WASHINGTON - Portraying the FBI as an agile agency fully engaged in the war on terrorism, Director Robert S. Mueller III defended his bureau yesterday in a speech meant to quiet suggestions that a new domestic intelligence agency be created.
Mueller's highly promoted speech outlined the bureau's initiatives and painted a picture of an agency transformed since the Sept. 11 attacks. He dismissed the notion of creating a domestic intelligence agency that would take over counterterrorism and intelligence gathering from the bureau and function like Britain's MI-5.
"This idea is based on a faulty understanding of counterterrorism that sees a dichotomy between intelligence operations and law enforcement," Mueller said. "Combining law enforcement and intelligence grants us ready access to every weapon in the government's arsenal."
FBI officials have been defending against lawmakers, committees and analysts who have called for at least a study of such a proposed agency.
Yesterday, Mueller echoed the themes of recently drafted FBI talking points. He told his audience at the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City that the bureau's worldwide network of agents and bureaus makes it uniquely able to fight terrorism.
He highlighted what he said are improved relations with state and local law enforcement agencies. And he pointed to the bureau's long history of cultivating sources and "working within the bounds of the Constitution."
Mueller's speech, unlike his usual public remarks, had been well advertised by the FBI, and advance copies were given to reporters. It was part of the bureau's effort to overhaul its image in the face of criticism that it has failed to revamp its chief mission from law enforcement to counterintelligence.
Bureau officials have reorganized the public affairs department and are trying to make the agency and Mueller more accessible to promote its message.
On Wednesday, at a news conference on the arrests of four brothers on charges of funneling money to the Islamic militant group Hamas, Mueller stressed that the arrests were "proof again that the FBI is committed to aggressively pursuing terrorists and disrupting terrorist networks wherever they are in the United States."
Yesterday, Mueller argued that the FBI, far from being a bureaucracy stuck in the past, is well on its way toward a sweeping transformation.
"We have all been changed by 9/11," he said. "Nowhere is that more apparent than in the FBI."
Mueller quantified the number of attacks the bureau has thwarted, estimating "as many as a hundred attacks or plots," here and abroad.
He said that more than 3,000 suspected al-Qaida operatives have been taken into custody and that 200 suspected associates have been arrested or detained because of bureau efforts.
Convincing Washington that it has turned itself into a counterterrorism agency, FBI officials acknowledge, is the bureau's best hope of survival.
"The FBI has identified, disrupted and neutralized a number of terrorist threats and cells," Mueller said. "We have done so in ways an intelligence-only agency like MI-5 cannot."