Aftermath
of Watergate:
1970's
Three
days after Director Kelley's appointment, top aides
in the Nixon Administration resigned amid charges
of White House efforts to obstruct justice in the
Watergate case. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned
in October, following charges of tax evasion. Then,
following impeachment hearings that were broadcast
over television to the American public throughout
1974, President Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as President
that same day. In granting an unconditional pardon
to ex-President Nixon one month later, he vowed to
heal the nation.
Director Kelley similarly
sought to restore public trust in the FBI and in
law enforcement. He instituted numerous policy changes
that targeted the training and selection of FBI and
law enforcement leaders, the procedures of investigative
intelligence collection, and the prioritizing of
criminal programs. All of this was done while continuing
open investigations. One such case was the Patty
Hearst kidnapping investigation.
In 1974, Kelley instituted
Career Review Boards and programs to identify and
train potential managers. For upper management of
the entire law enforcement community, the FBI, in
cooperation with the International Association of
Chiefs of Police and the Major Cities Chief Administrators,
started the National Executive Institute, which provided
high-level executive training and encouraged future
operational cooperation.
Kelley also responded
to scrutiny by Congress and the media on whether
FBI methods of collecting intelligence in domestic
security and counterintelligence investigations abridged
Constitutional rights.
The FBI had traditionally
used its own criteria for intelligence collection,
based on executive orders and blanket authority granted
by attorney generals. After congressional hearings,
Attorney General Edward Levi established finely detailed
guidelines for the first time. The guidelines for
FBI foreign counterintelligence investigations went
into effect on March 10, 1976, and for domestic security
investigations on April 5, 1976 (The latter were
superseded March 21, 1983).
Kelley's most significant
management innovation, however, was implementing
the concept of "Quality over Quantity" investigations.
He directed each field office to set priorities based
on the types of cases most important in its territory
and to concentrate resources on those priority matters.
Strengthening the "Quality over Quantity" concept,
the FBI as a whole established three national priorities:
foreign counterintelligence, organized crime, and
white-collar crime. To handle the last priority,
the Bureau intensified its recruitment of accountants.
It also stepped up its use of undercover operations
in major cases.
During Kelley's tenure
as Director, the FBI made a strong effort to develop
an Agent force with more women and one that was more
reflective of the ethnic composition of the United
States. By the late 1970s nearly 8,000 Special Agents
and 11,000 Support Employees worked in 59 Field Offices
and 13 Legal Attache offices.