Mueller praises FBI’s changes since 9/11

President Bush had warned of new threats of terrorism when he announced Robert S. Mueller III’s appointment as FBI director in 2001, but neither he nor Mr. Mueller knew how quickly the FBI would have to respond.

Just a week after Mr. Mueller assumed the director’s job, al Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people. The Sept. 11 attacks gave urgency to and greatly defined Mr. Mueller’s tenure.

“Before 9/11, we were an agency that focused primarily on investigating crimes after the fact,” he told The Washington Times in an e-mail interview this week. “Today we are actively preventing and disrupting destructive and illegal acts before they occur.”

As the FBI prepares to mark its 100th anniversary Saturday, Mr. Mueller, who is out of the country on business, answered questions from The Times through e-mail. A former Marine and a Vietnam veteran, Mr. Mueller discussed the bureau’s challenges since Sept. 11, its efforts to get information technology up to date and his relationship with rank-and-file agents, particularly on his contentious program of rotating senior agents to Washington.

Since Sept. 11, Mr. Mueller said, the bureau has made “substantial progress” in the realm of national security.

“While intelligence has always been an important part of FBI investigations, we’re now much more intelligence-driven, and a more fully integrated member of the broader intelligence community,” he said.

Visit TWT’s interactive special section on the force’s anniversary, 100 Years of the FBI

That has forced the FBI to strike a balance between national security and traditional criminal prosecutions.

“We are better leveraging our resources in other criminal areas, working side by side with our state and local law-enforcement counterparts in task forces and other partnerships,” he said.

Mr. Mueller said he was disappointed early in his tenure with the bureau’s computer technology, “but we’ve made great strides there in recent years.”

The FBI has spent millions of dollars to update antiquated systems.

“We’ve greatly modernized the FBI’s networks and infrastructure and continue to develop the FBI’s future enterprise information and case management system,” he said. “We’ve promoted information-sharing with law enforcement through the creation of regional and national-level systems and delivered new analytic tools and services to support the linguist, intelligence analyst, and agent.”

He noted that the bureau has put 18,000 wireless devices into the hands of agents and operational personnel.

Calling rank-and-file agents the backbone of the FBI, Mr. Mueller said he has “visited every FBI field office, some more than once, and most of our overseas offices in an effort to meet both agents and professional staff and to hear from them directly.”

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