Robert Mueller III, who led the FBI after the 9/11 attacks—overseeing its rapid modernization as an intelligence and counterterrorism agency—died on March 20 after a years-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 81.
A former Navy and federal prosecutor, Mueller was widely respected across the party lines for his loyalty to the rule of law and his dedication to public service.
But within a short span of his career, after being appointed as the US Department of Justice’s special counsel to oversee the investigation into Russian election interference, Mueller found himself caught in the buzzsaw. US President Donald Trump called the 2017 Russia investigation a “witch hunt” and railed against what he saw as a Democratic plot to undermine his election victory.
When Mueller brought it up many lawsuits in that case, including against a Russian troll farm accused of using information warfare to influence the 2016 presidential campaign, he declined to prosecute Trump, citing longstanding Justice Department guidance that sitting presidents, in most cases, cannot be charged criminally.
Mueller testifies before Congress in Washington on July 24, 2019, about his report on Russian meddling in the US election. He told lawmakers that the report does not exonerate US President Donald Trump. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
However, the Russia investigation set Trump on his current course of retaliatory charges more than any other imaginable humiliation.
Trump’s views on Mueller have not stabilized over time. After the news of Mueller’s death became public, Trump has been published about it on Social Facts: “Robert Muller just died. Good. I’m glad he’s dead. He can’t hurt innocent people anymore.”
In 1962, Mueller graduated from the uber-preppy St. It was there that he won the medal of the best athlete before going to attend Princeton University.
He joined the US Navy in 1968 and soon headed to Vietnam, where he commanded a rifle platoon. A number of fellow squad members were killed in action.
Mueller rose through the ranks to become aide de camp commander of the 3rd Marine division and was awarded the Bronze Star, two commendation medals, the Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross. Mueller almost never talked about his service but when he did, it was never to tell stories about his own bravery under fire, but rather his love for the Marine Corps.
“Bob felt a strong connection to the organization,” recalled Aaron Zebley, who served as Mueller’s chief of staff and deputy special counsel at the FBI. “One of the things he was proud of was that Marines saw him as worthy of leading other Marines.”
Mueller earned his law degree from the University of Virginia. After a stint in private practice, he joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor in the US Attorney’s offices in San Francisco and Boston. In 1990, he became assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s criminal division.
At the Justice Department, Mueller was known as “Bobby the Three Sticks,” a reference to his role as Robert Mueller III and, some say, the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. While there, he oversaw two of the most high-profile prosecutions of the era: the Pan Am 103 bombing and the trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Mueller was known for cutting through bureaucracy and the staff support he required.
When US President Bill Clinton took office, Mueller left the department and went to work for a law firm in Boston, focusing on war crimes. But he wanted to get back to prosecuting criminals, so he asked Eric Holder Jr., who was the US attorney for DC at the time, to work as a prosecutor in the office’s homicide unit. Holder was surprised that a former crime chief would seek such a low-level job. “It was one of the strangest calls I’ve ever received,” he recalled, but he made the appointment.
Mueller speaks with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft at a news conference in Washington on September 27, 2001. Behind them are pictures of the men believed to be the hijackers in the 9/11 attacks. Joyce Naltchayan/AFP via Getty Images
Mueller was appointed became FBI director by US President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001. His confirmation hearing took place on July 30, just three days before he underwent successful prostate surgery, and he began the job a week before 9/11.
In the FBI, he to be established major reforms, transforming the bureau into a full-fledged intelligence agency, upgrading its outdated technology, and bringing non-agents into key positions. Mueller himself was not an early adopter of the technology. The former FBI agent recalled briefing the director on how to use social media. Mueller let him go. “He didn’t even let me show him how to read the online version New York Times,” the agent said.
Mueller can have carbs and buttons down. He expected agents to wear well-pressed white shirts. If someone came to the office wearing a pink or lavender shirt, he called them “pajamas.” He did not like small talk and was surprised by those who tried to impress him.
He was also a creature of habit and somewhat ascetic. When he had friends over for dinner, he was known to turn the lights on and off at 9 p.m. as a not-so-subtle sign that it was time for his guests to go home. Most Friday evenings, he went out to dinner with a group of friends at the restaurant in northern Virginia. He usually ordered a Caesar salad with extra dressing and a glass of red wine.
Mueller meets with Haji Gulalai, commander of the Kandahar region, at a US military base in Afghanistan on January 23, 2002. Mario Tama / Getty Images
At the FBI, Mueller challenged some of the counterterrorism tactics of the George W. Bush administration. When FBI agents now in “black camps” and other detention centers overseas discovered that CIA officers were planning to use water and other harsh methods to interrogate al Qaeda suspects, they asked headquarters what to do. Mueller to command do not participate in the interview. He believed consensual interrogation was the most effective method of obtaining information from prisoners, and he did not want the FBI to be tainted by what the world would see as torture.
Mueller also played an important role in the good game 2004 struggle in the hospital room of US Attorney General John Ashcroft. Needing a Justice Department sign-off on the Bush administration’s controversial wiretapping plan, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried to talk Ashcroft, who was recovering from surgery and was relatively calm, into giving his consent. Mueller and then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey intervened and helped persuade Ashcroft to stand down. “In everyone’s life, there comes a time when the good lord tries him,” Mueller told Ashcroft, according to FishermanBarton Gellman’s account of the tenure of US Vice President Dick Cheney. “You passed your test tonight.”
Cheney, who was desperate for the surveillance program to go into effect, arranged for Gonzales to sign the authorization instead of Ashcroft. In a tense series of late-night meetings, Mueller, Comey, and a half-dozen other high-ranking Justice Department officials agreed to resign if the order was not overturned—a move that would have sparked a constitutional crisis and embarrassed Bush, who was running for re-election. The White House called Comey and Mueller aside for private meetings with the president, where the two men outlined their objections. The administration backtracked, and modified the plan to meet the demands of the Justice Department.
Mueller reacts when he is cheered by US Deputy Attorney General James Cole (center) and US Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. (right) during his farewell ceremony at the US Department of Justice in Washington on August 1, 2013. Win McNamee/Getty Images
When Mueller’s statutory 10-year term at the FBI was coming to an end in 2011, Holder stepped in and convinced the Obama White House to ask Congress for a two-year extension. When Mueller left the office in 2013, he believed, according to a friend, that his days as a law enforcement officer were over.
In 2014, he returned to private practice but returned to government a few years later, this time for the most taxing job of his career. When Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general of the United States, he asked her to serve as the Justice Department’s special counsel in the Russia investigation, Mueller was unsure at first and consulted friends and colleagues, some of whom advised him against taking the position. But finally, he agreed. “When you’re asked to do a service, you say yes,” he told Zebley.
Mueller will testify before Congress in Washington on July 24, 2019. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Mueller rarely showed emotion or complained, but one exception was after he submitted his report on the Russia investigation to the Justice Department. Without releasing the report to the public, US Attorney General William Barr provided his own summary of Mueller’s findings, insisting that he found no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and omitting that Mueller clearly said the investigation “hasn’t cleared” Trump. Mueller was furious and disappointed with Barr, a longtime Justice Department colleague and friend. He gathered the lawyers on his team and told them, “I know you’re upset,” according to the participant. What he didn’t say—and didn’t have to—was how angry he was.
