Reno, Freeh Defend Choice to Run Lab

Chemical, biological, nuclear and computer crime threats inspired the selection of a former nuclear weapons lab director with no forensic experience to head the troubled FBI crime lab, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said. They defended Freeh’s decision to depart from an FBI promise to hire an experienced forensic scientist. But the chief Senate overseer of the FBI, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), joined others in blasting the move. The FBI hired Donald M. Kerr Jr., 58, a physicist-engineer who from 1979 to 1985 headed the government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.