Good evening all, tonight we continue with Mark Riebling's work called ' Wedge- From Pearl Harbor to 911, How the Secret War between the CIA & FBI has endangered National Security'

..N TUESDAY MORNING, March 3, 1987, William Webster was working in his corner office at FBI headquarters, high above the traffic of Pennsylvania Avenue, when he received an urgent telephone call from the White House. Ronald Reagan’s voice had its usual warmth—the folksy, breathy, slightly scratchy timbre that put one automatically at ease—but today there was a barely detectable trace of weakness. “Bill, ” the president said after an exchange of pleasantries, “I’d like for you to take over CIA.”

The timing of the offer was no accident, Webster knew. In about forty hours, the president was scheduled to deliver his first detailed response to the damaging findings of the Tower Commission, a board he had appointed to investigate the Iran-contra scandal. White House aides had previously hinted that Reagan would announce the new nominee for CIA director before his speech, sending a clear signal that the Agency would be reformed. But the president was having a tough time finding any takers for the post. After Gates’ nomination was junked, Republican heavy-weights John Tower, head of the president’s Iran-contra board, and James Baker, his chief of staff, had both declined to clean out Casey’s stables. As a Washington insider, Webster well knew that he was, at best, the fourth choice for a messy job.

He thanked the president and promised to consider the offer. Leaving the White House on tenterhooks through much of the afternoon, Webster convened his FBI aides, consulted his old friend and former DCI Stan Turner, and talked to his three children. (His wife, Drusilla, had died in 1984.) At sixty-three, he was tiring of the bureaucratic life, and had rather been hoping that he might return to the less demanding, more cerebral work of a federal judge, perhaps even on the Supreme Court. He was also uncertain about just how he would adapt to the culture of secrecy at CIA. “The FBI’s one thing, ” his daughter, Drusilla, told him. “But, Daddy, that other place is scary.”

https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2022/03/part-10-wedgehere-comes-judgethe-fall.html