One Question After 9/11 Changed What the FBI Is For
Bush did not want arrest plans, he wanted prevention, and Mueller spent months rebuilding the bureau around that demand.
The Oath with Chuck Rosenberg · Robert S. Mueller III: The Director (Part 2)On the morning of September 12, 2001, Robert Mueller walked into the Oval Office with a prosecutor's brief. Mueller, the new director of the FBI, the federal law enforcement agency that investigates domestic crimes and terrorism, had been sworn in just eight days earlier. He wanted his first presidential briefing to be perfect, complete with statistics on identifying the attackers and arresting anyone who had helped them.
Halfway through, President George W. Bush stopped him.
Mr. Bush said he did not want plans to arrest and charge people. He wanted to know what Mueller and the FBI were doing to make certain it did not happen again. Mueller later said he "felt like a chastened high school student."
That interruption changed what the FBI was for, as Mueller saw it. His training as a prosecutor had taught him to measure success after the fact, by identifying the person responsible and making certain he stayed in prison for years. After that morning, the job was to produce something invisible, an attack that never occurred.
Back at headquarters, Mueller sat down with FBI leaders to figure out how to deliver it. He asked for a full picture of what was happening, what was likely to come, and what coordination with other agencies would be needed both to find those responsible and, more urgently, to prevent another strike. It was, he said, extremely difficult.
The bureau knew how to arrest people and put them in jail, but its intelligence operation was slim and largely tied to organized crime. Changing course meant changing how agents were measured, where they were assigned, and what counted as success.
They spent several months working out what the FBI should aim for in the future. The result was a set of 10 priorities, written so that everyone in the FBI, no matter where they worked, would know them. The first three, as Mueller put it, were "protecting the United States from a terrorist attack," from foreign spying operations, and from cyberattacks.
Mueller had arrived at the White House ready to show how the FBI punishes the last crime. He left with the president's demand to prevent the next one.
Questions people ask
Had Mueller really just started as FBI director?
Yes. He was nominated on July 5, 2001, confirmed by the Senate 98 to 0 on August 2, and took office as the sixth director on September 4, one week before the attacks. His briefing of President Bush on September 12 was his first as director.
Why was prevention so hard for the FBI?
Mueller said the bureau had been prepared for arresting people and putting them in jail, with only a slim intelligence function largely tied to organized crime. Prevention meant changing how agents were measured, how personnel were assigned, and what the priorities were, all in the wake of a disaster.
What did the new priorities mean for ordinary agents?
Mueller said the shift meant changing personnel assignments, moving agents into national security work and away from traditional criminal cases. Leaders also wrote out 10 priorities so every employee would know what came first.