An Accountable FBI: Robert Mueller Should Resign

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An Accountable FBI: Robert Mueller Should Resign

Postby admin » Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:20 am

An Accountable FBI: Robert Mueller Should Resign
by The Wall Street Journal
May 31, 2001

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In the wake of September 11, the public can be forgiven for thinking that America's intelligence agencies are more Maxwell Smart than James Bond. The issue now is whether, and how, the CIA and FBI can regain public confidence and deter future attacks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller made his pitch this week, announcing the second stage of a post-September 11 restructuring. The aim is to shift the bureau's priorities away from chasing kidnappers and drug kingpins toward finding and thwarting terrorists. "We need a different approach that puts prevention above all others," Mr. Mueller said in announcing the reforms. "We need to change and we indeed are changing."

This certainly sounds good, though we're always skeptical about proposals that rearrange the bureaucratic furniture. It's undoubtedly good to let agents in the field start investigations--until now they've often had to wait weeks for approval from Washington--but that won't matter much if headquarters ignores them. And we have some concern about the new "flying squads" of counter-terrorism investigators, who will be based in risk-averse Washington rather than out in the field. The last thing the bureau needs is another layer of bureaucracy.

The essential question is how far these reforms will go toward changing the institutional mindset of the FBI, which suffers from a dangerous lack of accountability. No extra agents or new computer system can make that happen. After Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Hanssen spy case, and now September 11, the lesson is that mistakes will go unpunished or be covered up, especially if they're committed close to the top. Specifically, this goes to the heart of the credibility of Mr. Mueller.

The highly publicized letter from veteran agent Coleen Rowley is devastating on this score. Mr. Mueller can't be blamed for September 11--he took office only on September 4. Yet his statements since that date have been, to say the least, embarrassing. First he proclaimed that the FBI had no information on possible terrorist attacks prior to September 11. This was the line he kept up for months--"circling the wagons," as Agent Rowley put it.

Then, as information dribbled out--the Phoenix agent's memo on Arabs enrolling at flight schools, the Minneapolis agents who had identified Zacarias Moussaoui as a terrorist threat--he amended it to say that despite the information nothing the FBI might have done would have changed anything. Agent Rowley puts it succinctly: "I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs." Specifically, she accuses Mr. Mueller and senior FBI officials as having "omitted, downplayed, glossed over and or mischaracterized" her office's probe of Moussaoui.

The Rowley letter surfaced last weekend and was immediately seen for what it was--a precision-guided missile aimed at the director. So now that his job is on the line, Mr. Mueller has apologized more or less. He concedes that the 9/11 attacks might have been detectable, even going so far as to thank Agent Rowley for her memo. This is a step forward, but the question for his future leadership is whether everyone in the FBI will see this for the self-protection it is.

If Mr. Mueller had wanted to send a message to change the FBI mindset, he would have fired the supervisory special agent who ignored the Minneapolis warnings on Moussaoui. Instead, Ms. Rowley says, that agent was promoted. All of this suggests that Mr. Mueller isn't willing or able to change the FBI culture.

Prior to his appointment, we raised questions about his handling of the BCCI scandal while he was head of the Criminal Division in the early 1990s. In his attempts to prosecute the case, the Manhattan District Attorney felt the same kind of frustration with main Justice that Agent Rowley now feels about FBI headquarters. His appointment, we wrote, put the Bureau "in the hands of someone who will turn over no rocks and rock no boats."

Problems at FBI headquarters long predated Mr. Mueller, admittedly, and have resisted reform efforts by many directors. Agent Rowley says it well: "I'm hard pressed to think of any case which has been solved by FBIHQ personnel and I can name several that have been screwed up!" It's no surprise that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft are standing by their man; Mr. Ashcroft this week praised him as a "battle-tested leader" and the "right man for the job." The director could relieve their embarrassment by completing this week's mea culpa with an honorable resignation.


Mr. Mueller has served his country honorably, as a Marine, a federal prosecutor and now FBI director. But what's at stake here isn't one man's career, distinguished as it has been. Nor, though agents and directors should be held accountable for performance, is this about assigning political blame. It's about rebuilding the FBI into an agency that can detect and prevent future terrorist attacks. Without leadership and credibility at the top, no amount of bureaucratic reshuffling will make a difference.
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