Justice Dept. To Probe Possible FBI Cover-Up

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Janet Reno assigned the Justice Department's inspector general today to investigate whether the FBI covered up allegations that one of its crime-lab agents testified falsely during the ouster of a federal judge.

She acted after Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said yesterday they would not be content with the internal investigation begun Tuesday by FBI Director Louis Freeh because they are wary of the FBI's ability to police itself.

"We're trying to have the inspector general pursue every issue" about the lab, Reno said today. Her spokesman, Bert Brandenburg, said Freeh agreed to transfer the probe to the inspector general.

Grassley, chairman of a Senate Judiciary panel that oversees the FBI, had written Reno asking her to take that step.

"It is better for an independent investigation," Grassley wrote. "Questions have been raised in the public arena in recent years regarding the FBI's ability to investigate itself."

Specter, a Judiciary Committee member who investigated the FBI's deadly Ruby Ridge, Idaho, siege, said, "It's atrocious what's coming out about the falsification of testimony. The Judiciary Committee has to pick this up" in hearings.

Freeh said he learned for the first time Tuesday that the bureau may have withheld from Congress, judges and defense attorneys a 1989 memo by FBI lab examiner William Tobin. The memo alleged that lab agent Michael Malone gave 27 instances of false or misleading testimony in proceedings that led to the impeachment and ouster of District Judge Alcee Hastings in 1989.

"How can he (Freeh) say that this is the first time he had heard of this?" Grassley asked in a Senate floor speech yesterday. "It's in the report that's been sitting on Mr. Freeh's desk since January 20th."

Grassley was referring to a draft report on lab problems by the Justice Department's inspector general, who Grassley said discovered the Tobin memo, but "nothing was done to correct the record."