Looks Like Smooth Sailing for FBI Choice

San Francisco prosecutor Robert Mueller’s nomination as director of the FBI appears headed for a quick confirmation by the U.S. Senate after he met Tuesday with several key lawmakers to talk about ways of mending the bureau.

The thrust of the meetings signaled that the 56-year-old Mueller is likely to dodge the political pitfalls that have slowed some of President Bush’s other political and judicial nominations amid sniping between the White House and Senate Democrats.

“I have no intention of holding this up,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, declared after emerging from a half-hour private meeting with Mueller, who is the U.S. attorney in San Francisco.

Leahy praised Mueller as “a man of total integrity” and pledged to “expedite” his nomination to allow a confirmation hearing as early as this month. The senator added that he has detected no signs of opposition from any members of either party in the Senate, which will ultimately vote on Mueller’s nomination for a 10-year term atop the FBI.

Bush’s selection of Mueller last week for the powerful FBI job was widely seen as a fairly safe and nonconfrontational choice, and that is just how it is playing out as Mueller makes the rounds this week to introduce himself to Capitol Hill leaders.

Mueller still awaits his formal nomination by the White House in coming days, an extensive FBI background check and Senate questioning. That process, often grueling and politically charged, has tripped up many other candidates who appeared well on their way to confirmation.

In the days and weeks before Mueller’s nomination, some factions in the Republican Party hinted that they wanted the White House to nominate a more conservative FBI director.

But Mueller’s critics have remained largely silent since the White House announced his nomination. And as of now, an overwhelming or even unanimous vote of support for Mueller in the Senate is “not unrealistic,” said one Republican aide who asked not to be identified while the nomination is still pending. “Nothing has come up to suggest otherwise.”

Mueller is a longtime federal prosecutor who has headed the U.S. attorney’s offices in Boston and San Francisco and ran the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington during the first Bush administration in the early 1990s.

A Republican with a conservative law-and-order reputation, Mueller is popular among many Democrats because he was appointed by the Clinton administration to take over the U.S. attorney’s office in Northern California in 1998 at a time when the office was floundering.

Many legal and law enforcement officials in San Francisco credit him with revitalizing the U.S. attorney’s operation, helping to double the number of criminal cases in just two years.

Supporters say his success could prove a critical asset for Mueller in taking over a bureau that faces four separate investigations probing missteps in the Robert Philip Hanssen spy scandal, the Timothy J. McVeigh document debacle, the Wen Ho Lee espionage investigation and other management problems.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a tough critic of the FBI who some Democrats fear could oppose Mueller, met with him Monday and came away with “a favorable impression,” said Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny.

But Grassley, a member of the Judiciary Committee who is pushing several legislative proposals aimed at ensuring greater accountability within the bureau, said the FBI has a long way to go in restoring public confidence.

“I expressed my strong view that the new director needs to act quickly to begin overhauling the agency and confronting what I think will be strong resistance to meaningful changes,” Grassley said after the meeting.

Mueller also met Tuesday with Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Mueller thanked Boxer for her strong support of his nomination for the San Francisco prosecutor’s job and asked her to introduce him at his upcoming Senate confirmation hearing. Boxer said she would be honored and pledged whatever assistance she could offer in his bid to become FBI director, her aides said.