Former FBI Director William Sessions dies at 90

William Sessions, 90, the scrupulously straight-arrow director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1987 to 1993 who faced down the agency's old-boy network to start bringing in more black, Hispanic and female agents, only to be fired for petty financial misconduct, died Friday at his son's home in San Antonio.

The cause was a congestive heart ailment.

Sessions bitterly fought a Justice Department report that accused him of abusing the perks of his job — avoiding taxes on his use of an FBI limousine and contriving work-related trips to meet relatives, among alleged violations. He refused to resign and ultimately was dismissed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Proclaiming his innocence, he blamed the report on disgruntled agents, saying they were unhappy with Sessions' independence and his shake-up of the FBI's traditional order created under J. Edgar Hoover, who had ruled the agency from 1924 until his death in 1972.

Sessions also weathered sharp criticism during his tenure for his handling of the fatal Ruby Ridge shootout in Idaho in 1992 and the fiery siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993.

Only the third Senate-approved director since Hoover — there were several acting directors as well — the austere, teetotaling Sessions made his mark as a strict but principled federal prosecutor and then judge in West Texas before President Ronald Reagan tapped him for the FBI post in November 1987 to succeed William Webster, another federal judge.

Sessions won lasting public support from Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., for his efforts in recruiting and promoting minority agents within the FBI — an agency that had conducted controversial surveillance of King and his organization under Hoover in the 1960s.

The family moved about the Midwest in the 1930s as the father changed pulpits and achieved notice for writing the "God and Country" handbook for the Boy Scouts of America. The future FBI director remained an avid canoeist and mountain climber.

He enlisted in the Air Force as the Korean War began and became an airborne radar intercept instructor, mustering out as a captain in 1955.

Sessions and his wife, Alice, first lived in Waco, Texas, where he studied at Baylor University on the G.I. Bill and finished an undergraduate degree in 1956 and a law degree in 1958. He entered 10 years of private practice in Waco, then took a job with the Justice Department's criminal division in Washington in 1969, prosecuting obscenity, voter fraud and draft-evasion cases.

A moderate Republican, he was named U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas by President Richard Nixon in 1971. Three years later, President Gerald Ford elevated him to judge in the district. He became chief judge in 1980 and held that position until Reagan brought him back to Washington in 1987 to run the FBI.

Lennie Niehaus, 90, who became well known as an alto saxophonist and arranger for jazz bandleader Stan Kenton in the 1950s before turning to a career as a composer of film scores, notably for Clint Eastwood movies like "Bird" and "Unforgiven," died May 28 at his daughter's home in Redlands, Calif.

Niehaus had been with the Kenton band for several months when he was drafted into the Army in 1952. He played in the base band at Fort Ord in Northern California and in a quartet that performed at noncommissioned officers' clubs where Eastwood, a jazz lover, was a regular.

He returned to Kenton's band in 1954 and remained until 1959, but he did not reconnect with Eastwood until the 1970s. By then, Niehaus was orchestrating scores for composer Jerry Fielding, including some for movies starring Eastwood, including "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976).

Eight years later, Niehaus wrote the score for "Tightrope," a murder mystery set in New Orleans that Eastwood produced and starred in as a police officer.

Eastwood wanted the score at times to reflect the "cacophony of music" that burst from clubs on Bourbon Street. So he flew with Niehaus to New Orleans, where they walked along that historic French Quarter street.

"Listen, hear those snippets of music on the left and right sides of the street?" Niehaus recalled Eastwood saying. "Can you get that effect in the score?"

With his score for "Tightrope," he became inextricably linked with Eastwood, composing scores for 14 films that Eastwood directed, including "Pale Rider," "Heartbreak Ridge," "The Bridges of Madison County," "Absolute Power" and "Space Cowboys." Beginning in 2003, he orchestrated the music for six others, most recently "Gran Torino" (2008).

For "Bird" (1988), the Eastwood film about pioneering jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, who was known as Bird, Niehaus not only composed and supervised the music but also taught Forest Whitaker, the star, how to play and hold himself onstage as Parker had.

As the music supervisor, Niehaus removed the piano, bass and drums from some of Parker's recordings from the 1940s and '50s because of their poor quality, leaving only the sax, and then brought in musicians to record new tracks.

Leonard Niehaus was born June 1, 1929, in St. Louis to Aaron and Clariss Niehaus. His father, a Russian immigrant, was a violinist who played in an orchestra that accompanied silent films in theaters.