WASHINGTON Webster leaves oversight panel

The controversy stemmed from his past work on the audit committee of a company facing fraud charges.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former FBI Director William Webster resigned under pressure as head of a special accounting oversight board created by Congress to rebuild public confidence shaken by a cascade of business scandals.
Webster was caught up in controversy over his selection by the Securities and Exchange Commission to head the new board, a debacle that already had brought the resignations of SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt and the SEC's chief accountant.
Webster's resignation was announced Tuesday, one day before the oversight board was scheduled to have its first meeting. The meeting, described as informal and dealing with administrative matters such as office space and staff, was proceeding today.
At issue
Webster declined to blame Pitt for not informing fellow SEC commissioners that Webster had headed the audit committee of a company now under investigation for fraud and had fired the company's outside auditors. But he acknowledged that the information should have been shared. Pitt, a Bush appointee, resigned a week ago over that.
"I don't want to put any responsibility on" Pitt, Webster said on CNN's "Moneyline" program. "I disclosed a possible problem, and they said they'd look into it, and they did. But I had no knowledge of what they might decide to do about it."
Asked whether he would agree that the commissioners should have been told, Webster replied: "I think it would help even if the information, in the opinion of those who looked at it, was as unimportant as it appeared to be in my case -- because you never know."
In a resignation letter to Pitt, Webster, who also once headed the CIA, said he now thought his continued presence on the board "will only generate more distractions which will not be helpful to the important mission of the board."
"Those who know me will appreciate that I do not abandon duty lightly. It is time to clear the air," he wrote.
Awaiting replacement
Pitt, whose 15-month tenure has been marked by a series of political missteps, has remained in office pending President Bush's naming a replacement to be confirmed by the Senate.
Creation of the oversight board was mandated by Congress last summer in legislation responding to the wave of accounting scandals at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other big companies. The five-member board, to be independent of the accounting industry, will be armed with subpoena authority and disciplinary powers and financed by fees from publicly traded companies. Each board member will be paid about $400,000 a year.