Former FBI & CIA Director William Webster Dies at 101

At the time Webster was selected to lead the FBI in 1978 by then-President Jimmy Carter, the bureau’s reputation was badly damaged by congressional revelations that unearthed corruption and extrajudicial spying on Americans under longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover. Webster, who was previously a Republican-appointed federal judge from Missouri, sought to restore the bureau’s image: one of his first acts in office was to remove the bust of Hoover from the director’s office, The Washington Post reported in a laudatory 1987 editorial.

When his nine-year term leading the FBI concluded, Webster was quickly tapped by then-President Ronald Reagan to head up the CIA, which itself was in the middle of a public relations fiasco stemming from the Iran-Contra scandal. There, again, Webster moved to clean up the agency’s image, this time by cracking down on the kinds of secret practices that led to the arms sale scandal and disciplining lower-ranking officials who were involved, The New York Times reported. His time at Langley, from 1987 to 1991, coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf war.

Webster was highly regarded for his stewardship in both roles, at least as far as the mainstream press was concerned. Regarding his time as FBI director, the Post approvingly said Webster “used his reputation for personal integrity to restore public confidence in a tarnished agency,” and the Times hailed his CIA leadership in restoring “public trust in American intelligence.”

Longtime federal judge

Webster was born March 6, 1924, in St. Louis, according to the FBI. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College, a law degree from Washington University Law School and served in the Navy as a lieutenant during both World War II and the Korean War.

Webster served as a district judge in the Eastern District of Missouri from 1970 to 1973, and on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit from 1973 to 1978, according to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, on which he held the title of chair emeritus. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.

The FBI has at times called upon Webster’s experience since his departure to conduct reviews on the agency, including following the exposure of double agent Robert Hanssen in 2001 and again in 2009 to review the “policies, practices and actions” leading up to the massacre of 13 people and an unborn child by an Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood.

Webster also served a three-week stint in 2002 on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which held the power to inspect and discipline auditing firms in the wake of corporate scandals like the fall of Enron.

He occasionally made headlines in later life: Webster helped thwart a phone-scammer who, apparently not realizing the target, tried to extort the intelligence veteran and his wife Lynda in 2014 and penned an op-ed in The New York Times in 2019 condemning then-President Donald Trump for attacking the credibility of the FBI.

Webster was married to Drusilla Lane Webster for 34 years until she died at age 57 in 1984. They had three children together, Amherst College reported in 2022. Webster remarried six years later to Lynda Clugston Webster.