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The FBI Chief Has a Little Job to Do— Overhaul the Agency from Top to Bottom

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The FBI Chief Has a Little Job to Do— Overhaul the Agency from Top to Bottom SPECIAL REPORT MUELLER’S The FBI chief has a little job to do— overhaul the agency from top to bottom 26FBI11 (1) KRIS - 2102 18 1ST PROOF MANDATE Mueller leaves the FBI building on one of his frequent trips to the Justice Department. JEFFREY MACMILLAN FOR USN&WR 26FBI11 (2) KRIS - 2102 19 1ST PROOF SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI By Chitra Ragavan House chief of staff. “It was baptism by conflagration.” For nearly every one of the 95 years it has been in existence, ob Mueller had been on the job just a week, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been all about inves- he was doing what all new bosses do—getting up tigating crimes, catching bad guys, and putting them behind to speed. Mueller was in the small conference bars. Crime prevention had never been at the core of the fbi’s room at the fbi’s command center, but the tele- mandate. But when Mueller walked into the Oval Office three vision was turned off so he could concentrate on days after New York’s twin towers fell, all that changed. “The details of the bureau’s investigation into the Oc- briefing started with, ‘This is what happened on September 11, Btober 2000 bombing of the uss Cole. Two men with links to al we’ll be building a case, and so on,’ ” Card recalls. “And the pres- Qaeda had rammed an explosives-laden skiff into the warship in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors. “We were with- in 15 minutes of ending the briefing,” says Michael Rolince, a top counterterrorism specialist who had just returned from Yemen, “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 it wouldn’t see a tower?” The briefing resumed. A few minutes later, the second plane hit. In that instant, the world of Robert Mueller iii changed forever, and so did that of the fbi. “One can’t even call it baptism by fire,” says Andrew Card, the White TERROR’S BACKYARD DEATH IN AN EDGY DESERT KINGDOM t was an all-too-familiar News, “and we’re eager to scene of devastation that get there.” Igreeted the small fbi Logjam. Finally, at advance team of six that week’s end, Rolince had arrived in Riyadh, Saudi his wish. A team of rough- Arabia, to help investigate ly 60 FBI agents left for last week’s lethal suicide Riyadh even as the ad- bombings. The attacks on vance team negotiated three residential com- with the Saudis for access pounds, heavily populated to the crime scene, evi- by westerners, killed 34 dence, and witnesses. The (including nine fbi has always been frus- Americans), wounded 200, trated working terrorism and stunned the ruling investigations in Saudi House of Saud, accus- Arabia, its priorities often tomed mostly to acts of ter- subsumed by broader po- ror abroad. litical and military agen- Back at fbi headquar- das. That first became ters, there was the now fa- clear seven years ago, the Bush administration. miliar, and frustrating, when a truck bomb de- A woman weeps over de- Mueller is perceived by post-blast delay as forensic stroyed the Khobar Tow- struction from an attack some agents as having too and explosives teams wait- ers, a U.S. military apart- at the al-Hamra housing close ties to Attorney Gen- ed for Saudi and U.S. ment complex in Saudi compound in Riyadh. eral John Aschcroft, espe- diplomats to negotiate the Arabia, killing 19 U.S. air- cially in the immediate af- fbi’s role in the investiga- men and wounding 250 termath of the 9/11 attacks. tion. “We bring a wealth of others. The inquiry was lowing the logjam. Congressional critics won- experience to the table, un- stymied by Saudi reluc- Investigating the latest der whether the Bush ad- fortunately, one might tance to grant the fbi ac- bombings could sorely test ministration will try to use say,” Michael Rolince, act- cess to suspects, and the the equanimity of Freeh’s that closeness to deflect ing assistant director in then director, Louis Freeh, successor, Robert Mueller, the bureau from raising charge of the Washington was furious with the Clin- not to mention his so-far questions about Saudi ties fbi field office, told U.S. ton administration for al- sanguine relationship with to the 9/11 attacks, (15 of 20 U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003 ALI FRAIDOON—AP 26FBI11 (3) KRIS - 2102 20 1ST PROOF COMP ident said, ‘What are you doing to prevent the next attack?’ That orienting virtually everything about the fbi’s institutional cul- was a change in mind-set that the president introduced.” ture and its traditional operating procedures. And it is one Mueller has worked every day since to imple- Both sides now. Resistance, unsurprisingly, has already been ment. Mueller’s mandate, if he can fulfill it, will represent the encountered. Members of Congress, civil libertarians, police, most sweeping structural and philosophical shift in the fbi’s and agencies like the cia have questioned the fbi’s competence history. In a series of exclusive interviews with U.S. News, for its new role even as they criticize the sweeping new pow- Mueller and his top aides detailed the steps they have begun ers the bureau has been given to carry it out. Mueller, in many to take. The changes, they say, mean transforming an inves- respects, is a man caught impossibly in the middle, able to tigative agency into an intelligence-gathering service and re- please some constituencies, but only at the risk of incurring the wrath of others. The stakes riding on the fbi’s success, nev- ertheless, could not be higher. Last week’s bombings in Saudi Arabia provided just the latest bloody evidence that the al Qaeda terrorist organization, while weakened, is apparently still able to attack and kill Americans overseas. And Mueller and his top deputies are not unmindful of what another ter- rorist catastrophe inside the United States would mean. “Just one more terror attack,” says Larry Mefford, the fbi’s assistant director for counterterrorism, “and we will be called a failure.” A host of friends and colleagues say Mueller is the right man for the job. A Princeton grad, decorated marine, private-sector or “legat,” based in Riyadh. they strongly suspect the In the first nine months bombings were the handi- of last year, the fbi says, work of Osama bin Laden’s the legat chased down al Qaeda network: the mul- 2,470 investigative leads tiple attacks, near simul- from headquarters, com- taneity, the lead cars shoot- pared with 654 in the ing their way in—exactly as same period in 2001—a outlined in al Qaeda train- 278 percent increase. But ing videos. the U.S.-Saudi relation- In recent weeks, the ship will always be diffi- Saudi government devel- cult, a senior fbi official oped intelligence that re- cautions. “Their system,” sulted in the issuing of he says, “will always be bulletins for 19 al Qaeda their system.” operatives in the kingdom Al Qaeda. For Mueller’s and in a raid by Saudi small team of investigators police on a house near in Riyadh, the sifting of one of the compounds. clues is just beginning. The raid yielded explo- fbi officials hope to get sives, machine guns, and access to Indian, Pakistani, ammunition, causing the British, and other nation- U.S. Embassy in Riyadh als who lived in the com- to urge the Saudis, for the pounds where the bomb- third time, to beef up ings occurred. If agents do protection for the com- get at the bomb sites, it pounds. U.S. officials say the 19 hijackers were Mueller said, the bureau will be a tough task sifting the Saudis failed to heed Saudi) or about Saudi “has been given a deference through rubble for car the request. funding of terrorism. “This and independence.” But on parts. During the Khobar Last week, fbi officials country needs an arm’s- issues like terrorism, he Towers investigation, tem- were chalking up a list of length independent inves- added, “it’s a question of peratures reached 144 de- questions for the Saudis. tigative agency,” says a for- understanding the mission grees, forcing the evidence Who planned the attacks? mer fbi official. “I totally and the goal and working response team to work only Who helped carry them agree,” Mueller told U.S cooperatively to accom- at night under floodlights out? How did they get News, when the general plish that.” for 15 minutes every hour. away with it? “There’s a question of independence fbi officials say their re- It’s likely, sources say, thousand questions yet to was posed to him in an in- lationship with the Saudis that the Saudis know who be answered,” says Rolince. terview conducted just be- has improved. Since the did this. But whether “But you have to sit at the fore the Riyadh bombings. Khobar bombing, the fbi they’ll tell the fbi is anoth- table across from them and On critical issues, has had a legal attaché, er story. fbi officials say ask those questions.” –C.R. U.S.News & World Report, May 26, 2003 21 26FBI11 (4) KRIS - 2102 21 1ST PROOF COMP SPECIAL REPORT • INSIDE THE FBI STILL YOUR FATHER’S FBI? Director Robert Mueller’s effort to focus on the fightSLUG: against •221G1 terror FBI requires changes in the way the FBI has traditionally ARTIST: cady done business—changes involving the bureau’s workloadSTORY: FBI and prosecution strategy as well as the makeup of its workforce.
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