Transcript: FBI Director Robert Mueller
Full remarks from Wednesday's Monitor lunch with FBI Director Robert Mueller.
(Page 11 of 11)
Hizzbollah is different from Hamas, different from AL Qaeda and consequently the training has been very much enhanced for our agents. On the other hand, how do you gather information- how do you gather information, your ability to contact and get people to talk to you, the development of sources, and the ability to take and report accurately and truthfully? The compiling of documents and information to establish a basis for a factual scenario is all much the same as it was before, but enhanced since September 11th. People forget but people talk about the phoenix memorandum. That memorandum as most would say was a prophetic, I think that perhaps goes to far, but that was a document that laid out a reasonable concern. That was written by an agent. A very good agent. And consequently, I think we have good people. Very good people....we have Marine Bakinsky (ph), who came in as executive assistant director for intelligence for NSA and she sits down at the table and listens to the dialogue and says this are some of the best analysts I have ever worked with, because the way we as agents look at a set of facts and drill down to find out what is accurate and what is the truth.
Looking back at the assumption that the FBI cannot do the work is somewhat attributable to, perhaps, TV shows, but also a misunderstanding of what we do and what we do very well
(and morale?)
yes, increasingly I hear that morale is very good. There are always going to be agents who do other things. When you take an organization through a transformation there are a number of people who have done things in a particular way in the past and have trouble changing. They are few and far between but they are out there. As I go around the country I talk to agents, I find them excited by the responsibility, excited about what they are doing to prevent terror attacks and in preventing another 9/11.
How imminent was the possibility of an attack over the last few weeks when there was a high alert?
It is an ongoing process in evaluating the risk day by day as we look at the facts as they come in, the threats as they come in, the reports as they come in and try to evaluate. You have to look at the sources that gave us relatively specific information prior to the holiday season in light of what did, or did not happen, over the last three or four weeks. You cannot exclude that from the calculus to believe that heightened security deters attacks so you cannot discount sourcing because it did not occur on that particular date. AL Qaeda is known to be fluid in its setting of the time table so what you can do is go back and reevaluate and once you do that we are still in a position where we have substantial concern about an attack from Al Qaeda. Without a question of a doubt AL Qaeda would like nothing more than to replicate in some fashion, in some way that which occurred on September 11th and so I do believe you can go back and look at what impact the fact that we did not have an attack on the sourcing but you cannot, cannot discount it.
Can you see doing this for ten years? (yes) And, what's the Mueller culture?
And I leave that to others. People talk about management styles and all the rest of that stuff. I leave it to others. The culture of the FBI I would hope is individuals dedicated to hard work, public service, integrity and that has been the quote culture of the FBI since its start and that I would hope remains the culture of the FBI today whether its me or someone else.
