Onetime FBI Chief Kelley Dies

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Clarence Kelley, the former FBI director who steered the agency through the turbulent post-Watergate era and helped usher in the computer age of crime fighting, has died at age 85.

Kelley, who had battled minor strokes and emphysema in recent years, died at his home yesterday, said his wife, Shirley Kelley.

"He died peacefully," she said. "Clarence dealt with his illness with as much grace as he dealt with his public, popular life."

When President Nixon appointed Kelley to the job in 1973, he inherited an agency shaken by the Watergate scandal and in transition after the death of J. Edgar Hoover.

"Clarence Kelley represented the best of the FBI, the past and future," said FBI Director Louis Freeh. "He served his country and the law-enforcement community unselfishly and distinguished himself in a variety of assignments . . ."

As FBI director from 1973 to 1978, and as Kansas City police chief before that, Kelley helped modernize crime fighting, encouraging the use of the latest technology.

He joined the FBI fresh out of college in 1940. In 1961, he left to become chief of police in Kansas City, a job he held until the president offered him the FBI director's job.

Kelley later said he had joined the FBI to gain some quick experience in the justice system but soon developed a love for police work.

"It's one of those occupations that captures you, and that's all there is to it," he told a newspaper in 1986. "I just had an interesting career and rolled with it. I did the best I could."

Freeh said that during Kelley's FBI tenure, the agency focused on counterintelligence, organized crime and white-collar crime and developed an agent force with more women and ethnic minorities.

"Clarence Kelley was the right person for the FBI at that time," said Terry Knowles, who was an FBI agent from 1965 to 1989. "I think Clarence Kelley was directly responsible for getting us back on our feet."

Kelley won praise as an administrator who never lost the common touch.

"The law-enforcement community has lost a true innovator who was dedicated to his profession, and Kansas City has lost a man who was a devoted public servant," said Kansas City Police Chief Floyd Barch.

In 1968, the Kansas City police department became the nation's first to install computers allowing officers to quickly run checks on cars' license plates.

But critics said Kelley was slow to embrace civil-rights causes.

"He was not as sensitive as he should have been and could have been," said Alvin Brooks, a black officer who resigned in a dispute with Kelley over minority promotion policies.

Brooks said Kelley later grew to understand the civil-rights movement as chief of the FBI.

Kelley was married to Ruby Kelley for 38 years before her death in 1975. They had two children, Mary Kelley Dobbins, 55, and Kent Clarence Kelley, 50, and three grandchildren.

In 1976, Kelley married Shirley Dyckes Kelley, 63.

Kelley once said he learned the impact of crime as a victim, when his house was ransacked in 1985.

"I thought that after being chief of police and director of the FBI they would stay away from me," he said. "But I guess this shows that if they would do this to me, by God, it could happen to anybody."