March/April 2014
This week, (click here) after nine years of trying, Freeh and some friends were finally hired as the "go-to investigators" for the scandal-plagued NCAA.
During Louis Freeh’s eight years as the FBI’s director, (click here) he received hundreds of awards, plaques and honors. None of them adorned his office walls at FBI headquarters. However, he eventually papered one entire wall next to his desk with drawings and sketches by his six sons.
“I chose that wall so I could look at them during phone calls or meetings when I needed to keep my focus on reality and what, at the end of any Washington, D.C., day, is really important,” he writes in his 2005 book, “My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.”
“I promised myself when I became director that I wouldn’t be one of those D.C. types who would announce — usually when things were going south — that they were leaving government in order to spend more time with their family. I actually spent all the time I needed with them while director,” Freeh wrote.
When Freeh was FBI director, he sent a message to the bureau’s employees about the agency’s Core Values:
- Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States.
- Respect for the dignity of all those we protect.
- Compassion.
- Fairness.
- Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity.
- Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences of our actions and decisions.
“We who enforce the law must not merely obey it,” he exhorted his people. “We have an obligation to set a moral example, which those whom we protect can follow.”
Freeh, by example, could have added a seventh core value: Keep all things in perspective. He has blended an impressive law enforcement career with raising a large family, which he’s worked to keep as his first priority....
