In 1992, ex-Judge WILLIAM HEDGCOCK WEBSTER met with the Department of Energy Manager for Oak RIdge Operations, JOE BEN LA GRONE, and his General Counsel, C.S. "Tyler" Przybylek. JUDGE WILLIAM WEBSTER fell asleep, the victim, it was thought, of jet lag taking a redeye flight from Los Angeles. WEBSTER and MILBANK, TWEED, HADLEY & McCLOY did a superficial, outcome-oriented report on a case involving a worker intentionally exposed by Oak RIdge National Laboratory to a toxic, hostile working environment. JUDGE WEBSTER shocked DOE officials by falling asleep. How poetic. Thanks to JUDGE WEBSTER and Congressman JOHN MICA and other Repugs, America's skies were less safe, and regulators were once again asleep at the switch.
Now the FBI has hired WILLIAM HEDGCOCK WEBSTER (see below) "to conduct an independent review of FBI policies, practices, and actions prior to the tragic events at Fort Hood. Following the November 5, 2009 shooting."
This over-rated mediocrity with a reputation for corporate coverups can be expected to bill FBI for his mendacity at the prevailing rates of MILBANHK, TWEED, HADLEY & McCLOY, for whom he lobbied against airline safety measures before 9/11. See New York Times article, below.
N.Y. TIMES: WILLIAM H. WEBSTER LOBBIED AGAINST AIRLINE SAFETY BEFORE 9/11
November 5, 2002
CORPORATE CONDUCT: THE CHAIRMAN; Webster's Public Service Image Not Duplicated in Private Sector
By ALEX BERENSON
As a public servant, William H. Webster has an impeccable résumé.
Mr. Webster, who last week became the head of a new government board that will oversee the accounting industry, is the only person to have served as the director of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a special medal from the American Bar Association for outstanding leadership.
But outside Washington, Mr. Webster's record is less than perfect. Since he retired from the C.I.A. 11 years ago to build a lucrative second career as a corporate lawyer, Mr. Webster has repeatedly taken positions that critics say have been at odds with his reputation.
A lawyer who sued General Motors for making unsafe pickup trucks says that after the automaker hired Mr. Webster with great fanfare, he permitted G.M. to shelve his report into whether the company had improperly destroyed documents relating to the case.
Some labor leaders say that Mr. Webster has not devoted enough time to his $100,000-a-year position on a government-created board that monitors the Teamsters union.
And a former chief economist with the Federal Communications Commission says that Mr. Webster's involvement with NextWave, a telecommunications company that defaulted on billions of dollars of payments to the F.C.C., should disqualify him from being the accounting board's chairman. NextWave was a ''bottom feeder,'' said Gerald Faulhaber, a Wharton School professor who served as the F.C.C.'s top economist in 2000 and 2001. ''Do I feel comfortable with my watchdog being involved with these guys? No.''
Mr. Webster, who did not return repeated calls or e-mail messages for comment on his corporate life, now faces criticism for his short stint as the head of the audit committee at U.S. Technologies, a nearly bankrupt Internet company that is under criminal investigation for possible fraud. In August 2001, U.S. Technologies fired BDO Seidman as its auditor after the firm said that the company's financial records were disorganized and that some transactions had not been recorded.
Mr. Webster and Gregory Earls, the chief executive of U.S. Technologies, said last week that U.S. Technologies did nothing wrong and that the company fired BDO Seidman because its audit was expensive and slow. But the accounting firm has now asked a federal judge to release it from its client confidentiality agreement with U.S. Technologies so that it can respond to what it says are ''false and misleading'' statements from Mr. Webster.
Even before these problems came to light, Mr. Webster's appointment as head of the board sparked sharp criticism from Democrats and some big investors. They said he was not knowledgeable about accounting and -- at 78 -- too old to take on a tough and time-consuming new post.
Still, many in Washington say that they respect Mr. Webster. Even the Democrats who criticized his appointment to the accounting board were careful to say that they were not attacking him personally. ''He is a top-notch civil servant,'' said Griffin Bell, the former attorney general who asked Mr. Webster in 1978 to head the F.B.I.
Before Mr. Webster took that job, the agency conducted a background check with interviews of 500 people who knew him, Mr. Bell said. ''And not one thing turned up against him.''
Soon after Mr. Webster left the government and became a partner in the Washington office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in 1991, he took a surprising position. In 1992, the Air Transport Association, an airline trade group, hired him to lobby against fingerprinting and background checks for security screeners and airline employees who worked in secure areas. Facing opposition from the airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration delayed for four years before adopting a weakened requirement for background checks.
Representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, told The Los Angeles Times last year that he was ''flabbergasted'' that Mr. Webster had once lobbied against the proposal. ''I looked him square in the eye and asked, 'Would you be taking this position if you were still director of the F.B.I?' '' Mr. Oberstar said.
In 1993, General Motors hired Mr. Webster to conduct an internal inquiry into whether it had destroyed documents relating to the safety of pickup trucks that had been made from 1973 to 1987 and that had fuel tanks mounted outside the vehicles' frames. Mr. Webster was hired one month after a Georgia jury returned a $105 million verdict against the company. (The verdict was later overturned on appeal, and G.M. settled the case and three others.) Mr. Webster never released his report, said James Butler, the plaintiff's lawyer who won and later settled.
''Why announce in a public press release if you're going to have the former F.B.I. director do an investigation if you're not going to report the results?'' Mr. Butler asked, suggesting that the findings may have been unfavorable. Mr. Webster should not have permitted the findings to be silenced, Mr. Butler said.
Mr. Webster's performance on a government-created board that monitors the Teamsters union for corruption has generated criticism and praise. In the late 1990's, some Teamsters complained that the union's pension funds had been depleted under the board's watch.
A labor leader who is not a Teamster and has observed Mr. Webster serve for the last decade on the board said he thought Mr. Webster did not take the responsibilities very seriously and worked only a few hours a month on the board. But Marick Masters, a business professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said he thought Mr. Webster had done a good job on the board, considering its limited resources.
''These aren't full-time appointments. They don't have large staffs. You have to be somewhat limited in what your expectations are about what these boards can do,'' Mr. Masters said. ''It's very difficult for one board to get in there and really investigate everything.'' He said he thought Mr. Webster would do a good job as head of the oversight board.
Mr. Webster's position on the board of NextWave Telecom has also raised concern. Congressional investigators have said they will examine Mr. Webster's role at NextWave in addition to his work at U.S. Technologies. NextWave is a bankrupt wireless company whose main asset is a set of airwave licenses that the company won in an auction from the government in 1996 but never paid for. Since 2000, the Federal Communications Commission has been trying to recover the licenses from NextWave and sell them to other companies. NextWave has sued the government to keep the licenses.
''NextWave came in, and they got more licenses than anyone else,'' said Mr. Faulhaber, the Wharton professor. ''And then at their earliest opportunity, they defaulted.''
Mr. Webster knew or should have known that NextWave's actions were not in the consumers' or the government's best interest, Mr. Faulhaber said. He said Mr. Webster should not serve on the accounting board, which demands someone whose reputation is above reproach.
''He may be a perfectly fine fellow,'' Mr. Faulhaber said. ''But this is a Caesar's wife situation.''
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