After months of maneuvering and news leaks, President Clinton on Monday fired FBI Director William Sessions, saying he was "unable to effectively lead" the agency.

On Tuesday the president is expected to name a New York federal judge and former bureau agent, Louis J. Freeh, to head the nation's premier investigative agency.

Sessions' removal is expected to pave the way for a major reorganization of federal law enforcement agencies, often criticized by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for their duplication and inefficiency, and to make possible the restoration of morale and administrative effectiveness at the FBI.

Sessions, his arm in a sling after a fall Saturday that broke his elbow, called a news conference at the FBI headquarters after Clinton telephoned him to fire him.

The former federal judge from Texas said that after decades of service to law enforcement, "Because of what I would term `scurrilous attacks' on myself and on my wife of 42 years, it has been decided by others . . . that I can no longer be as forceful as I need to be in leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Sessions' ouster closes a strange period in the handling of a Cabinet-level post. He had come under criticism in the Bush administration last year for using FBI planes and other resources for personal matters, allowing his wife undue powers within the bureau and attempting to avoid income taxes on his government-provided limousine service between home and work.

He was investigated by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which found him in violation of government regulations.

Sessions denied improprieties. He said the attacks on him were fueled by FBI officials angry over his efforts to open the ranks to minorities and by Bush administration officials seeking to distract the public from Sessions' charges of political manipulation.

When Clinton took office, his administration said it would review the report and draw its own conclusions about Sessions' suitability for office. But early on there were news leaks that Clinton wanted him out. After Reno took office in March, she said she would review the report.

"Based on this review," she told the president in a letter Monday, "I have concluded that the director has exhibited a serious deficiency in judgment involving matters contained in the report and that he does not command the respect and confidence needed to lead the bureau and the law-enforcement community in addressing the many issues facing law enforcement today."

Reno had first sought Sessions' resignation last week, recalling him from a trip. He met with Reno and other top officials on Saturday and apparently refused to tender his resignation. As he was leaving the Justice Department meeting and helping another person who had stumbled over the curb, Sessions fell and broke several bones in his elbow.

Sessions' refusal to quit forced the president to fire him Monday. Clinton made the announcement in person, appearing in the White House briefing room with Reno in midafternoon.

Clinton said: "We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the FBI. It is time that this difficult chapter in the agency's history be brought to a close."

Without directly saying so, Sessions seemed to view his decision not to resign as showing that he did not admit any of the lapses of integrity found in the report.

"It is because I believe in the principle of an independent FBI that I have refused to voluntarily resign," he said.

Sessions, 63, had served 5 1/2 years of the 10-year term, but held office only so long as the president wanted him. A Republican, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and sustained in office by President George Bush.

Freeh, his expected replacement, is a 43-year-old U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan. He became an FBI agent in 1975 after graduating from Rutgers Law School in New Jersey and obtaining a master's degree in criminal law from New York University.

He rose quickly in FBI ranks and by 1980 he was a supervising agent in Washington.

He left the bureau to become an assistant U.S. attorney working in New York under Rudolph Giuliani during the years in which Giuliani took on the Mafia and Wall Street. Freeh directed the investigation of the so-called Pizza Connection case involving a Sicilian-directed heroin smuggling ring.

A Republican, he was appointed to the federal bench in 1991.

With a new director and her own position strongly solidified, Reno is expected to begin the most sweeping review of federal law enforcement since the 1970s.

She has strongly criticized the management and credibility of the Justice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service. She believes the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be revamped and its role coordinated with the FBI.

Reno has also said that the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI need to coordinate efforts in stopping urban crime.

After working visits to Chicago, Los Angeles and New York as well as parts of Washington, she said the roles of these key federal agencies seem to overlap or are disconnected. There has long been a belief in some circles that the DEA should be melded into the FBI.

But it is within the FBI where Sessions' dismissal can clear the way for long-range planning and the reshaping of the bureau's resources to deal with increased terrorism as well as foreign espionage from new directions and countries never before considered as adversaries.