His most enduring legacy may have been his commitment to affirmative action.
SAN ANTONIO — William S. Sessions, a former federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan to head the FBI and fired years later by President Bill Clinton, died Friday at his San Antonio home. He was 90.
William Sessions
Sessions died of natural causes not related to the novel coronavirus, said his daughter, Sara Sessions Naughton.
Sessions was a career Justice Department attorney and federal judge until Reagan appointed him FBI director in 1987. He modernized the bureau’s technology, overhauled the FBI’s fingerprint files, reassigned 325 counterintelligence agents after the end of the Cold War and focused the bureau’s efforts on violent crime.
His most enduring legacy may have been his commitment to affirmative action at a bureau that historically was dominated by white men. Sessions refused to fight a federal judge’s ruling that favored Hispanic agents, settled a civil rights lawsuit brought by black agent Donald Rochon, who was harassed by white agents, and settled a threatened suit by black agents.
All of which placed him at odds with some FBI traditionalists.
