-Caveat Lector- If Dismalcrats are for him, there's something rotten in Denmark! - Bill WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Ex-Marine Is Praised as Tough, Skilled _____From The Post_____ By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 6, 2001; Page A01 The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco was, by all accounts, a shambles. Prosecutions had plummeted to a record low, some of the office's best lawyers were jumping ship, and even the defense bar was clamoring for change. The Clinton administration, desperate for a reformer, turned to a lifelong Republican, Robert S. Mueller III. Within weeks of taking over in August 1998, Mueller had forced all of the office's supervisors to reapply for their jobs, and none were retained in their original slots. A few months later, the decorated ex-Marine was recommended for the job permanently by none other than Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), one of the more liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill. "It was a troubled office, and he shook things up," Boxer recalled yesterday. "The U.S. attorney's office had an ingrained culture that was hard to change, but he was able to change it very rapidly. I think he will be able to do the same with the FBI." Mueller, nominated for the job of FBI director yesterday by President Bush, comes with glowing recommendations from politicians and lawyers on both sides of the political aisle, hailed for having the kind of tough management style that many say is needed at the troubled institution. The 56-year-old prosecutor came to prominence in Washington during the previous Bush administration, supervising the proceedings against Manuel Noriega and John Gotti and heading up investigations of the Pan Am 103 bombing and the BCCI banking scandal. He also served earlier this year as acting deputy attorney general, the Justice Department's second-in-command, until Larry Thompson was named to the post. He is widely and uniformly described by present and former colleagues in cliches: tough-as-nails, straight-shooting, no-nonsense. Communications with colleagues are direct and to the point. He shuns the press and the limelight, and he tends to keep a low profile in public. At his appearance yesterday at the White House Rose Garden to accept his nomination, Mueller spoke just 79 words. "He comes off as your central-casting ex-Marine: tough, no-nonsense, and not suffering fools gladly," said Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who dealt with Mueller during the transition into the Clinton presidency. "None of us should be in the business of suggesting that Superman is going to come in and save the day, but . . . he's got as good a chance as anyone around to grab this institution by the throat and reform it." Some have bridled at Mueller's hard-charging style. One former colleague in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington said Mueller has a low tolerance for people who don't share his work ethic, which usually includes 12-hour days, and will shake offices up to improve production. "Some felt he was unnecessarily gruff," the former colleague said. William H. Webster, the former director of the FBI and the CIA who is heading up one of four ongoing investigations of the bureau, said, "Bob's not warm and cozy in his general demeanor." But even many of those who have faced him in bitter courtroom battles, or those who have lost out to him for jobs, tend to give Mueller high marks. In part, Mueller seems regarded by many former colleagues as the embodiment of an ideal: the selfless, apolitical prosecutor. "Bob has a quirky kind of charisma. You end up wanting to make the guy happy, a little out of fear and a little out of respect," said Rory Little, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Little was a leading candidate for the U.S. attorney's job there in 1998. "You think to yourself, there must be a flaw or a crack in the facade, some sort of dark side," Little added. "But the more you work with him the more you realize, he is what he appears to be." One of Mueller's career choices is legendary among the fraternity of lawyers who have spent time as federal prosecutors. After a couple of unhappy years in private practice after the end of the Bush administration, Mueller decided to take a job as a front-line prosecutor handling homicide cases at D.C. Superior Court. "He called up out of the blue and said he wanted to try murder cases," recalled Eric H. Holder Jr., who was then the U.S. attorney for the District. "I was like, 'What?' Here's this guy who was the former assistant attorney general, the head of the criminal division, and he came to the U.S. attorney's office and tried cases as a line guy. . . . He wanted to try cases. He didn't want special treatment. He wanted to make a difference, and he did." When Holder became deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, he recommended Mueller for the San Francisco job. During his tenure there, officials said Mueller increased the number of women in supervisory positions to more than half and improved the representation of racial minorities. His prosecutorial focus during the last three years has included a new emphasis on white-collar and high-tech crimes, in addition to crackdowns on major drug rings, colleagues said. Mueller's popularity in heavily Democratic San Francisco comes despite his generally conservative politics. Mueller was the first U.S. attorney in California's Northern District to seek the death penalty since Congress reinstated the federal punishment in 1988, and he argued this year in favor of pursuing the execution of accused FBI spy Robert P. Hanssen despite intelligence community concerns, according to sources. The number of federal criminal cases and the number of trials in the San Francisco district has doubled during Mueller's tenure. Little said Mueller is a strong supporter of mandatory minimum sentencing, which has come under increased criticism for its impact on low-level drug criminals. Mueller also implemented new guidelines that, according to many defense lawyers, made it harder to obtain plea agreements. Some in the defense bar also said the rules would require their clients to give up the right to see evidence that might help their case. Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the policy was troubling considering the FBI's problems with disclosure of records, most recently in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. "This has been a pattern on the part of the FBI, their failure to meet their legal discovery obligations," he said. 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