What is known about the most mysterious man in America - special counsel Robert Mueller

He almost never gives interviews and rarely appears in public. You won't see him at official events. Yet Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US election, is one of the most talked-about people in the US.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Critics accuse him of conspiring to overthrow President Trump. And his supporters see him as a tireless truth-seeker. He himself remains in the shadow, despite all the hype, writes Air force.

Who is he, Robert Muller?

FBI official Lauren Anderson investigated the murder in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, when she received an urgent call.

A voice on the other end told her that Robert Muller, who had been appointed director of the FBI two years before, in 2001, had tried to contact her.

“It really surprised me,” Lauren told the BBC. “I thought, what could have happened here, what did he need to know about?”

A few weeks before, Lauren had been traveling in a bus in Paris, when a man who was traveling in the same bus had a heart attack. He subsequently died, but she literally jumped over several rows of seats to give him an artificial heart massage, and then, when the doctors arrived, she comforted his wife.

In Gabon, she cautiously raised the phone to her ear and heard the voice of Robert Muller.

“I heard you were trying to save a man’s life,” he said. - Thank you".

This case, according to Lauren Anderson, reveals the essence of his character.

“He took the time when the world was in complete chaos to call and talk to me.”

“He values ​​people who do the right thing. That’s what’s important to him in a person.”

Robert Swan Muller III was born to a wealthy family in Manhattan in 1944. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied at St. Paul’s private boarding school in New Hampshire.

“He was a very serious young man,” recalls Maxwell King, who studied with Muller for five years. “Open, straight as an arrow, very purposeful and tenacious.”

“Children in these boarding schools can be very mocking, sarcastic,” King recalls one incident that occurred near the school store. “We were laughing at someone, and I remember Bob [Mueller] just got up and walked away, making it clear that he didn't like it. He shook his head and walked away."

An aversion to injustice, a deep-rooted understanding of right and wrong, are qualities that many people who know Müller point to.

“He was a great football, hockey and lacrosse player,” adds his former classmate. “I think he was captain of each of those three teams.”

“He was a real team player, he didn’t show off, everyone appreciated that and respected him for it. He is still like that, he has always been an honest and straightforward person.”

At school, as King says, they emphasized the desire to work for the good of the state.

“Many of us wanted to dedicate ourselves to public service. As for Bob ... we saw how much time he devoted to studies and sports, and many predicted success in the public service for him.”

After a policy course at Princeton University, Muller joined the marines and was sent to Vietnam in 1968.

“At that time, few wealthy families voluntarily went to war. Another example of Bob's dedication to his country,” says Maxwell King.

Фото: Depositphotos

Müller himself explained his decision in a rare interview in 2002.

“One of the reasons I joined the Marines was because we lost a very good friend who served as a Marine in Vietnam. He was a year ahead of me at Princeton,” he said. “Some of us thought we should follow his example.”

In the war, Muller commanded a platoon, was wounded twice in battle and repeatedly awarded for bravery.

“Second Lieutenant Muller fearlessly moved from one position to another, disregarding his own safety,” his award sheet says.

After returning from the war, Muller enrolled in law at the University of Virginia and graduated from it in 1973.

After studying, he got a lawyer at a law firm in San Francisco, after which he moved to Boston, where he worked as a prosecutor and investigated major crimes such as terrorism and international money laundering.

In 1990, he went to work at the Ministry of Justice, and then made, as some of his friends thought, a very unexpected step in his career.

“He could have left [the Justice Department] and spent his life making a great living in a law firm,” says Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI.

“Instead, he became a prosecutor in the criminal justice system in Washington, D.C., which is really an entry-level position.”

“He felt a moral obligation to fight crime in Washington, which was then at a very high level, with a high number of murders caused in part by the drug wars.”

Photo: wikipedia.org, public domain

In August, 2001, Muller, whom most experts considered the clear favorite, was unanimously approved by the Senate as head of the FBI.

Müller was sworn in on 4 in September and arrived at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, already with a solid reputation for his work as a prosecutor in the capital.

But exactly one week after he entered his office for the first time, the September 11 attacks occurred, resulting in the death of about 3000 people, and this completely changed his role.

“You can imagine what his second week was like,” Weiner says.

“The FBI, for which he was now responsible, was a deeply troubled institution...95% of the employees were white men, and the organization did not perform its core function, namely intelligence, very well.”

“In his 12 years as director, Robert Mueller has transformed the FBI into a 21st-century agency and made it an intelligence service under the law.”

Ali Sufan, a former FBI agent who worked with Muller in the fight against terrorism after 11 September, agrees with this statement.

“He was able to effectively transform the FBI from an organization historically focused on law enforcement to one focused on intelligence,” he says.

But his desire to modernize the bureau, the technology in which was so outdated that its employees could not even send files to each other by e-mail, had not been liked by everyone.

“Because of 11/XNUMX, he had to make sweeping changes at the FBI, and I can tell you that those changes were very difficult to achieve,” says Lauren Anderson. “His decisions, in the opinion of a significant number of employees, were detrimental to the FBI.”

Anderson adds that the director also annoyed some colleagues with his relentless meticulousness.

“It drove people crazy,” she says. “It was common for him to ask for very specific details at a briefing—details that some managers considered trivial. But if they didn’t have them, employees felt embarrassed and irritated.”

Фото: Depositphotos

After the September 11 events, Muller was criticized for not performing effective intelligence, says Douglas Charles, professor of US history at the University of Pennsylvania. But he points out that in 2004, when President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on US citizens as a counter-terrorism measure, Muller threatened to resign. This led to the president finally retreating.

“He was extremely vigilant about the danger that the U.S. could lose civil liberties in the fight against terrorism,” says Tim Weiner, who spent time with Mueller in Mexico City shortly before the 2016 election.

How did Muller remember him?

“I saw a man who is very formal in appearance, he always wears a button-down shirt, always in a dark suit, he dresses like it’s 1956, Frank Sinatra is singing on the radio, and Eisenhower is in the White House,” he says. He. “But underneath that formal exterior lies a charming man with a very sharp and focused mind.”

Since Müller was appointed special prosecutor in May 2017, a lot has been said about his restrained approach to leading the investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential election in 2016. In the course of the investigation, very little information was leaked to the press, and he rarely spoke of him in public.

"The fact that we haven't heard anything from him other than announcements of lawsuits is completely consistent with the leader and person I've known and worked with," Lauren Anderson says.

“He's very reluctant to talk to the media because he doesn't think his work should draw attention to him as a person,” she adds.

He communicates the results of his work to the public through indictments and arrest warrants, says Lauren Anderson.

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public relations at Princeton University, where Muller himself studied, sees this as a positive side.

“Nowadays, everyone shouts loudly, including the president, everyone is always saying something. Keeping it quiet only adds to the mystery.”

“A lot of people, if they were under that much pressure, would feel the need to say something to fix the situation. But he has self-confidence and can allow himself to focus on his work.”

Robert Mueller has certainly suffered from attacks. President Trump described him, among other things, as a "very controversial" and "disgraced" man. But Lauren Anderson, who worked under Mueller throughout his tenure as FBI director, doesn't think his cautious approach to the Russia investigation will change anytime soon, despite all the attacks.

“I'm willing to bet we won't hear back from him until he has to testify before Congress,” she says. “He will do everything in such a way that his work speaks for him.”

Read also on ForumDaily:

Revealed evidence of Russia's interference in elections: from a report to the US Senate

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.