Robert Mueller
Robert Swan Mueller III is an American lawyer who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI. He is the only FBI director that Congress has allowed to serve more than the statutory limit of 10 years since the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 by giving him a special two-year extension.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale and Robert Swan Mueller Jr.. He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse.Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia. On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 with a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị province by small arms fire.After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting deputy attorney general. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, Mueller became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, Mueller declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Bush administration
nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
File:President Announces Steps to Keep America's Children Safe.jpg|thumb|upright=1.07|left|Mueller with President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, August 6, 2002
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, then-deputy attorney general James Comey received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney, Thomas Wilner, who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."