Mueller can't manage. I said that the institutional failure of the FBI on 911 would get everyone involved raises and promotions. I didn't know it went this far.
Congress has increased the FBI's budget to handle the new challenges, with funding almost doubling from $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2001 to a proposed $5.7 billion for fiscal 2006.
FBI Overseers Now
Put Spotlight on Mueller
After Four Years on the Job, Director
Gets Scrutiny Amid Hiring Delays,
Failed Computer Project
By ANNE MARIE SQUEO
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 29, 2005; Page A4
WASHINGTON -- The aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks roiled the U.S. intelligence community, with several heads rolling. But Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, escaped much of the tumult.
In large part, that's because Mr. Mueller took over the bureau on Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks on New York and Washington. So although Congress and two presidential commissions lambasted the FBI for deficiencies in gathering, analyzing and sharing information related to terrorism, responsibility for such problems fell to his predecessor.
But with Mr. Mueller approaching four years on the job, pressure is mounting on the 60-year-old director to show that he is transforming the FBI from a law-enforcement agency that preferred working alone into a terror-fighting force closely aligned with others and working with the new national director of intelligence, John Negroponte.
"The institutional limitations of the bureau are very difficult to counter and they've not been countered," says Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I know [Mr. Mueller] is making his best efforts, but they simply haven't been enough."
Some of the problems critics cite -- delays in hiring linguists and intelligence analysts despite increased funding for counterterrorism efforts -- are a result of Sept. 11. But others, particularly failed efforts to modernize the FBI's case-file system, have been longer in the making.
"The FBI's lack of focus and accountability in wasting multiple millions of tax dollars on a bungled computer project is generating immense frustration," says Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "The bureau has enjoyed considerable support on the Hill, but patience is wearing thin."
The computer project, called the Virtual Case File system, was scrapped in March after a $170 million investment over four years. The lack of cost estimates for its replacement, dubbed Sentinel, is a sore point on Capitol Hill. FBI officials say they can't put a number on the project until they complete the vendor-bidding process. Congressional overseers also have complained about high turnover in key posts, such as the New York and Newark, N.J., field offices.
The scrutiny is expected to intensify next month, with the Senate and House planning hearings on the FBI's progress. The House has asked a number of agencies -- including the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service and National Academy of Public Administration -- to monitor the agency.
For all the criticism, Mr. Mueller, who is serving a 10-year term, is well-liked in Washington. A recipient of the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for military service in Vietnam, he is frequently lauded for leaving a partnership at a prestigious Boston law firm to become a rank-and-file litigator in the homicide section of the U.S. attorney's office in Washington because he missed the front-line work.
[Mueller graphic]
He spent three years as the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, leaving that post in 2001, and served as Acting Deputy Attorney General for several months before taking the FBI job. Just weeks earlier, he had had surgery for prostate cancer. "On a personal level, he's a good person who has a good record," Mr. Specter says. "The problem is he hasn't gotten the results."
FBI officials say they're still combating problems but defend the progress made under Mr. Mueller. "The pace of change has been significant," says FBI Deputy Director John Pistole. "It may not be to everyone's pleasing, but it has been nothing short of radical for an institution with almost 30,000 employees and a $6 billion budget."
Congress has increased the FBI's budget to handle the new challenges, with funding almost doubling from $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2001 to a proposed $5.7 billion for fiscal 2006.
The FBI says the money is being put to good use. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the ranks of FBI agents assigned to counterterrorism investigations have more than doubled, the numbers of counterintelligence analysts and of language analysts both have almost quadrupled. Between October 2003 and April 2004, Mr. Mueller sent 275 senior bureau executives, including the heads of the FBI's 56 field offices, to Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management for 2½-day seminars focused on "Navigating Strategic Change," which he also attended.
Mr. Mueller has gotten high marks from the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn Fine, and Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who is chairman of an influential House subcommittee, for welcoming the added oversight and being willing to change. When Mr. Mueller pulled the plug on the FBI's Virtual Case File system, the House Appropriations Committee sent staff to gather information and files related to the project. The FBI readily turned over the data. "It's not a perfect operation, but I think it's getting better," Mr. Wolf says.
In June, Mr. Fine issued a report highlighting continued deficiencies at the FBI. In particular, he said the bureau has achieved just 56% of its hiring goals this year for linguists and that it is taking longer -- 16 months on average -- to hire contract linguists. Mr. Pistole says a new chief human-resources officer post has been created to streamline the FBI's "arcane and bureaucratic" hiring process; an appointment is expected as early as next week.
The FBI also was criticized for how long it takes to review audio materials collected in counterterrorism efforts. According to the inspector general, the bureau's backlog of these materials increased to 8,354 hours in March from 4,086 hours in July 2004. Mr. Mueller told Mr. Specter's committee in July that this represented a tiny portion of the 418,855 hours of audio material collected during the past year, and that some 93% of that was "white noise."
FBI defenders say the bureau is caught in a battle of perceptions. For decades, the law-enforcement ethos of the bureau focused on statistics, such as the number of arrests and convictions, or the size of fines. Legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover routinely went to Congress armed with numbers that demonstrated the bureau's efforts.
That's difficult in fighting terrorism since the idea is to prevent an attack, not necessarily make an arrest. "There's been no terrorist attack since 9/11, why is that?" asks Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S. "Maybe we're doing a lot of things right. Maybe we're lucky. Maybe both." |
