In better times, President Bush’s nomination of Robert Mueller III as FBI director would be an excellent choice. Mr. Mueller will bring to the job a famously no-nonsense work ethic, an apolitical approach and a history of successful law-enforcement experience; invaluable assets under any circumstances.

In these times, under these circumstances, the choice is even better. With a resume that includes leading the Justice Department’s Criminal Division under the first Bush administration (including supervising the Noriega, Gotti and Pan Am 103 investigations) to re-energizing the moribund U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco under President Clinton by rebuilding staff and vigorously pursuing drug rings, along with white-collar and high-tech criminals, Mr. Mueller knows the FBI but is not part of the insular culture that has made this otherwise admirable agency the victim of so many self-inflicted wounds.

Of those wounds, the arrest and now the plea-bargained conviction of 15-year FBI veteran Robert P. Hanssen as a Russian spy is the most painful and visible. Before that, however, came such high-profile missteps as the hasty and leak-filled investigation of the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the bungled investigation of U.S. nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee and the misplacing of evidence in the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh.

Only the most myopic FBI defender can deny that the independence any credible investigative agency needs has been stretched to undesirable lengths, leading to these and by many lesser-known incidents. In introducing his nominee, President Bush made indirect reference to the FBI’s problems by noting that the agency must fulfill its duty as the nation’s premier counterespionage and counterterrorist organization “with a firm commitment to safeguarding the constitutional rights of our citizens.”

The FBI technically is part of the Justice Department, but it often has behaved as a separate branch of government, a tendency that can be traced to its first director and most myopic defender, J. Edgar Hoover. Outgoing Director Louis Freeh, though deserving praise for his willingness to tackle such difficult crimes as internationally based terrorism, exacerbated this tendency by squabbling openly with the Clinton administration he served on the foreign policy aspects of terrorism and by lobbying Congress in ways seen as designed to enhance his reputation at the expense of the reputation of his, technically at least, boss, then-Attorney General Janet Reno.

Mr. Mueller’s first task, then, will be to restore the FBI to an investigative role, to refocus the bureau as a police agency that builds cases and leaves prosecutorial decisions to prosecutors. Mr. Mueller’s well-known ability to stay on the assigned task and Attorney General John Ashcroft’s recently announced top-to-bottom review

of the FBI, should combine to bring this

refocusing about.

With the confidence shown in him by the last three presidents, two Republicans and one Democrat, Mr. Mueller should have a relatively trouble-free Senate confirmation process. There are two important points upon which senators should question him – his support of mandatory minimum sentences and of tight rules of evidence disclosure for those pleading guilty – but only to ascertain that his FBI, as an investigative agency, has no interest in matters better left to prosecutors.