Judge Johnson may be just what the beleaguered bureau needs
President Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell sat in the Oval Office chewing over a familiar problem. FBI Director Clarence Kelley was due to step down by the end of 1977, but Carter and Bell had no replacement in sight; they were not happy with the five candidates proposed by a special committee. "My God," sighed Bell, "I still wish we could get ole Frank Johnson to take it."
As a matter of fact, Bell, to his pleased astonishment, had already received a signal from U.S. District Judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr. (TIME cover, May 12, 1967). One of Bell's aides, a former Johnson law clerk named Frances M. ("Kelly") Green, had informed the Attorney General that Johnson was having "second thoughts"—he was now convinced he had made a mistake in turning down the offer of the FBI post eight months ago. Bell quickly arranged a clandestine rendezvous with Johnson last week in the dining room at the Newnan, Ga., Holiday Inn. "Nobody recognized either one of us," chortles Bell. At the end of the two-hour meeting, Bell went away convinced that Johnson was prepared to serve for the full ten-year term established by Congress last year.
Thus was Carter able to announce a gilt-edged choice for one of his most crucial appointments. Since the 1972 death of J. Edgar Hoover, the 8,400-agent bureau has been virtually rudderless and buffeted by disclosures of repeated individual-rights abuses. Now the FBI will be getting a leader with a towering record for correcting abuses of civil rights.
Johnson's approval by the Senate is a near certainty. The appointment not only delighted liberals but also drew surprising praise from some segregationists, who were forced to acknowledge Johnson's fairness and integrity. Johnson, 58, has probably handed down more important and innovative rulings than any trial judge in U.S. history. Almost immediately after his appointment to the federal bench in 1955, he began issuing orders that broke down segregation in Dixie. His role as point man for social change brought him and his family ostracism, vituperation, cross burnings and death threats. With Johnson obviously in mind, Alabama Governor George Wallace last year groused that "thugs and federal judge have just about taken charge of this country" and suggested a "political barbed-wire enema" for such interlopers.
The careers of Wallace and Johnson have been intertwined since their years together at the University of Alabama law school, where Wallace was considered liberal and Johnson an aristocratic conservative. Wallace grabbed headlines in 1959, when, as a lameduck state judge he made a public show of defying a Johnson order to turn over voting lists to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Johnson later found that Wallace had cooperated with the authorities, and dropped contempt charges against him. But the false show of bravado helped propel Wallace into the governorship in 1962. As the years passed, Johnson's intervention in .he workings of state government so emasculated Wallace's authority that some observers began calling Johnson "the real Governor of Alabama."