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The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/William Barr.md

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category tags summary born location relations created updated
Law Enforcement & Legal
Person
CIA
Lawyer
PROMIS
INSLAW
BNLScandal
IranContra
Former CIA employee who became Attorney General in 1991 and again in 2019; he appointed the INSLAW and BNL special counsels and urged the Iran-Contra pardons of 1992. 1950-05-23 Washington, D.C.
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employed_by Central Intelligence Agency 1973 1977 assistant legislative counsel 1
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head_of Office of Legal Counsel 1989 1
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employed_by Department of Justice 1989 1993 Office of Legal Counsel, deputy attorney general, attorney general 1
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appointed Nicholas J. Bua 1991-11-07 INSLAW special counsel 2
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appointed Frederick Lacey 1992-10-16 BNL special counsel 4
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appointed Malcolm Wilkey House bank special counsel 1
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director_of Dominion Energy 2019-02-12 5
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relative_of Donald Barr son 6
2025-08-05 2026-10-26

William P. Barr worked at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 1977 while attending law school at night. "During my tenure at CIA, 1973 to '77, the investigations of the agency started, and I moved to the legislative counsel's office," he recalled; as assistant legislative counsel under Director George H.W. Bush in 1976 he worked against legislation of Representatives Michael Harrington and Bella Abzug that would have required notice to people whose mail the agency had opened under HTLINGUAL. He then clerked for Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a former head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, who telephoned Bush for a reference. After private practice and the Reagan transition he joined the White House domestic policy staff, where he worked with C. Boyden Gray, counsel to Vice President Bush. In 1988 he helped screen vice-presidential candidates through Robert Kimmitt.1

His father, Donald Barr, had served briefly in the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War.2 Barr began seasonal employment at the CIA in June 1971, while pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University, and wrote in his 2022 memoir, One Damn Thing After Another: "I want a career in intelligence.... My strategy is to make myself an attractive candidate by becoming an expert on China."2

Justice Department, 1989-1993

Gray, who wanted in the Office of Legal Counsel "someone in that position who believed in executive authority," asked Barr to take it in 1989; Barr was "the White House's choice," acceptable to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. At the Office of Legal Counsel he took part in the planning of the legal basis for the invasion of Panama and the arrest of Manuel Noriega in December 1989. He became deputy attorney general in 1990 and acting attorney general in August 1991, during the seizure of the Talladega federal prison by Cuban detainees, and served as attorney general until January 1993.1

INSLAW

According to the report of Nicholas J. Bua, Barr appointed him special counsel on the INSLAW matter on November 7, 1991, requesting "a complete and thorough investigation."3 The House Committee on the Judiciary gave the date as November 13, 1991, and noted that "at that time the Attorney General had not empowered Judge Bua to subpoena witnesses, convene a grand jury or compel the Department to produce key documents."4 Barr recalled that he announced the appointment at his confirmation hearing, in answer to Senator Paul Simon: "I've promised him carte blanche. Let the chips fall where they may." Simon, he said, called it "great news," and "Once Simon gave his imprimatur, that issue was off the table."1

BNL

On the BNL Scandal loans to Iraq, Barr declined to seek an independent counsel. "Even though an independent counsel was not required, in my opinion, because they didn't meet the statutory test, I just used my inherent authority," he recalled. He first asked former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who declined, and on October 16, 1992, appointed the retired judge Frederick Lacey. Barr said the position became untenable after an allegation that the CIA had withheld cables and after a White House aide's call to the Atlanta prosecutor Gale McKenzie about the case, and that Bush telephoned him from Air Force One only to ask what to say about it. Lacey reported on December 8, 1992, that there were no grounds for an independent counsel and that he had "seen nothing" to suggest that Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger knew of the loans; Representative Henry B. Gonzalez called the report a whitewash.15

House Bank

Barr appointed his former judge, Wilkey, as special counsel for the investigation of the House bank. He recalled that two members of Congress "took me back in my office" and "threatened that life could be very difficult for me if this thing was really investigated," and that he answered, "That's tough. It's going to be investigated."1

Iran-Contra Pardons

At the end of the administration Barr advised Bush to pardon Caspar Weinberger, "but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others." "The big ones obviously were the Iran Contra ones. I certainly did not oppose any of them. I favored the broadest. There were some people arguing just for Weinberger, and I said, 'No, in for a penny, in for a pound.'" He described Elliott Abrams as "very unjustly treated" and did not remember going through the pardon office. Of the independent counsel Lawrence Walsh he said: "He was certainly a headhunter and had completely lost perspective." He disputed Bob Woodward's account that Bush "bellowed" at him over Weinberger's indictment on the Friday before the 1992 election: "He didn't even raise his voice. He just said that he felt it cost him the election."1

Attorney General, 2019

Barr resigned from the board of Dominion Energy effective February 12, 2019, before his confirmation as attorney general.6 His department oversaw the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein that year. His father, Donald Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School in New York during the period in which Epstein, a college dropout, was hired there to teach; accounts differ on whether Donald Barr personally hired him.7 The New York Times wrote on July 12, 2019 that Donald Barr announced in February 1974 that he was resigning as headmaster but would stay until the end of the school year, and that "It is unclear whether Mr. Barr hired Mr. Epstein during that time."8 Peter Branch, interim headmaster from July 1, 1974, told Thomas Volscho that he did not recall hiring Epstein and was "relatively certain Barr or possibly the head of the Math Department hired Epstein."9 Marie Brenner wrote in Vanity Fair that Barr "recently claimed he hadn't made the Dalton-Epstein connection until he read about it in the press."10 Interviewed by NPR in December 2019, Brenner said that Barr watched his father "being criticized quite publicly in The New York Times, in New York magazine, in the early 1970s" as he entered college.11

In a deposition before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on August 18, 2025, Barr was asked whether he had recused himself from the Justice Department's review of the Florida prosecution and plea agreement of Epstein. He answered, "No, I didn't recuse myself." He said that the Southern District of New York investigation was "the only thing that I was aware of going on when I was there," and that "I don't recall playing a role in the review of that." He said he had considered whether to recuse from the New York matter, and that the decision not to recuse was made on input from the department's ethics office, by his recollection. Asked about the 2019 Office of Professional Responsibility inquiry into the Florida plea deal, he said, "I wasn't hovering over that or involved in that."12

Asked whether his father's role as headmaster of the Dalton School had been a consideration in the Ethics Office analysis, Barr answered, "Actually, I don't even think... I don't know whether I was aware of that at that time. Obviously not. It's not pertinent at all." Asked about Kirkland & Ellis representing Epstein in the non-prosecution negotiations, and about his former employment with the firm, he said, "I actually don't think I would've had to recuse myself from that. But I just was never involved in that."13

Footnotes

  1. Miller Center, University of Virginia. "William P. Barr Oral History," interview of April 5, 2001, George H. W. Bush Oral History Project. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/william-p-barr-oral-history ↩︎

  2. Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, review essay on William P. Barr, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General (William Morrow, 2022), Studies in Intelligence 67, no. 1 (extracts, March 2023). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/4-Review-Essay-Barr-Memoir.pdf ↩︎

  3. U.S. Department of Justice. Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc., March 1993, introduction. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎

  4. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report, H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport ↩︎

  5. Lacey, Frederick B. "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Investigation: Report of the Independent Counsel," reproduced in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Serial No. 103-95, November 9, 1993; Gonzalez, Henry B. "Update on BNL Investigation," Congressional Record, House, January 21, 1993. ↩︎

  6. Dominion Energy, Inc. Proxy statement, 2019, SEC Form DEF 14A, director table, note 4. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/715957/000119312519085276/d693331ddef14a.htm ↩︎

  7. "The 'Epstein-Barr' Problem of New York City's Dalton School." Law and Crime, July 13, 2019, which states that Epstein was hired "by the school's headmaster Donald Barr in the mid 1970's". https://web.archive.org/web/2019/https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-epstein-barr-problem-of-new-york-citys-dalton-school/ ↩︎

  8. Mike Baker and Amy Julia Harris, "Jeffrey Epstein Taught at Dalton. His Behavior Was Noticed," The New York Times, July 12, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-dalton-teacher.html ↩︎

  9. Thomas Volscho, "Jeffrey Epstein Dodged Questions About Sex With His Dalton Prep School Students," The Daily Beast, July 12, 2019 (updated September 27, 2019). https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-dodged-questions-about-sex-with-his-dalton-prep-school-students ↩︎

  10. Marie Brenner, "'I Had No Problem Being Politically Different': Young William Barr Among the Manhattan Liberals," Vanity Fair, October 7, 2019. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-untold-tale-of-young-william-barr ↩︎

  11. Rachel Martin, interview with Marie Brenner, "'Vanity Fair': Father-Son Dynamic May Explain Tenure Of AG Barr," NPR, December 10, 2019. https://www.kjzz.org/politics/2019-12-10/vanity-fair-father-son-dynamic-may-explain-tenure-of-ag-barr ↩︎

  12. Deposition of William P. Barr, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, August 18, 2025, pp. 47-48. https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Barr-Transcript.pdf ↩︎

  13. Same transcript, pp. 51 and 92-93. ↩︎