William Webster: Answering the call of his country

A private man in public service, Rappahannock resident celebrates 100 years

“I am an old Navy man, and I heard a bosun’s pipe.”

In 1978, that was William H. Webster’s reason for leaving a distinguished judicial career and the possibility of a future seat on the United States Supreme Court to right a floundering federal agency. Then it was “all hands on deck” for Bill Webster as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation followed by director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And that call to duty echoed through the decades, interspersing government service between stints of private legal practice. He is the only person to head both the FBI and CIA.

Intelligence and integrity were among his super powers, and that combination persuaded presidents from both parties to appoint him a high-level problem solver not only as director of those two agencies but also chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Commission, leader of the commission investigating the 1992 Los Angeles riots and more. The list of appointments, achievements, awards, medals, honorary degrees and notes of merit would run pages. It includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Webster and his wife, Lynda, escaped weekends to Rappahannock, starting 22 years ago, and became full-timers when COVID hit, but kept a low profile. The public leader in D.C. returned to private life in the country, as he and Lynda gathered new friends and old connections to wine, dine, walk and talk of books, politics and news of the world.

With Webster’s centennial this week, his life again became high-profile as he turned 100 on March 6 . . .  and the celebrations began at: Glen Gordon Manor in Huntly, where the extended Webster family has gathered for the judge’s birthdays since they  settled here; The Inn at Little Washington where friends who share March 6 birthdays have assembled annually for toasts and feasting on that date.

Honoring  the “benefits and integrity” of Webster’s leadership along with his milestone membership in the select Century Club, the FBI’s Society of Former Special Agents showered their former director with birthday cards. It was perfect recognition for a gentleman who cherishes the daily stroll down his farm lane to the mailbox and a powerful reminder that he hasn’t been forgotten by the street agents.

This year, the observances in Webster’s honor included a special and very personal accolade, the debut of the William Webster Centennial March, composed by Col. John Bourgeois, Webster’s dear friend and across-the-road neighbor who is director emeritus of  “The President’s Own” United States Marine  Band.

Woven through the centennial march is the theme from the Missouri Waltz, Bourgeois explained, since Webster was born and raised in Missouri.

“The march begins in the key of F and goes to B flat, signifying the FBI, and it concludes in C and A flat, signifying the CIA,” he added, grinning to beat the band. The piece was recorded two weeks ago at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where the colonel joked that he has a bar stool to match his chair at Chicago’s Loyola University.

The two men knew each other from Webster’s FBI days and Bourgeois’ time with the Marine Band, and they’re both members of the exclusive Alfalfa Club for power players and tycoons. The D.C. club’s only function is an annual black-tie dinner at the Capital Hilton on the last Saturday in January, and at one of those dinners Bourgeois learned the identity of the new family across the lane when Webster greeted him with “Hi, neighbor!”

“He’s a gentleman’s gentleman, who never sparked controversy,”  Bourgeois said. “One of a kind. Unique in every way.”  Webster would motor down his drive and across the road for an evening cocktail with his neighbor, sounding the ooga-ooga horn on his Gator utility vehicle as he neared. “We’re like family out here,” Bourgeois said of the circle gathered by the Websters. “Bill is a jurist, gentleman, scholar and patriot and, most importantly, a friend.”

Law drew him from the start

“I always wanted to be a lawyer,” Webster recalled last week, settling back in an easy chair and taking in the view from his country home off Hunters Road near Washington. “The law has so much to do with how we live, relate to each other and resolve our differences. And we had no lawyers in the family!” he added, with a characteristic twinkle dancing in his blue eyes. Summers on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, where his aunt lived, almost persuaded the Missouri boy to try hotel management, but his mother held firm, recalled wife Lynda. “She insisted he would be a lawyer.”

Mom was right. Webster earned his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts and a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

It was an interrupted start. Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he enlisted in 1943 after his sophomore year. He returned to the Navy for a second tour during the Korean War when he finished  law school, and there he wrote his first footnote to history.

Webster represented an ensign accused of stealing batteries, and he got the sailor off by arguing he was not read his rights. “Due to Lieutenant Webster’s interference, unable to obtain confession,” was the message to the higher-ups. Webster earned a commendation, the right-to-counsel advisory was added to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and that legal precursor was cited by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda ruling.

But the most valuable lesson from his years in the Navy didn’t come from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “The Navy taught me about leadership,” he said.

Always a  problem solver

Regarding the law, Webster described his area of interest and expertise as problem resolution, noting, ”I didn’t shy away from anything.”  But with clients that included the Enterprise car rental agency, Anheuser-Busch and Mastercard, the focus was more corporate than criminal.  

Asked to name a hero, someone who inspired him, Webster paused for a minute. “Eisenhower, the general and the president. Because of his positions, his ideas, what he did and said. He never favored one side to the exclusion of the other. He was seasoned and resistant to influence.”

His role model was John J. McCloy, another Amherst grad, a diplomat and lawyer, who advised every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. Instrumental in rebuilding post World War II Europe, McCloy was “a private man in public service,” said Webster, who likewise believes that government is strengthened by having private people move in and out, bringing with them “fresh ideas and energy.”

Appointed a judge for the U.S. District Court for Missouri’s Eastern District in 1970 and a judge for the Eighth District Court of Appeals in 1973, Webster said he was guided by a desire to mold the law so that it had a positive impact on people’s lives and “could be passed on to succeeding generations with reverence and pride.” 

As a judge, he saw himself as both a servant and a master of the law, always renewing his fealty to it. And in his mind, the judiciary was always American, “never Republican or Democrat.” 

Webster was on the short list for the U.S. Supreme Court during the Ford Administration, a point that was noted by Chief Justice Warren Burger when he advised Webster against taking the “dead-end job” at the FBI. Burger described the agency as  “a mess,” following disclosures of domestic surveillance and illegal wiretaps, while he maintained that Webster’s eventual Supreme Court seat was a foregone conclusion.

But, Webster explained, he thought the nation’s top law enforcement agency required “righting with the law” and an understanding of “the importance of the rule of law.” And he listened to counsel from Solicitor General Wade McCree, who made the point that mattered most: “Your country needs you.”

Webster’s goal was to shape the FBI into the model for all U.S. law enforcement in professionalism and conformity with the constitution. In 1987, with the FBI’s pride and reputation restored, President Ronald Reagan asked him to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Many in the CIA had become artful dodgers under Director William Casey, and Webster was to end the game playing with the truth and reestablish the four Cs for testimony: “Correct, candid, complete and consistent.” 

Said The New York Times of the appointment: “Mr. Webster has a reputation for absolute integrity.” And the always controlled and steady Webster was dubbed “Mild Bill,” in contrast to “Wild Bill” Donovan, whose statue stands in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley. (Fans of police procedurals would be pleased to know that Mild Bill approved the psychological profile consultations with local law enforcement, sharing the services of the new Behavioral Science Unit to apprehend serial killers and mass murderers.)

During his tenure at the FBI, his wife of 34 years, Drusilla Lane Webster, died in 1984. The couple had three children Drusilla, William Jr., and Katherine. Following six years as a widower, Webster married his current wife, Lynda Clugston, in 1990.

Rappahannock friends

Bennett Johnston is a former four-term Democratic senator from Louisiana who discovered Rappahannock on vacation drives to Camp Hoover and settled in the heights of Old Hollow a quarter century ago. He and Webster have been friends for 30 years. 

“Bill is a man for all seasons. He’s unusual, bordering on the unique because every aspect of his character is to be admired.” Ticking off the attributes, Johnston listed “kind but strong, always fair, possessing deep character and

 integrity. He would never tell a lie, in contrast to so many people today who believe one thing and say another. Bill would never utter falsehoods.

“He’s good company,” Johnston continued. He remembered one of Col. Bourgeois’ annual gatherings for Cajun lunch where Webster had the floor. “He talked of the past and how it relates to the present. We were absolutely hypnotized by the scope of his experience and the wisdom. You can feel the character and integrity of the man in his presence.”

“There’s always something lively going on at the Websters,” added Ellis Wisner, who comes several times a week from his hilltop home near Massies Corner to accompany Webster on his walks. “Bill’s generous with hospitality. He wants to know what you’re reading, what you’ve heard, what you think.” 

Wisner has known Webster for a decade or so in Rappahannock; his partner Judy Hope, former associate director of the White House Domestic Council, who also taught law at Pepperdine, Georgetown, University of Richmond and Harvard, was Webster’s friend even earlier, during the years as spymaster.

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Wisner and Webster have a cosmically coincidental connection that makes for good conversation on those half-mile saunters  – Wisner’s father was a founding officer of the CIA, 40 years before Webster became director. Like others, he described Webster as a careful man, closed mouth on behind-the-scenes doings of the agencies he led. 

Nonetheless, Webster was asked for just one tiny, inconsequential secret for The Rappahannock News. And he joked, “I tell you the same thing I told my wife. If I reveal a secret to you, I’d have to kill you!”

But he’ll happily share the secrets of successful aging. “I married a younger woman who keeps me young, too,” he confided, grinning.

In a more serious vein, that younger woman reported her husband played tennis until he was 93, rode horses until he was 94, and until very recently, did jumping jacks on a trampoline every morning, upping the number of jumps with each advancing year. And he still walks a half mile four or five days a week.

“Bill enjoys a glass of wine as much as anyone does, but he doesn’t abuse the house he lives in – his body. He takes care of himself. He’s the sweetest guy, and he wakes up happy every morning,” Lynda said.

Webster was also willing to share his secret for happiness and a good life. “Try to do what you understand to be right, in accord with the rules of the game.”

William Hedgcock Webster kept to that personal credo for his first century, and with past being prologue, he’ll keep right on doing right as he begins his second.

Foothills Forum is an independent, community-supported nonprofit tackling the need for in-depth research and reporting on Rappahannock County issues.

The group has an agreement with Rappahannock Media, owner of the Rappahannock News, to present this series and other award-winning reporting projects. More at foothillsforum.org.