G-Man Among the Spooks

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William Webster first heard the term "plausible deniability" a few months after he took command of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That was the last time. "I have a responsibility to know about these sensitive operations and to be accountable," he said, banning the phrase. "I wasn't sent here not to know what was going on."

If, as seems likely, the Senate confirms Webster to head the Central Intelligence Agency, he will be entering territory where plausible deniability still exists. If Webster has his way, however, he will ban the policy again. A man of unassailable integrity with a spongelike mind for detail, Webster, 63, is likely to run the CIA as he did the FBI -- by the book and in close consultation with Congress. Says Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd: "Webster is a highly regarded professional who will bring much needed credibility to the CIA."

A St. Louis lawyer and lifelong Republican who was appointed to the federal bench in Missouri by President Nixon in 1971, Webster became head of the FBI in 1978. He took an agency demoralized by the paranoid political spying that marked J. Edgar Hoover's last years and aimed it at truly criminal activities. He shifted agents away from the statistic-making bank-robbery and stolen-car cases that Hoover favored, and authorized long-term undercover operations against organized crime, something Hoover refused to do. With that insider information and thousands of legal wiretaps, the FBI has locked up hundreds of top Mafia figures across the country. Webster's men also branched out to pursue drug traffickers, white collar criminals, corrupt officials and spies.

Even so, Webster did not escape controversy. In the late 1970s the FBI conducted its Abscam investigation, videotaping Capitol Hill lawmakers as they accepted bribes from agents posing as representatives of an Arab sheik. Though the inquiry led to the convictions of one Senator and six Representatives, critics charged that the FBI's tactics amounted to entrapment. Webster also oversaw the arrests of eleven agents, most notably Richard Miller, who was convicted of espionage last June. The Judge, as he likes to be called, preferred that route to Hoover's practice of summarily firing the offender and burying the evidence. "He takes deep pride that we handle our own problems," said Roger Young, a former assistant director. "He is glad that this was something we ourselves discovered and have taken steps to correct."

But can a man who has lived in the black-and-white world of law enforcement navigate in a universe that is all shades of gray? Commanding a corps of clannish, spit-and-polish G-men is slim preparation for managing the articulate intellectuals, technocrats and covert operatives who make up the CIA. Webster impressed agency officials when he successfully ousted Soviet KGB officers from the U.N. last fall, but some analysts are distressed by his inexperience in foreign affairs. "Webster's a nice guy," says one critic. "But it remains to be seen whether he has the breadth and depth for the job."