Inside the FBI?s ?Threat Matrix,? From Nuclear Urinals to Osama?s USBs

Yesterday, President Obama said he wanted to extend FBI director Bob Mueller?s term for another two years, on top of the 10 Mueller has already served. It?s not only the first time since Hoover that an Bureau director has been asked to stay on. It makes Mueller the only major public official to have kept his job through the entire ?War on Terror? era.

Mueller remains largely unknown to the general public. He doesn?t give many any interviews to the press, and even some of the people who have worked with him for years say they don?t know him particularly well.

Washingtonian magazine editor Garret Graff is the exception. He has interviewed Mueller at least a half-dozen times, and spent more than a thousand hours speaking to the director, his top aides and 180 current and former officials at the FBI, White House, Justice Department, CIA, NYPD and the Pentagon. These interviews form the heart of Graff?s new book, The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror.

We talked to Graff about the director?s longevity, Osama bin Laden?s thumb drives, the Bureau?s allergy to technology and the lamest ultimatum by a wannabe terrorist ever.

Wired.com: How has Mueller been able to hang on?

Garrett Graff: Mueller last year became the longest-serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover himself and, with this proposed extension by President Obama, will clearly be the most influential director since, as well. There have been five FBI directors since Hoover but Mueller was set to be the first to reach the full 10-year term limit ? two directors quit early, one was fired and one was appointed director of the CIA.

What?s particularly impressive about Mueller?s accomplishment is that the job has never been harder than it is today ? it?s 24/7 in a way that the job never was under Mueller?s predecessors, with enormous pressures from both U.S. security threats and geopolitical pressures overseas.

I think this is going to be a Cal Ripken-like record, one that we?ve never seen before in modern history and one we?re unlikely to ever see again. Mueller just happened to have a unique constitution ? an enormous reserve of physical stamina, the right set of political skills for an apolitical job, and the right mix of management skills necessary to lead and transform an agency in the midst of tremendous pressure.

Wired.com: News reports say that the FBI is part of the team that?s scouring the discs and drives taken from the bin Laden raid. Any insight on what the agents are doing, specifically?

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Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/inside-fbis-threat-matrix/

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