Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Shapiro is entitled to his opinion of FBI Director Robert Mueller (“Mueller’s record makes him unfit for FBI,” Viewpoints, Feb. 7). But claiming he is unfit to continue as director is absurd.
Mueller is nearing the end of his tenure – 10 years – as set by Congress after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. He will reach that point in September 2011.
That he took over the FBI a week prior to the 9/11 attack was unfortunate, as he never really had a chance to settle in to the position; to learn the ropes of heading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency with its ever-expanding responsibilities at home and abroad.
On the other hand, the urgency of the moment allowed him to rebuild and reorganize the FBI without facing headwinds from the usual congressional and internal traditionalists. Whether or not the new FBI has been the best outcome for America is still an open question. But make no mistake, the FBI and Mueller were fighting for their very survival in the weeks and months following 9/11. Why?
To answer that question, one must understand life within the Beltway.
In the months prior to 9/11, the FBI was beset by a number of very public missteps which generated an equal number of independent reviews of its policies, practices and procedures. Not the least of these incidents was the arrest on espionage charges of FBI Agent Robert Hanssen. The list is long: Mishandling some documents concerning the investigation of Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building; the review of FBI counterintelligence operations; missing laptop computers and firearms.
All of these were distractions and, in the end, meaningless, but they diverted the bureau’s focus from investigation to introspection.
Meanwhile, on the streets of America, the FBI was expected to perform as it always had – with unquestioned dedication and attention to detail to an ever-expanding list of criminal statutes thanks to hyperactive members of Congress.
The more Congress demanded of the FBI in the years preceding 9/11, the more the FBI’s expertise was diluted and its focus clouded from core national security and criminal issues to dealing with less serious criminal matters – most, if not all, redundant to existing state law.
Former FBI directors William Sessions and Louis Freeh did nothing to resist this expansion, as it often brought additional resources and funding – prized bureaucratic booty. But the downside to all of this was that as the FBI’s jurisdiction grew, so did the need for specially trained FBI agents to handle the administration, training and deployment of these new assets. The days of the totally capable FBI agent, one who could work any criminal case, were numbered. In their place grew smaller, specialized cadres to support the specialized work environment dictated by Washington.
Remember the “peace dividend”? This was the term Congress applied to newly-liberated funding that was previously dedicated to our faceoff with the former Soviet Union. Part of that largess was felt in the rank-and-file of the FBI, where several hundred experienced counterintelligence agents were immediately shifted to criminal work. Never mind that the learning curve for a counterintelligence agent is much longer and steeper than one associated with criminal work.
Congress and the White House said that the Cold War was over. The Soviet empire was no more, so there was no need for the FBI to maintain existing levels of counterintelligence resources.
But somebody forgot to tell that to our adversaries.
Their names might have changed and their demeanor is friendlier – charming even – but the reality continues to be that America’s military, economic and political secrets are at risk. While we are courting yesterday’s enemies as today’s trade partners, they are still very actively and clandestinely seeking our deepest secrets by any means available.
All of that greeted Mueller as he was sworn in on Sept. 4, 2001. He had one week to digest the old FBI before the events of 9/11 forced him into survival mode – his and the FBI’s.
Except for a handful of FBI executives over the years who thought otherwise, the counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs were never viewed as “real” FBI work. And except for the relatively few dedicated agents who chose to work these programs, most agents were assigned there as a result of management decisions opting to “hide” less capable performers.
Having worked or supervised every investigative program within the FBI during my career, I can tell you that none taxes an agent’s intellect, patience and persistence like counterintelligence or counterterrorism. All of that aside, today’s Federal Bureau of Investigation has become more of a Federal Bureau of Intelligence.
The FBI collects massive amounts of information – intelligence – from all kinds of open and classified sources. The FBI is expected to sift through mountains of data every day and to make the right call every time. It has to digest it all, make sense of it all and, where warranted, act on it. This is really an impossible task but no one seems willing to acknowledge that reality – no one in Congress, the administration or the FBI.
Instead, we live with the illusion that our national security agencies are on the job and that every threat will be identified and neutralized. Keep dreaming.
Although the FBI has made great strides under Mueller to be more of an intelligence collection and analysis agency, it still has a tremendous challenge dealing with criminal investigations.
Criminal investigations took a back seat, understandably, post-9/11, and Congress was among the many voices supporting the FBI’s reorganization away from criminal matters to create its intelligence directorate. Now you can hear those same congressional voices clamoring for the FBI do something about serious criminal activity like corporate fraud and mortgage scams. I guess we have this terrorism thing under control.
There has been a lot of discussion whether a new domestic intelligence agency needs to be created – the so-called MI-5 option. A separate counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency would lift those responsibilities from the FBI and allow the bureau to focus entirely on criminal investigations.
I support such a new creation, and I believe that it would allow the FBI to return to its former status as the unequalled criminal investigative organization in the country – maybe on the planet.
Whether or not the MI-5 plan is adopted, what is certain is that all of the political realities that forced Mueller to reorganize the FBI in the months and years after 9/11 will remain with us. They never ebb. And while old FBI hands and new may argue over how the FBI has evolved, all will agree that Congress is responsible for a lot of it.
Mueller will likely remain as FBI director until the end of his statutory term. While he might not be all things to all people, he has tried to do what is best for the country and the FBI while operating within the law and respecting the limits of power established by the Constitution.
Shapiro’s comment that “for the good of the country and the integrity of the FBI, it’s time for Robert Mueller to go” simply demonstrates just how little Shapiro really knows about Mueller, the FBI or integrity.
Frank G. Scafidi
