Mueller: FBI remade to meet threats

WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- FBI Director Robert Mueller, the longest serving FBI head since J. Edgar Hoover, says the agency's job is more complicated than ever before.

Mueller said since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the FBI "has transformed itself into a threat-driven, intelligence-led national security agency" with a mission of protecting the nation from terrorism, fraud, public corruption, and international and violent organized crime.

"The FBI has never faced a more complex threat environment that it does today, whether one considers terrorism, espionage, cyber-based attacks, or traditional crimes," Mueller, who has been director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly a decade, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.

Mueller cited "an extraordinary range of national security and criminal threats" -- including attempted bombings of cargo flights from Yemen in October, a failed car bombing attempt in New York's Times Square in May and numerous plots by lone wolf offenders targeting Washington's Metro subway system, the Texas home of former President George W. Bush and the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore.

Mueller also cited the outing of 10 deep cover Russian spies, multibillion-dollar mortgage and investment frauds, violence on U.S. borders and the disclosure of thousands of classified State Department cables and documents by WikiLeaks as threats.

"And throughout, there were serious corruption cases that undermined the public trust and violent gang cases that continued to endanger our communities," he said.