment as director. The Executive Conference consists of 16 ranking FBI officials who chipped in some $15 each to honor Kelley. Members of the conference last week visited Levi to express "absolute support and confidence" in Kelley. None of them reminded Levi that they had sent the Attorney General about $30 worth of flowers recently on his wedding anniversary.

Kelley last week gave the bureau a check for $335 to cover the valances and said he would gladly repay his aides for the gifts if any federal regulations have been violated. Levi has not said what he will do about his flowers, which presumably have wilted by now.

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