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Sullivan, William

William Sullivan was a career Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) bureaucrat and the founding director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of National Narcotics Intelligence. The office was folded into what became the Drug Enforcement Administration.

William Cornelius Sullivan was born in Bolton, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1912. He graduated from Hudson High School. He completed advanced degrees from American University and George Washington University; he was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Boston College. Sullivan became an agent for the FBI in 1941 after completing the Bureau University. During the early part of World War II, he was sent on an undercover mission to Spain. FBI colleagues came to call him “Crazy Bill,” because of his unpredictability. He was ambitious and rose quickly up the ranks of the bureau. Early in his tenure with the bureau, Sullivan had a close relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director. Sullivan held a series of administrative posts with the FBI rising to the point where he was the third highest ranking official within the FBI, behind only Hoover and his assistant, Clyde A. Tol-son. In fact, Sullivan was, for a time, considered as one of the possible successors to Hoover.

In 1961 Walter Sullivan was promoted to assistant director of the Domestic Intelligence Division of the FBI. This unit was also known as the FBI's Division V and Sullivan ran intelligence operations through the division that investigated espionage, sabotage and subversion.

Walter Sullivan had also directed Project COINTELPRO for the FBI; this project was instituted in accord with the Huston Plan in order to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens suspected of involvement in dissident political and cultural movements. During President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, Sullivan redesigned the counter-intelligence operations of the FBI. However, Sullivan came to disagree with some of controversial counter-intelligence actions that Hoover was authorizing, despite the fact that Sullivan had been involved with infamous FBI investigations, such as those regarding Alger Hiss, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy.

Nixon Administration

Sullivan had risen to be an associate director at the FBI. It had been his ambition to succeed Hoover as director, but others at the bureau did not support this. Sullivan began working closely with members of the Nixon White House staff, hoping to garner President Richard M. Nixon's support. Sullivan arranged a special process where he could authorize requests from the White House for unusual wiretaps. Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig wrote memoranda supporting Sullivan's special relationship with the White House, so Hoover relented and allowed Sullivan to continue his unorthodox operations. However, there were transcripts and authorizations for these wiretaps. Sullivan had these records transferred from the FBI to John Ehrlichman in the White House.

The rift between Sullivan and Hoover widened. On October 1, 1971, Hoover fired Sullivan from the FBI for insubordination and suspected disloyalty. After Hoover died on May 2, 1972, President Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray, who had worked with the Nixon election campaign, as acting director of the FBI.

The Nixon campaign organization and subsequent administration was very interested in the use of surveillance techniques. John Dean, an assistant to Attorney General John Mitchell, directed Sullivan to write a summary of illegal activities conducted by the FBI under previous presidential administrations; this became known as the “Sullivan Report.” Sullivan was supportive of the efforts of strategists in the Nixon administration who asserted that federal efforts to deal with narcotic drugs were too fragmented. Indeed, there were many uncoordinated initiatives intended to address the drug problem, including those emanating from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Customs Bureau, and the Internal Revenue Service. The policy to consolidate approaches to deal with drugs during the Nixon administration is best exemplified by the passage of the sweeping Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.

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