William H. Webster, Who Ran Both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., Dies at 101

U.S.|William H. Webster, Who Ran Both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., Dies at 101

William H. Webster, the only person ever to lead both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, switching from lawman to spymaster while the bureau was investigating high crimes at the White House and the C.I.A., has died. He was 101.

His family confirmed his death in a statement, but did not say where or when he died.

Mr. Webster was born two months before J. Edgar Hoover took command of the F.B.I. in 1924. Hoover, who governed the bureau for almost half a century, was not yet six years in his grave when Mr. Webster was sworn in as the F.B.I.’s third director on Feb. 23, 1978, and Hoover’s long shadow still darkened Washington.

Senate hearings had exposed the bureau’s Cold War history of warrantless wiretaps and burglaries and laid bare its vendettas against the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The F.B.I., America’s leading law enforcement agency, was widely seen as lawless and malicious. Six weeks after Mr. Webster took office, a federal grand jury, citing a “conspiracy to injure and oppress citizens” with illegal break-ins against the friends and families of far-left fugitives, indicted L. Patrick Gray III, the former acting F.B.I. director; Edward S. Miller, the former F.B.I. intelligence chief; and Mark Felt, the former deputy director who was later revealed as Deep Throat, The Washington Post’s secret Watergate source. (Mr. Gray’s indictment was later dropped by the Justice Department. Mr. Miller and Mr. Felt were fined and later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.)