Bush Taps New FBI Chief

W A S H I N G T O N, July 5 -- President Bush has tapped federal prosecutor Robert Mueller to become the next director of the FBI.

"He has shown high ideals, a clear sense of purpose and a tested devotion to his country," Bush said of Mueller as he announced his nomination at a Rose Garden ceremony today. "The FBI has a great tradition that Mr. Mueller must now affirm and some important challenges he must confront."

If confirmed by the Senate, Mueller, the current U.S. attorney in San Francisco, will replace retired FBI Director Louis Freeh as head of the nation's top law enforcement agency. Since Freeh, a holdover from the Clinton administration, announced in May he would step down by the end of last month, Mueller had emerged as the leading candidate to fill the post.

"I am deeply honored by the trust that President Bush has shown in nominating me," Mueller said. "I look forward to working with the thousands of dedicated men and women who are agents and employees of the FBI to enforce our nation's laws fairly and with respect for the rights of all Americans."

Agency Reeling From High-Profile Missteps

Mueller is preparing to assume the directorship of an agency still reeling from a number of widely publicized missteps, most notably its failure to turn over evidence in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"It is a difficult time," says former FBI counterintelligence official Harry Brandon. "Right or wrong, I think there is a feeling within the FBI that the public has lost some level of faith in them."

In recent years the bureau has faced criticism over its espionage investigation of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, the arrest of former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen on charges he spied for Russia, and the FBI's mistaken targeting of Richard Jewel as a suspect in the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing in Atlanta.

"The new FBI director will inherit … an agency beleaguered by high-profile mistakes and by a culture that too often does not recognize and correct its errors," the panel's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a written statement this afternoon.