The FBI's Top Gun

By Elaine Shannon And Matthew Cooper

When Bob Mueller took over the Justice Department's criminal division in 1990, his subordinates teased him about his patrician manner and the pressed jeans that were his idea of a dress-down Saturday in the office. His high-Wasp name, Robert Swan Mueller III, led them to call him Bobby Three Sticks.

But there was nothing effete about Mueller, a decorated Marine, who handled cases ranging from the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 to the prosecution of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. He smashed through bureaucratic obstacles so enthusiastically that his deputy, Dave Margolis, warned him gently that if he didn't forgo a few battles, Washington would smash him. "I don't bruise easily," Mueller replied. The 56-year-old prosecutor is going to need his thick skin. Last week, when George W. Bush nominated him to succeed Louis Freeh as director of the FBI, Mueller prepared to take over an organization battered by recent failures, including the 11th-hour discovery of 4,000 pages of documents that had not been handed over to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Just last week former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded guilty to having worked as a spy for Moscow--for more than two decades. Then there was the botched investigation of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Leel. Mueller, who is all but certain to be confirmed by Congress, could have the second toughest job in Washington as he attempts to restore the FBI's reputation.

Mueller's resume, however, suggests he is tough enough for the burden. Although born to an affluent family and educated at Princeton, Mueller enlisted in the Marines in 1967 and earned a rack of medals for his Vietnam service. After law school at the University of Virginia and a stint in private practice, he became a federal prosecutor and then U.S. Attorney in Boston. "It seemed to me he stood head and shoulders above all the other persons mentioned," says Dick Thornburgh, the former Attorney General who tapped Mueller to become Assistant Attorney General for the criminal division in 1990. In that role, however, while prosecuting the messy B.C.C.I. banking scandal, Mueller drew criticism for getting into an unnecessary jurisdictional tussle with the Manhattan district attorney.

When the Bush Administration left office in 1993, Mueller went into private practice but returned to government work two years later, taking a job as a lowly prosecutor chasing murderers in the District of Columbia Superior Court. He told a friend, "There are just too many people dying violently in this city." He loved to answer his phone, "Mueller, Homicide."

It wasn't long before Mueller was back in a senior position as the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco. There he doubled the number of criminal prosecutions and recruited women and minorities. Some of his critics find him overbearing--one former subordinate claims that Mueller has a my-way-or-the-highway philosophy--but most colleagues see him as refreshingly direct. "He's not afraid to hear bad news," says Matthew Jacobs, an attorney in the San Francisco office.

He'll certainly get his share when he steps into the director's office. At least Mueller has good relations with Congress, the White House and Attorney General John Ashcroft, who championed his bid, convincing Bush that Mueller is the right kind of manager. While some press accounts portrayed Bush as hesitant about the choice, aides say the President's consideration of other candidates like former Justice official George Terwilliger was simply a case of diligence, since the FBI director gets a ten-year term. There was little surprise in the West Wing when White House counsel Al Gonzalez quoted the President as saying, "Mueller's my man."

--With reporting by John F. Dickerson and Viveca Novak/Washington and Chris Taylor/San Francisco

With reporting by John F. Dickerson and Viveca Novak/Washington and Chris Taylor/San Francisco