#William Sessions, FBI director fired by Bill Clinton, dead at 90

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William Sessions talks at a news conference in San Francisco in 1988 about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Pete Leabo/AP

Former FBI head William S. Sessions, the Texas judge appointed to the job by President Ronald Reagan and fired by President Bill Clinton six years later, died Friday at age 90.

Sessions died of a congestive heart ailment at his son’s San Antonio, Texas, home, daughter Sara Sessions Naughton said.

The longtime Justice Department lawyer and federal judge became FBI director in 1987. He gave the bureau’s technology a system-wide update, modernized its fingerprint files, diversified a workforce that had been dominated by white men, and improved relations with Congress.

After serving under two Republican presidents, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, he ran afoul of Clinton shortly after the Democrat came to office.

When a Justice Department report accused Sessions of misusing the bureau’s official limousine and helicopter for personal trips and ordered him to pay back taxes for the travel, Clinton fired him in 1993.