26FBI11 (1) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF18

MUELLER’S MUELLER’S The FBI chief has a little job to do—overhaul the agency from top to bottomThe FBI chief has a little job to do—overhaul the agency from top to bottom

SPECIAL REPORT

26FBI11 (2) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF19

MANDATE MANDATE

Mueller leaves the FBIbuilding on one of hisfrequent trips to theJustice Department.JEFFREY MACMILLAN FOR USN&WR

26FBI11 (3) KRIS - 2102

ALI FRAIDOON—AP20 U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003

By Chitra Ragavan

Bob Mueller had been on the job just a week, and he was doing what all new bosses do—getting up to speed. Mueller was in the small conference room at the fbi’s command center, but the tele-vision was turned off so he could concentrate ondetails of the bureau’s investigation into the Oc-

tober 2000 bombing of the uss Cole. Two men with links to alQaeda had rammed an explosives-laden skiff into the warshipin the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors. “We were with-in 15 minutes of ending the briefing,” says Michael Rolince, atop counterterrorism specialist who had just returned fromYemen, “when all the pagers went off.” The time: 8:45 a.m. The date: Sept. 11, 2001. “It was a beautiful day out,” Muel-ler recalls thinking. “How could a plane be so lost that itwouldn’t see a tower?” The briefing resumed. A few minuteslater, the second plane hit. In that instant, the world of RobertMueller iii changed forever, and so did that of the fbi. “Onecan’t even call it baptism by fire,” says Andrew Card, the White

House chief of staff. “It was baptism by conflagration.”For nearly every one of the 95 years it has been in existence,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been all about inves-tigating crimes, catching bad guys, and putting them behindbars. Crime prevention had never been at the core of the fbi’smandate. But when Mueller walked into the Oval Office threedays after New York’s twin towers fell, all that changed. “Thebriefing started with, ‘This is what happened on September 11,we’ll be building a case, and so on,’ ” Card recalls. “And the pres-

1ST PROOF COMP20

SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI

I t was an all-too-familiarscene of devastation thatgreeted the small fbi

advance team of six thatarrived in Riyadh, SaudiArabia, to help investigatelast week’s lethal suicidebombings. The attacks onthree residential com-pounds, heavily populatedby westerners, killed 34(including nineAmericans), wounded 200,and stunned the rulingHouse of Saud, accus-tomed mostly to acts of ter-ror abroad.

Back at fbi headquar-ters, there was the now fa-miliar, and frustrating,post-blast delay as forensicand explosives teams wait-ed for Saudi and U.S.diplomats to negotiate thefbi’s role in the investiga-tion. “We bring a wealth ofexperience to the table, un-fortunately, one mightsay,” Michael Rolince, act-ing assistant director incharge of the Washingtonfbi field office, told U.S.

News, “and we’re eager toget there.”

Logjam. Finally, atweek’s end, Rolince hadhis wish. A team of rough-ly 60 FBI agents left forRiyadh even as the ad-vance team negotiatedwith the Saudis for accessto the crime scene, evi-dence, and witnesses. Thefbi has always been frus-trated working terrorisminvestigations in SaudiArabia, its priorities oftensubsumed by broader po-litical and military agen-das. That first becameclear seven years ago,when a truck bomb de-stroyed the Khobar Tow-ers, a U.S. military apart-ment complex in SaudiArabia, killing 19 U.S. air-men and wounding 250others. The inquiry wasstymied by Saudi reluc-tance to grant the fbi ac-cess to suspects, and thethen director, Louis Freeh,was furious with the Clin-ton administration for al-

lowing the logjam. Investigating the latest

bombings could sorely testthe equanimity of Freeh’ssuccessor, Robert Mueller,not to mention his so-farsanguine relationship with

DEATH IN AN EDGYDESERT KINGDOM

TERROR’S BACKYARD

A woman weeps over de-struction from an attackat the al-Hamra housingcompound in Riyadh.

the Bush administration.Mueller is perceived bysome agents as having tooclose ties to Attorney Gen-eral John Aschcroft, espe-cially in the immediate af-termath of the 9/11 attacks.Congressional critics won-der whether the Bush ad-ministration will try to usethat closeness to deflectthe bureau from raisingquestions about Saudi tiesto the 9/11 attacks, (15 of

U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003 21

ident said, ‘What are you doing to prevent the next attack?’ Thatwas a change in mind-set that the president introduced.”

And it is one Mueller has worked every day since to imple-ment. Mueller’s mandate, if he can fulfill it, will represent themost sweeping structural and philosophical shift in the fbi’shistory. In a series of exclusive interviews with U.S. News,Mueller and his top aides detailed the steps they have begunto take. The changes, they say, mean transforming an inves-tigative agency into an intelligence-gathering service and re-

orienting virtually everything about the fbi’s institutional cul-ture and its traditional operating procedures.

Both sides now. Resistance, unsurprisingly, has already beenencountered. Members of Congress, civil libertarians, police,and agencies like the cia have questioned the fbi’s competencefor its new role even as they criticize the sweeping new pow-ers the bureau has been given to carry it out. Mueller, in manyrespects, is a man caught impossibly in the middle, able toplease some constituencies, but only at the risk of incurring thewrath of others. The stakes riding on the fbi’s success, nev-ertheless, could not be higher. Last week’s bombings in SaudiArabia provided just the latest bloody evidence that the alQaeda terrorist organization, while weakened, is apparentlystill able to attack and kill Americans overseas. And Muellerand his top deputies are not unmindful of what another ter-rorist catastrophe inside the United States would mean. “Justone more terror attack,” says Larry Mefford, the fbi’s assistantdirector for counterterrorism, “and we will be called a failure.”

A host of friends and colleagues say Mueller is the right manfor the job. A Princeton grad, decorated marine, private-sector

26FBI11 (4) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF COMP21

the 19 hijackers wereSaudi) or about Saudifunding of terrorism. “Thiscountry needs an arm’s-length independent inves-tigative agency,” says a for-mer fbi official. “I totallyagree,” Mueller told U.SNews, when the generalquestion of independencewas posed to him in an in-terview conducted just be-fore the Riyadh bombings.

On critical issues,

Mueller said, the bureau“has been given a deferenceand independence.” But onissues like terrorism, headded, “it’s a question ofunderstanding the missionand the goal and working cooperatively to accom-plish that.”

fbi officials say their re-lationship with the Saudishas improved. Since theKhobar bombing, the fbihas had a legal attaché,

or “legat,” based in Riyadh.In the first nine months of last year, the fbi says,the legat chased down2,470 investigative leadsfrom headquarters, com-pared with 654 in thesame period in 2001—a278 percent increase. Butthe U.S.-Saudi relation-ship will always be diffi-cult, a senior fbi officialcautions. “Their system,”he says, “will always betheir system.”

Al Qaeda. For Mueller’ssmall team of investigatorsin Riyadh, the sifting ofclues is just beginning. fbi officials hope to get access to Indian, Pakistani,British, and other nation-als who lived in the com-pounds where the bomb-ings occurred. If agents doget at the bomb sites, it will be a tough task siftingthrough rubble for carparts. During the KhobarTowers investigation, tem-peratures reached 144 de-grees, forcing the evidenceresponse team to work onlyat night under floodlightsfor 15 minutes every hour.

It’s likely, sources say,that the Saudis know whodid this. But whetherthey’ll tell the fbi is anoth-er story. fbi officials say

they strongly suspect thebombings were the handi-work of Osama bin Laden’sal Qaeda network: the mul-tiple attacks, near simul-taneity, the lead cars shoot-ing their way in—exactly asoutlined in al Qaeda train-ing videos.

In recent weeks, theSaudi government devel-oped intelligence that re-sulted in the issuing of bulletins for 19 al Qaedaoperatives in the kingdomand in a raid by Saudi police on a house near one of the compounds. The raid yielded explo-sives, machine guns, andammunition, causing theU.S. Embassy in Riyadh to urge the Saudis, for thethird time, to beef up protection for the com-pounds. U.S. officials saythe Saudis failed to heedthe request.

Last week, fbi officialswere chalking up a list ofquestions for the Saudis.Who planned the attacks?Who helped carry themout? How did they getaway with it? “There’s athousand questions yet tobe answered,” says Rolince.“But you have to sit at thetable across from them andask those questions.” –C.R.

26FBI11 (5) KRIS - 2102

22 U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003

attorney, and former homicide prosecutor, Mueller, 58, hasspent 30 years in law enforcement, much of it as a federal pros-ecutor (story, Page 24). “He has a hard-driving managementstyle that doesn’t tolerate people who don’t give 100 percent,”says David Schertler, who supervised Mueller in the homicidesection of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. In SanFrancisco, when he was brought in to overhaul the U.S. attor-ney’s office there, Mueller ruffled plenty of feathers, but inthe end, he boosted morale and increased prosecutions. Evenat Princeton, friends say, Mueller was a man in a hurry, but he’sa man in a deadly serious hurry now. “We’re in a race,” Muellersays, “against the next terrorist attack.”

The race is far from over, but Mueller can point to some ev-idence that the fbi is closing the gap with the terrorist groupsthat seemed to operate with impunity before 9/11. There hasn’tbeen a major attack on U.S. soil in 20 months. And the fbi hasbeen successful in identifying “sleeper cells” in the United Statesand disrupting al Qaeda operations in places like Detroit andLackawanna, N.Y. But these have been smaller-scale investi-gations, mainly of secondary players. Most of the planning forthe attacks on New York and Washington, by contrast, occurredoverseas. “So by definition,” the fbi’s Mefford explains, “ourintelligence agencies are going to be in key roles for us, and it’s

going to be very difficult without that information to be as ef-fective as we need to be. It’s a partnership.”

Critics have a different take. The fbi, they say, has simplybeen unable to penetrate the world of violent Islamic funda-mentalists on its own. “As 9/11 was being planned,” says a for-mer intelligence official, “there was not one [successful fbi]penetration in al Qaeda.” The fbi’s inability to find the mostdangerous terrorists, adds John Martin, the Justice Depart-ment’s former top counterintelligence official, “indicates a lackof penetration of cells in this country.”

Mother ship. The fbi’s miscues in the months before the 9/11attacks have been well documented. The first was headquar-ters’ refusal to approve a request by fbi agents in Minneapolisfor an intelligence wiretap on Zacarias Moussaoui, now chargedwith being a 9/11 conspirator. The second was the failure of fbiheadquarters to heed the now infamous memo from a Phoenix-based agent urging a study of the large numbers of Middle East-ern men training at U.S. flight schools.

In order to ensure that such leads get stitched together in thefuture, Mueller is making big changes. The first has to do withthe role of fbi headquarters. Since the 1993 bombing of theWorld Trade Center, the fbi’s sprawling New York field office

1ST PROOF COMP22

FINAL ART

SLUG: •221G1 FBIARTIST: cadySTORY: FBIPAGE: 22Copyright © 2002 by U.S. News andWorld Report. All rights reserved

STILL YOUR FATHER’S FBI?Director Robert Mueller’s effort to focus on the fight against terror requires changes in the way the FBI has traditionallydone business—changes involving the bureau’s workload and prosecution strategy as well as the makeup of its workforce.The charts below document a “work in progress.”

ON THE RISEAfter 9/11 there was a spike inthe FBI’s referral of terror-relatedcases to prosecutors.

STILL A SMALL SLICEThose terror-related referrals still represent onlya tiny percentage of the bureau's overall caseload.

3.7%Terrorismreferrals

96.3%Referrals forother crimes0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

149

1,297

•revise

USN&WR

STILL YOUR FATHER’S FBI?Director Robert Mueller’s effort to focus on the fight against terror requires changes in the way the FBI has traditionallydone business—changes involving the bureau’s workload and prosecution strategy as well as the makeup of its workforce.The charts below document a “work in progress.”

ON THE RISEAfter 9/11 there was a spike inthe FBI’s referral of terror-relatedcases to prosecutors.

STILL A SMALL SLICEThose terror-related referrals still represent onlya tiny percentage of the bureau's overall caseload.

3.7%Terrorismreferrals

96.3%Referrals forother crimes

3.5 %AmericanIndian andAsian

83.5 %White

5.6%Black 7.4%

Hispanic

81.9%Men

18.1%Women

THE BIGGER PICTUREThe FBI’s total number ofreferrals to prosecutors has beendropping.

FBI DEMOGRAPHICS

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

149

1,297

34,000

36,000

38,000

40,000

42,00042,170

35,382

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002Sources: FBI, Syracuse University's TRAC Reports Inc.

SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI

Continued on page 26

24

By Chitra Ragavan

If Robert Mueller looks as if hedoesn’t have much to smile aboutthese days, it’s not just becausedealing with a hidebound bureau-

cracy is no laughing matter—friendssay that’s just the way he is. In theHoover building, Mueller is known as“the director.” But old friends like JoeLuongo call him “Bobby” or “Muls.” Lu-ongo spent a wild junior year in aPrinceton dormitory with Mueller and22 close friends from the Class of ’66. “lcould spend five hours talking about allthe antics the 23 of us did,” says Luon-go, “but I would have to testify thatBobby had nothing to do with it at all.”

He was, in fact, the reverse of thefrat-boy type. After Princeton, hepulled a three-year hitch in Vietnam. AMarine Corps platoon leader, he waswounded in combat, earned a BronzeStar, the Purple Heart, and the Viet-namese Cross of Gallantry. “He’s a truepatriot,” says another old friend, BobBreakstone. “There’s no other way I candescribe him.”

His soldiering days over, Mueller, aRepublican, spent the next threedecades hopscotching between private-sector law firms and a number of high-profile jobs in the Justice Department,during both Republican and Demo-cratic administrations. Former cowork-ers describe him as organized and dis-ciplined, a skilled prosecutor, a fair butdemanding manager. But he has alsoearned his share of brickbats. “I briefedMueller on espionage cases,” says a for-mer top Justice Department counterin-telligence official, John Martin, “and hehad a difficult time wrapping his armsaround the issues.”

High-tech. Mueller’s hallmarks are at-tention to detail, reaching out to a widespectrum of friends and foes, and a fas-cination with technology. He’s alsoknown for taking a job just because itinterests him. In 1995, Mueller gave upa lucrative job defending white-collarcriminals and took a line prosecutor’sjob in the homicide section of the U.S.attorney’s office in Washington.“There’s a real satisfaction helping peo-ple . . . by bringing closure to a family

of a homicide victim,” he says. “It’s oneof the most challenging things you cando in the legal profession.”

Mueller’s passion for technology islegendary. When a police officer namedBrian Gibson was shot to death in Feb-ruary 1997, Mueller, then the chief ofhomicide prosecutions, had his lawyersuse special litigation software to ana-lyze grand-jury transcripts, witnessstatements, and other police docu-ments, says Lynn Leibovitz, a formerfellow prosecutor who is now a judge.“To me,” Mueller says, “it’s kind of

like doing crossword puzzles.” Unlike a lot of prosecutors, Mueller es-

tablished close ties with the cops whosecases he and his lawyers brought tocourt. One reason for their trust wasthat, even when he was head of the homi-cide section, Mueller took the time to goto crime scenes. Today, he does the samething, sort of, traveling to Afghanistanand Yemen—or even downtown Wash-ington, when a disgruntled tobaccofarmer recently drove his tractor into apond near the Washington Monument,saying the rig was filled with explosives.

A MAN CALLED ‘MULS’Driven and demanding, with maybe the toughest job in town

SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI

26FBI11 (6) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF24

MARIO TAMA—GETTY IMAGES

25

Mueller’s obsession with disciplineand organization has made for somepeculiar stories over the years. In acomplex murder case, Mueller warnedLeibovitz not to remove any of hiscolor-coded files, unless she left a li-brary-style “out card” behind. Neverone for socializing, Mueller invited histeam of homicide prosecutors to hishouse for dinner one night. “He madesure we all knew,” Leibovitz says, “thatat 9 o’clock we should all leave becausehe was going to bed.” Sure enough,when the clock struck 9, Leibovitz re-calls, Mueller “turned up the lights andtold us the party was over.” They all putdown their drinks and left.

In 1998, Mueller was named actingU.S. attorney in San Francisco. His job:to restore morale and beef up prosecu-tions of white-collar crime. “The officewas a slumbering dinosaur,” says NanciClarence, a prominent Bay Area de-

fense attorney, “overweight with whiteguys who thought they’d park in the of-fice for the rest of their careers.”Mueller made a series of changes bigand small. He met with the staff everymorning for 15 minutes to catch up oncases. “He got rid of lethargy,” saysBeth McGarry, assistant U.S. attorneyin San Francisco. Mueller promotedwomen and minorities to key positionsand recruited new talent from white-shoe law firms.

His precedent-setting technology ad-vances have been implemented nation-wide. He created the first computerhacking and intellectual property unit inthe nation. It was modeled on the com-puter crimes section that Mueller hadcreated at the Justice department in1990. He was one of the first U.S. attor-neys to create a Web site for his officeand post press releases and electroniclinks to indictments. He created a com-

puterized case-management systemcalled Project Alcatraz for prosecutorsand supervisors to access and analyzedocuments. He also created one of thefirst automated litigation-support units,complete with database experts andgraphics artists, to help trial attorneysuse PowerPoint presentations and com-puter-generated graphics during trials.

“They rolled me.” Mueller’s successled President Clinton to take the “act-ing” out of his U.S. attorney title. Heheld that job until he was named fbidirector, although he also served asJohn Ashcroft’s deputy attorney gener-al during some of that time.

One of Mueller’s biggest skills, for-mer colleagues say, is building bridges.“I’m a liberal Democrat and a defenselawyer,” says Clarence, “so we disagreeon everything, but we had an unlikelyfriendship.” As U.S. attorney, Muellermet once a month with San Franciscodefense attorneys for off-the-recordjawboning sessions. He came alone,says Clarence, and wrote everythingdown. “More often than not, he used tosay ‘no’ to us, oh, say, 100 percent ofthe time,” laughs Clarence. “But hecame back with his reasons. They werewell considered.” Mueller says he didn’talways say no. “They rolled me,” hesays, “a few times.”

Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, the chiefjudge in the U.S. district for northernCalifornia, says Mueller never forgotjudges, either. “I would get periodic let-ters advising of, ‘Here are somechanges we made to the office,’ ” saysJudge Patel, “and really being thought-ful about the relationship between thecourt and the office.”

Deeply private, Mueller is extremelyresponsive to employees’ special needs,former colleagues say. One of Mueller’stwo daughters was born with spina bifi-da. Friends say it was a traumatic expe-rience for Mueller and his wife, Ann,who raised the girl to be a feisty and in-dependent world traveler. “He had a lotof compassion for employees who wereill,” says McGarry, “and whose familymembers were sick. He did it in a veryquiet way. Only the people who were illknew it.”

Mueller is taking a similar approachin his attempts to revamp the fbi, try-ing to teach agents to convert theirseemingly insurmountable obstacles in the post 9/11 era into opportunitiesfor success. “The culture of the fbi isthe agents,” Mueller says. “The cultureis one of dedication, is one of service to the country. The culture is that of hard work.” l

1ST PROOF/COMP

Mueller, see-ing for himselfin Afghanistan

CAREER PATHSEPT. 4, 2001

Sworn in as fbi director

AUG. 2, 2001 Confirmed as fbi director

JANUARY–MAY 2001 Acting deputy

attorney general

1998–AUGUST 2001U.S. attorney,

northern district California

1995–1998Prosecutor,

homicide section, U.S. attorney’s office, District of Columbia

1993–1995Litigator, Hale & Dorr,

Washington

1990–1993Assistant

attorney general, criminal division,

Department of Justice

1989–1990Assistant to Attorney

General Richard L. Thornburgh

1988–1989Litigator, Hill &Barlow, Boston

1982–1988U.S. attorney, Boston

1976–1982Assistant U.S. attorney,

San Francisco

1973–1976Litigator, Pillsbury Madison & Sutro,

San Francisco

26FBI11 (7) KRIS - 2102 25

26FBI11 (8) KRIS - 2102

CHRIS USHER—APIX FOR USN&WR26 U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003

served as the “office of ori-gin” for all terrorism cases.That, Mueller says, wasboth wrong and unfair. “Ican’t turn to New York,” heexplains, “and say, ‘You inthe New York field office[are] responsible for pro-tecting the United States.’ ”Instead, Mueller has madethe fbi headquarters, justseven blocks from theWhite House, the “office oforigin” for all terrorism in-quiries. Ultimately, fbibrass will have 1,200 spe-cial agents and analysts as-signed to counterterrorismwork; 570 are on board sofar. The new team is re-sponsible for coordinatingall terrorism investigations,ensuring, theoretically, thatdisparate strands of infor-mation are sifted, analyzed,and understood, and thenshared as needed. Field offices can no longer open and closea terror investigation without notifying headquarters. “It’s veryimportant that there be responsibility in one place . . .” Muellersays, “because only from the headquarters view can you seewhether or not there are leads in Portland or Seattle that wouldtie in to a lead in Miami or elsewhere.” President Bush has alsoordered the fbi to join forces with the cia and others in a newcenter for analyzing terrorist threats.

More than a few agents question the wisdom of “headquar-ters knows best.” After all, they say, both the Moussaoui andPhoenix screw-ups originated aboard the mother ship. Muellerand his deputies counter that the new system will ensure thatagents get the best guidance. “There’s still a tremendous

amount of respect for the field agent,” says Pat D’Amuro, ex-ecutive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterin-telligence. “What the field needs to understand is there willbe oversight. . . . That does cause tension because people don’twant headquarters running their cases.”

Following Tiger. Mueller’s second big change is to upgrade thebureau’s Stone Age computers. A technology buff, Mueller is abig believer in former ge chairman Jack Welch’s philosophythat transforming an organization’s technology can transformthe organization. Last June, Mueller hired former ibm exec-utive Wilson Lowery to direct a multimillion-dollar upgrade.The challenge, says Lowery, an avid golfer, is “like teeing off200 yards behind Tiger Woods.” But the challenge, Muellersays, must be met: “We have to transform ourselves, from aorganization that is paper driven, that can be somewhat slowto move . . . to a flexible organization that can move quickly.”

He’s got a long way to go. Before the September 11 attacks, fbiagents were still using old “386” and “486” computers and had noInternet access or fbi E-mail addresses. After the attacks, fbi

1ST PROOF COMP26

NEW YORK STORY

The late John O’Neillwas a legendary inves-tigator who began his

posting as fbi counterter-rorism chief the same dayPakistani police capturedRamzi Yousef, who plottedthe 1993 bombing of theWorld Trade Center. Yearslater, Yousef’s uncle,Khalid Shaikh Mo-hammed, aka ksm, wouldbecome Osama bin Laden’stop operative and takecredit for mastermindingthe 9/11 attacks. O’Neillwas one of the victims.After retiring from the bu-

reau, O’Neill showed up onthe morning of Sept. 11,2001, for his second day ofwork as head of security atthe World Trade Center.

Ironically, ksm was oneof O’Neill’s few blind spots.Around 1998, U.S. Newshas learned, O’Neill triedto shut down a probe ofMohammed by the fbi-nypd terrorism task force.Agent Frank Pellegrinohad begun pursuing ksmin 1995, after police in thePhilippines discovered hisname in Yousef’s laptop,along with details of a plan

to blow up airliners. A yearlater, Yousef was convictedof the trade center bomb-ing. Pellegrino chased Mo-hammed around the globe.But back then, “nobody

gave a s- - -” about ksm,says Tom Corrigan, a re-tired task force detective.The surveillances and wire-taps involved in the chasewere costing too much.O’Neill wanted out.

But agent Pat D’A-muro—now a top countert-errorism official—pre-vailed on O’Neill to trustPellegrino’s instincts. Pel-legrino couldn’t bereached, but D’Amuronoted that O’Neill “mademistakes, just like every-body.” ksm was arrestedin March. He has sinceprovided valuable leads inthe search for other alQaeda terrorists. –C.R.

AP

Uncle Khalid: spilling the beans

A LEGEND’S BLIND SPOT

SPECIAL REPORT

An exodus of veterans meansrelying on new blood; newagents at the FBI Academy

JEFFREY MACMILLAN FOR USN&WR U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003 27

headquarters staff had to send photographs of the 19 hijackers tothe 56 field offices by FedEx because they lacked scanners. “Topmanagers, including [former director] Louis Freeh, didn’t usecomputers and weren’t chagrined about it,” says the Justice De-partment’s inspector general, Glenn Fine. For decades, agentsstruggled with a balky software package called Automated CaseSupport that was anything but automated, requiring 11 keystrokesfor every search. In the past year, Lowery has distributed 22,000new computers to field offices. Agents now have shared Internetcapabilities and individual fbi E-mail addresses.

When Mueller arrived at the Hoover building, the fbi hadalready embarked on a technology upgrade package knownas Trilogy, but Lowery says it didn’t offer agents sophisticat-ed new search capabilities. Mueller revised the hardware re-quirements and nixed the Trilogy package. He brought in ateam of agents, supervisors, analysts, and secretaries to comeup with an alternative and took personal interest in the proj-ect, even attending technical meetings. Says Deputy fbi Di-rector Bruce Gebhardt: “You [could] see his eyes light up.”

The new $596 million software package will be unveiled inDecember, six months behind schedule and $138 million overbudget, but Lowery says it will be worth it. For the first time,agents will be able to do complex searches, E-mail color pho-tos of suspects, and search for trends. All 56 fbi field officeswill have access to the same information. The upgrade includesa 40 million-page terrorism database of evidence dating backto the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, documentsseized from Afghanistan, and 2 million pages of cable traffic.Agents searching for vulnerabilities to terrorists can now ac-cess even the Phoenix memo—instantly.

It all sounds good—on paper. But despite the change in the roleof fbi headquarters, and after all the new computers are pluggedin, Mueller’s biggest challenge will be to sell the “prevention first”philosophy to a workforce that may simply be unwilling to buyinto it. Busting criminals is still the fbi’s bread and butter, andbusting criminals is still what the fbi is doing most. Muellerhas shifted 500 agents from drug squads to counterterrorismwork, and he has tripled the number of agents devoted to ter-rorism. But that still means only a fifth of the 11,500-agent work-force is devoted to counterterrorism. Terrorism prosecutions areup, but they constitute just a fraction of the bureau’s total work-load, according to a U.S. News analysis of statistics compiled bythe Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse Uni-versity research group (chart, Page 22). And the fbi’s convictionrate for terrorism cases is lagging behind that of other crimes.

One reason could be thatwhile Mueller has made ter-rorism a priority, Congresshas not reduced the numberof laws the fbi must en-force; terror cases are alsocomplex. Changing any in-stitution takes time, and thefbi has been resistant tochange. Many agents signedup because they love thethrill of chasing bank rob-bers and drug dealers.“You’re saying, ‘Eighty per-cent of all the stuff you weredoing for the last 15 years isnot important anymore’?”asks one agent. “Huh?”

Risk city. Change maycome slowly for other rea-sons. Some fbi supervisorsbelieve it would be a mistakefor special agents to stop in-vestigating bank robberies,white-collar crimes, anddrug syndicates because they

develop sources working those kinds of cases. U.S. attorneys alsocontrol powerful fiefdoms around the country and can exert astrong influence on what kinds of cases fbi agents in their ju-risdictions pursue. In January, Thomas DiBiagio, the U.S. at-torney in Baltimore, excoriated the fbi field office there for hav-ing become “a marginal presence at best.” In a letter, DiBiagiocomplained to the special agent in charge of the Baltimore fieldoffice, Gary Bald, that the bureau’s focus on terrorism had dis-tracted agents from DiBiagio’s top priorities—violent crime, white-collar fraud, and public corruption. “The fbi has become dis-tracted,” DiBiagio wrote, “and almost useless.” Bald says terrorism“is the fbi’s No. 1 priority, and if it causes us to be providing fewercriminal cases for prosecution, it’s an undesirable byproduct, butit’s got to be tolerated.” Sources say Mueller and DiBiagio ex-changed sharp words. DiBiagio got the message. “There was a fail-ure on my part to adjust to the change quickly enough,” he nowsays. “. . . I wish I would have figured it out sooner.”

It’s not just philosophical, cultural, or bureaucratic obstaclesthat could stymie Mueller’s changes. There’s also the reality thatproactive operations to penetrate terror cells are riskier thanstraight criminal investigations. “When you are proactive, it’s adouble-edged sword,” says Tom Corrigan, a retired New York de-tective who spent 16 years on the fbi-nypd joint terrorism taskforce. “If you get your feet dirty, it can come back to kick you inthe ass.” In the early 1990s, fbi officials shut down surveillanceoperations on radical Islamic fundamentalists in Brooklyn andJersey City, N.J., who would turn out to be players in the 1993bombing of the World Trade Center and other planned attacks.Why? Supervisors feared costs and liabilities. Recently, the fbihas taken flak for interviews of Iraqi exiles here and researchon mosques. These efforts “don’t keep us safer, but destroy fun-damental freedoms,” says the American Civil Liberties Union’sDalia Hashad. Some fbi officials are nonplussed. “The bureauwas beaten following 9/11 for not knowing,” says an fbi offi-cial. “And now [we’re] beaten for trying to find out.” Still, someagents find the prevention concept legally suspect. “How do yougrab someone who hasn’t done anything,” asks former agentEd Stroz, “but you knew he was about to do something?”

And how, in an intensely careerist place like the fbi, will per-

26FBI11 (9) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF COMP27

Former IBM exec Lowery: in-troducing FBI agents to thewonders of the 21st century

26FBI11 (10) KRIS - 2102

KEVIN HORAN FOR USN&WR28 U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003

formance of agents be measured in Mueller’s bravenew world? In the old days, supervisors counted thenumber of arrests an agent made; even today, pro-motion rests on making cases. But what is the rightway to measure prevention? Mefford is trying to de-velop a new performance-measurement system. Nolonger will agents be rated simply on things like howmany bank robberies they solved. It’s going to behow many criminal and intelligence wiretap appli-cations they write, how many informants they de-velop, and the quality of the intelligence that theycome up with. In the meantime, Mueller’s preven-tion mantra may be catching on, albeit slowly. Thenumber of nonterrorism criminal cases the fbi re-ferred to U.S. attorneys has plunged since 9/11(chart, Page 22), though it’s unclear how much ofthis reflects a shift toward more proactive, preven-tive operations.

The change, skeptics say, is going to come grudg-ingly, if at all. “I believe Mueller is trying to make thefbi . . . more responsible,” says Sen. Charles Grass-ley, an Iowa Republican and fbi critic. “But there’san institutional disease there that is going to be verydifficult for him to change.” Sen. John Edwards, aNorth Carolina Democrat—and presidential con-tender—believes the fbi is juggling two inherentlyincompatible missions: intelligence gathering andlaw enforcement. “The nature of law enforcementis linear,” he says. “Intelligence is never-ending.”

Insular institution. Others say the fbi’s demo-graphics are ill-suited to combating terrorism. With500 agents eligible to retire this year and with ayoung and inexperienced workforce—average age,31—the fbi’s institutional memory on terrorism islargely gone. Worse, Mueller must combat radicalIslamic fundamentalism, global terrorism, and internationalcrime syndicates with a workforce that’s mostly white andmale. Only 76 agents speak Arabic. Mueller has hired near-ly 300 language translators and created an fbi language cen-ter. He wants to hire 700 intelligence analysts. But his effortshave been stymied by stiff security checks. “The bureaucra-cy is stifling,” says one senior official, “and he’s trying to breakthrough it.”

On every front, Mueller keeps pushing, trying to instill asense of urgency. “We can’t take any information or source forgranted,” says Van Harp, who just retired as the head of thefbi field office in Washington. “It all has to be vetted, runto the ground.” Agents’ workloads have dramatically in-creased, supervisors say. “You used to look at threats; youknew what had validity; you’d get to them after you got allthese other things out of the way,” says one official. “Now,

1ST PROOF COMP28

POLICE

After terrorists rammeda plane into the Penta-gon, Arlington County,

Va., police chief EdwardFlynn worked shoulder toshoulder with fbi agents. “Ihad no anger towards thefbi on 9/11,” says Flynn. Butthat changed in the weeksthat followed, asserts Flynn,because the fbi denied himintelligence data, saying helacked clearances. “And Isaid, ‘That’s a bunch of bu-

reaucratic b- - - - - - -!’ ”Flynn explodes. “I alreadyhad one plane in my back-yard, and you’re telling meyou can’t trust me to tell mewhen there’s going to be an-other one?”

Flynn, now the Massachu-setts secretary of public safe-ty, has worked through hisanger, but many policechiefs haven’t; they are stillfurious because they can’tget security clearancesquickly and because theyfeel trapped by the color-coded threat system, which

they say is based on fuzzyfbi intelligence.

Making enemies. Somechiefs prefer to keep theirmisgivings to themselves; it’snot easy fighting the bureau.Just ask Col. Ed Norris, chiefof the Maryland State Police,who’s been a critic for adecade, since he was a NewYork cop. When Norris criti-cized the fbi’s skills in con-gressional testimony, bureauofficials were enraged. “Peo-ple were threatening to ruinmy career,” says Norris, “atcocktail parties.”

Norris’s feelings haven’tchanged, but he givesMueller credit for at least try-ing. “Mueller called one day,”says Norris, “and asked,‘What do you want?’ ”—prompting a thank-you notefrom Norris. Mueller sayshe’ll call any cop with a beef.“It’s the most important thing I do,” he says. Flynnsays relations improved lastNovember when Mueller at-tended a national police con-ference and let the chiefs vent.Still, says Flynn, it was onlythen that bureau officials re-

NO LOVE LOST

SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI

U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003 29

no matter how bizarre or how routine, you go after them.”All terror threats get flashed on the pagers of senior execu-

tives, whether it’s a suspicious package on a subway or an an-thrax hoax. “You’ll sit at a table with management,” saysRolince, “and simultaneously every pager will go off.” Theagents say they are exhausted from chasing leads constantly.Mueller says he wants supervisors to use their judgment, buthe insists that no lead can be ignored. “The possibility of that

lead, if that lead were followed, identifying somebodywho wanted to kill Americans,” he says, “is such thatwe just cannot afford to have that happen.”

Last November, Gebhardt, the deputy director,sent an E-mail to field supervisors saying he was“amazed and astounded” by the failure of field agentsto develop sources. “You need to instill urgency,”Gebhardt wrote. “. . . You are the leaders of the fbi.You cannot fail at this mission. Too many people aredepending on us.” Gebhardt says his memo wasmeant to energize agents, not to scold them.

Perhaps. Many agents appreciate Mueller’s effortsto solve problems. “He seems to be very honest, veryapproachable,” says Nancy Savage, president of thefbi Agents Association. “He wants to know direct-ly if there’s a problem.” But others are resentful of hispush for change. “A lot of agents are saying, ‘To hellwith it—get someone else to do this,’ ” asserts formeragent Stroz. They construe Mueller’s urgency as im-patience, his directness as a lack of regard. So far,Mueller and his laser focus on terror aren’t creat-ing a lot of warm and fuzzies among the troops. Dur-ing one of Mueller’s trips to a field office, an agentasked him about the status of “office of preference,”a perk that allows agents to select a field office, oncein their careers. It’s especially important to New Yorkagents, because that posting is considered the pits.The agents say Mueller was unsympathetic andreplied that if an agent didn’t like his posting, therewere 70,000 applicants waiting to take his place.

Mueller says he never indicated he would discontinue the pro-gram. “I do believe it’s important,” says Mueller. “I have toldagents, though, that . . . if there are skills that are needed some-place in the organization that sacrifice is necessary. . . . Theneeds of the organization come first.” l

With Christopher H. Schmitt, Sheila Thalhimer, and Monica Ekman

26FBI11 (11) KRIS - 2102 1ST PROOF29

vealed that applying for a “secret” clearance rather than“top secret” clearance wouldcut the chief’s wait in half.

Flynn appreciates thatMueller showed up, butMichael Chitwood, policechief in Portland, Maine,where two of the hijackersboarded their flights, is un-convinced. Chitwood says he’sgotten zero fbi informationabout the hijackers’ ties toPortland. The Coast Guard, hesays, recently called 911 andreported that a man was tak-ing pictures of oil tank farms

and pipelines in the area. “Thered flags go up,” says Chit-wood, who called the Bostonfbi field office but was told,“There’s nobody around; doyou think you can make a re-port and send a copy to us?”

Many chiefs won’t rely sole-ly on the fbi anymore. “Ifyou’d asked me before 9/11what I’m doing to protectFairfax County [Va.] fromterror,” says the county’s po-lice chief, J. Thomas Manger,“I’d say, ‘Nothing; that’s thefbi’s job.’ Now it occupiesmuch of my day.” –C.R.Ed Norris giving congressional testimony in October 2001

Rescue workers search for simulated victims aspart of a terror drill in Bedford Park, Ill.

JOE RAEDLE—GETTY IMAGES