A turnaround specialist for a battered FBI

Robert Mueller was only a few months into his tenure as head of the US Attorney's Office in San Francisco, when he decided to shake things up. He fired off an e-mail to the 80-plus lawyers he oversaw. It contained a simple message: Justify your job.

Mr. Mueller, a former Marine with numerous legal credentials, had been dispatched to the office to help clean up what some saw as a bureau that had absorbed too much of the easy-going West Coast atmosphere. The northern California office had seen a declining number of criminal prosecutions and the lowest number of environmental-crime prosecutions in the country.

Mueller's e-mail, which asked people why they should be allowed to keep their positions and what other jobs they had their eyes on, had a big impact. In the next few months, nearly every supervisory position changed.

"He told every single person in the office their job was open and he sat down with each one at a time for meetings. People were upset," says Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor. "But Bob's view was and is that working for the government is a privilege, and you should have to justify why you deserve to be there."

In the end, Mueller was credited with turning the office around. Now the Bush administration and the Senate are hoping for a repeat performance from Mueller as the new head of the FBI, which faces one of its biggest challenges in modern history.

From missteps at Waco and Ruby Ridge, through Wen Ho Lee and the missing files in the McVeigh case, the nation's once-vaunted law-enforcement agency is under fire for everything from computer problems to questions about its fundamental culture.

Mueller arrives at the J. Edgar Hoover Building with a very different résumé than his predecessor. Louis Freeh arrived with the aura of a streetwise supercop; Mueller is the man in the gray flannel suit - the quiet, efficient executive who enjoys managing.

In many ways, he is a striver who succeeded through work and steady climbing. Friends and associates describe him as straightforward, someone who is not necessarily adept at "working a room," but who knows how to get what he wants.

Meuller attended St. Paul high school in Concord, N.H., where he was known for his athletic prowess. It was there he met his wife, Ann Cabell Standish. Mueller went on to Princeton University and after that, to Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon commander, earning a Bronze Star, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and a purple heart with the Marines.

Back from the war, Mueller studied law at the University of Virginia and then headed west, where he soon made his mark as an Assistant US Attorney in the same San Francisco office he'd later shake up. He scored a big victory developing and trying a racketeering case against the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang.

"He did a retrial of that case," says Barry Portman, a federal public defender in San Francisco who has known Mueller for 25 years. "The first case was built against 25 defendants and didn't get a single conviction. Bob retried it, pared it down to about seven people, and I think each one was found guilty.

"It went from a case that took nine months to a case that took six weeks. That's the story of Bob. He has a history of learning from others mistakes."

From San Francisco, he bounced east to the Boston US Attorney's office, recruited by an attorney named William Weld, who would go on to become Massachusetts governor, and later to Washington where he was named head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. In that time he worked on cases ranging from the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing to the decision to prosecute Manuel Noriega.

Mueller rejoined the Justice Department in 1995, and was eventually charged with heading the San Francisco office.

His background, which includes working for Democratic and Republican administrations, helped make his trip through the confirmation process satin smooth. In exceedingly cordial hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, he was called a "superextraordinary" fit for the FBI post. The full Senate was expected to approve his nomination as early as yesterday.

But it is Mueller's time in the San Francisco office that is particularly significant to his new role. There, he turned the prosecutor's office around by shunning complacency, while also understanding his staff's needs.

"He changed the work ethic in that office," Rory Little says. "He pushed people, but when they came to him and said, 'We can't do all this with the staff we have,' he said, "You're right."

What's more, he had the political clout to get things done. Mueller got Washington to create 15 new attorney slots in the San Francisco office within six months, Mr. Little says, a task that normally takes years. And Mueller helped get new computer systems to better keep track of what the office was doing in court.

The results were dramatic. In 1998, the year he arrived, the office filed 672 criminal cases. In 2000 they filed 1,253. Penalties won by the office went from $7 million in 1998 to $208 million in 2000.

But the real changes Mueller made were tonal. He did what some called "bed checks" at 5:30 or 5:45 p.m. everyday to see who was still on the job. And every six months or so, he issued what many called the "chess memo," which announced moves and new appointments within the office.

"Bob really doesn't like people to get too comfortable," says Laura Gonzales, an attorney who worked in the office. "He was always moving people and if it wasn't perfect - and it never is - he moves them again. He's always trying new things."

Ms. Gonzales says that not everyone was happy with every move, but overall people were satisfied with "the effect of the changes" Mueller put in place. "In the end," she says, "you can't argue that the office wasn't better."

The real questions as Mueller starts his new job are how FBI agents will greet his management style and if the techniques that worked in a 100-person office are transferable to a 3,000-person bureaucracy.

"I have mixed feelings about Mueller," says former agent I.C. Smith, who knows the new director and says he worries too much about what his superiors think. "The real test for him will be how he handles a problem with someone in the administration."

Another former agent who knows Mueller simply says, "Bob Mueller kisses up and kicks down."

But others, like former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, say Mueller is the right pick. "He is a terrific guy and a wonderful law enforcement mind," Bromwich says. "He is a skilled and experienced manager, which is something the FBI needs.

"But we should keep in mind that no one is going to step in and completely turn the Bureau around. It is going to take time."

Education: Princeton University, B.A. New York University, Masters in International Relations University of Virginia Law School, J.D.

Served in Marine Corps from 1967 until 1970, decorations include the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star

Stock portfolio worth more than $1.7 million

As assistant attorney general, supervised the Pan-Am 103 Lockerbie case and advised then-President Bush to prosecute Nicaraguan leader Manuel Noriega

He and his wife, Ann, have two daughters