Louis J. Freeh

Louis Freeh first joined the FBI as a Manhattan street agent in 1975. After six years, he left the bureau to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the southern district of New York as an assistant and later associate U.S. attorney. From 1981–91, he made headlines as the lead prosecutor in the “Pizza Connection” case, a high-profile case involving drug trafficking and organized crime. He also prosecuted the man responsible for the 1988 murder of a federal judge in Oklahoma and a Georgia NAACP leader. President George H.W. Bush made him a judge for the southern district of New York in 1991, a job he held until July 1993, when President Bill Clinton nominated him to be FBI director. While at the FBI, he oversaw a number of advancements, including a National DNA Index System that allows public forensic laboratories to exchange and compare DNA profiles. As director, he established a global presence for the FBI and integrated its operations with local, state, and foreign counterparts. He left the FBI in June 2001 and served as vice chair and general counsel for MBNA until 2005. That same year, Freeh published a book about his career in the FBI, titled My FBI: Bringing Down the Maf a, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.