Reid praises Las Vegas FBI office

Friday, June 22, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this morning he feels badly that the Las Vegas FBI office has been dragged into the national scrutiny of the bureau in Washington.

Grant Ashley, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office, briefed Reid over the weekend on the scandal involving James J. Hill, the FBI security analyst charged with stealing and selling confidential investigative information that wound up in the hands of mob figures.

"I think Grant Ashley has done a tremendous job," Reid told the Sun from Washington. "He's been open with us every step of the way. It's too bad he's found himself with this mess."

Reid, the Senate's assistant majority leader, said embarrassing cases such as those involving Hill and Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent charged with spying for Russia, have surfaced as a result of the FBI's diligence in ferreting out corruption within its house.

"The FBI has been given more tools to go after bad people within their ranks," Reid said. "That's why they're coming up with stuff like this Hill guy, who's accused of stealing files.

"In the short term it looks bad, but in the long term it's going to be good for the FBI. They need to have a better image."

Reid said he supports Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision to order a Justice Department review of the FBI in the wake of the Hill and Hanssen cases and the mistakes made in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

At the same time, Reid said Congress should be taking its own look at the FBI.

In Las Vegas, meanwhile, the FBI continued today to refuse to confirm that former FBI agent Mike Levin, now a private investigator, is the man who allegedly recruited Hill and ultimately turned him in.

Levin reportedly told FBI agents in New York that he had paid Hill $25,000 since November 1999 for classified FBI documents relating to various criminal cases and then passed on the documents to organized crime members and other FBI targets.

Levin, who was forced to resign from the FBI in 1997 because of alleged government credit card abuses, has not returned calls to his office and cellular phone. He is reported to be back in Las Vegas.

The FBI was continuing to assess the damage caused by the alleged theft of the top-secret information.

Hill, a 20-year Air Force veteran, who has worked for the FBI since 1991, had access to national security and electronic surveillance information, as well as confidential informants and witnesses data stored in the FBI's national computer system.

Hill, through his attorney, has denied any wrongdoing and offered to help the FBI find others within the Las Vegas office who might have provided Levin with information.