As the former Deputy Director of the FBI, what do people most commonly want to know about your experience?
People often ask me about the relationship between Presidents and FBI Directors, and I guess the best example I can give you is, of course, a sports analogy. Imagine that the President is like the best, most famous and influential superstar in the NBA, and if that's the case, then the FBI Director is like a referee. Sure, they are both on the same court every night, but their goals are very different. The superstar wants to win every game, every night, and every championship. The referee's job is to preserve the game for the fans, and they do that by enforcing the rules in a fair and unbiased way. Sometimes the referee has to make decisions that the superstar doesn't like. That's a lot like the relationship between the FBI Director and the President...the President puts the FBI Director in the job, but once there, the FBI Director has got to use his awesome authority and investigative capability to enforce the rules, no matter what they or the President think about it.
Can you explain why the relationship between the President and FBI Director is so complex?
During my time at the bureau, I had the opportunity to help prepare several FBI Directors (Mueller, Comey, Ray) for their meetings with the President on really important issues, and it brought back for me the memory of the intensity of those sessions because FBI Directors are really in a tough balance in those moments. On the one hand, they are not supposed to drag the President into the day-to-day work of criminal investigations, but on the other hand, they must impart to the President the information needed to make big decisions about national security matters.
What stands out about the FBI Directors that you worked with during your time at the FBI?
Every FBI Director I ever worked for wanted to be laser accurate on the information provided to the President. Sure, they would like to persuade the President to pursue the option they thought was best, but at the end of the day, the important thing to focus on was just giving the President the information they need to protect America.
Are there any interesting stories that come to mind that represent the unique relationship between the FBI Director and the President?
When you work with the Director of the FBI, sometimes you get a sense of history being made right in your presence. I remember a time in 2013 when we were trying to capture two separate terrorists in foreign countries to bring them back to the United States to face justice. The entire intelligence community wanted one of them, but we felt strongly that the other was a high-level Al-Qaeda official and was the person we should prioritize first. Well, Director Mueller had to go down to the White House and explain to the President and the National Security Council who the FBI had to go with first. He was leaning in the direction of the intelligence community. Yet, moments before he left the building, he asked a few of my colleagues and me to come to his office to make the case as to who the bigger threat to national security was. In those five minutes, he put aside the concerns of the rest of the agencies and listened directly to his own people. We were able to convince him that the Al-Qaeda official was a great threat to national security. Director Mueller went down to the White House, explained this to the President of the United States, and the entire community got behind our decision. Ultimately, the FBI got its man.
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