Gilt-Edged Choice for the FBI

Judge Johnson may be just what the beleaguered bureau needs

President Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell sat in the Oval Office chewing over a familiar problem. FBI Director Clarence Kelley was due to step down by the end of 1977, but Carter and Bell had no replacement in sight; they were not happy with the five candidates proposed by a special committee. "My God," sighed Bell, "I still wish we could get ole Frank Johnson to take it."

As a matter of fact, Bell, to his pleased astonishment, had already received a signal from U.S. District Judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr. (TIME cover, May 12, 1967). One of Bell's aides, a former Johnson law clerk named Frances M. ("Kelly") Green, had informed the Attorney General that Johnson was having "second thoughts"--he was now convinced he had made a mistake in turning down the offer of the FBI post eight months ago. Bell quickly arranged a clandestine rendezvous with Johnson last week in the dining room at the Newnan, Ga., Holiday Inn. "Nobody recognized either one of us," chortles Bell. At the end of the two-hour meeting, Bell went away convinced that Johnson was prepared to serve for the full ten-year term established by Congress last year.

Thus was Carter able to announce a gilt-edged choice for one of his most crucial appointments. Since the 1972 death of J. Edgar Hoover, the 8,400-agent bureau has been virtually rudderless and buffeted by disclosures of repeated individual-rights abuses. Now the FBI will be getting a leader with a towering record for correcting abuses of civil rights.

Johnson's approval by the Senate is a near certainty. The appointment not only delighted liberals but also drew surprising praise from some segregationists, who were forced to acknowledge Johnson's fairness and integrity. Johnson, 58, has probably handed down more important and innovative rulings than any trial judge in U.S. history. Almost immediately after his appointment to the federal bench in 1955, he began issuing orders that broke down segregation in Dixie. His role as point man for social change brought him and his family ostracism, vituperation, cross burnings and death threats. With Johnson obviously in mind, Alabama Governor George Wallace last year groused that "thugs and federal judge have just about taken charge of this country" and suggested a "political barbed-wire enema" for such interlopers.

The careers of Wallace and Johnson have been intertwined since their years together at the University of Alabama law school, where Wallace was considered liberal and Johnson an aristocratic conservative. Wallace grabbed headlines in 1959, when, as a lameduck state judge he made a public show of defying a Johnson order to turn over voting lists to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Johnson later found that Wallace had cooperated with the authorities, and dropped contempt charges against him. But the false show of bravado helped propel Wallace into the governorship in 1962. As the years passed, Johnson's intervention in .he workings of state government so emasculated Wallace's authority that some observers began calling Johnson "the real Governor of Alabama."

Johnson is a product of northern Alabama's Winston County. In that rocky hill country, few 19th century landowners had slaves, and Winston attempted to withdraw from Alabama when the state seceded from the Union. Much of the county became Republican; at one point. Johnson's father was the only Republican in the Alabama legislature.

After winning a Bronze Star as an infantry lieutenant in combat during World War II, Johnson returned to become active in Republican politics. He helped manage Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 Alabama campaign and was named U.S. Attorney in 1953. Two years later, a week before his 37th birthday, he was appointed the youngest federal judge in the country. In June of 1956, Johnson and another federal judge ordered desegregation of the Montgomery transit system, extending the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision beyond the schools for the first time. In the years that followed, Johnson--acting alone or as a member of a three-judge panel--desegregated public facilities, voided attempts to evade such orders through "private" schools, abolished the poll tax, ordered legislative reapportionment based on population, mandated the inclusion of women on jury rolls, expanded a suspect's right to counsel and established a "right to treatment" for mental patients. Martin Luther King Jr.--who was, ironically, being wiretapped and harassed by the FBI --once said of Judge Johnson: "That is the man who gives true meaning to the word justice."

Johnson's activism has made for a turbulent personal life. In Montgomery, Johnson and his family were unwelcome at their neighborhood Baptist church and subjected to threatening letters and telephone calls. Two years ago, Johnson's son Johnny, 27, killed himself with a shotgun. Some friends thought the adopted Johnny's longstanding emotional problems could be traced to harassment by his Montgomery schoolmates.

Last year Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared in Montgomery to do research on Johnson for his senior thesis at Harvard. The two developed a closeness described by one observer as akin to a father-son relationship. "He's tough and strong, and he's got a great big heart," says Kennedy. An expanded version of Kennedy's thesis is to be published (as was his late Uncle Jack's Harvard senior thesis).

Lawyers and clerks who have worked with Johnson describe him as a no-nonsense administrator with an innate sense of justice. "God pity the Mafia," said Alabama Attorney George Dean. "He's mean as a snake on crime." But he does not lack compassion. In one case, a white man was accused of persuading several black youths to steal peanuts from a warehouse; the jury convicted the blacks but acquitted the alleged ringleader. Johnson sentenced the youths to 30 minutes in the custody of a U.S. marshal.

The judge has few outside diversions except an occasional golf game, tinkering with grandfather clocks, and a periodic chaw of Red Man chewing tobacco. His capacity for work is remarkable, and he keeps his docket unusually current. If an attorney fails to file papers on time, Johnson is apt to call him personally--collect.

Such a strong administrative hand is badly needed at the FBI. After Hoover's death in 1972, two acting administrators (L. Patrick Gray and William Ruckelshaus) were unable to concentrate on permanent reforms. Current FBI Chief Kelley has proved unequal to the task of controlling the cliques that flourished under Hoover. Public esteem for the bureau remains low, and so does agent morale.

Although Bell insists that many FBI problems will be solved by publication of a charter for agents, spelling out their responsibilities, the bureau really needs an old-fashioned dose of leadership. From his record, Johnson appears to be exactly the man to fill that prescription.

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