FBI Chief Lacks All the Answers on Project Woes

WASHINGTON —  Lawmakers criticized FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday for continued problems with a costly computer project that was supposed to dramatically improve management of terrorism and other criminal cases.

Mueller acknowledged he did not know how much the FBI’s Virtual Case File would cost beyond the $170 million already budgeted and largely spent, or when FBI agents and analysts would have it on their computers.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mueller made improvement of the agency’s computer systems a priority. Members of Congress and the independent Sept. 11 commission said the overhaul was critical to enabling the FBI and intelligence agencies to “connect the dots” in preventing attacks.

But at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Mueller acknowledged that an agent with information to share still faced “a cumbersome, time-consuming process” to put it in an FBI database.

His remarks came the same day Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a report that blamed planning failures and management weaknesses for many of the project’s problems.

Mueller said he would have a better idea about costs and a timetable in two months, after the FBI evaluated a test of a slimmed-down version of the Virtual Case File that was being run in the agency’s New Orleans office.

He said it was possible the entire system, designed by Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, was so inadequate and outdated that one would have to be built from scratch.

Senators took Mueller to task over the Virtual Case File. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) called the project a “catastrophic failure.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Mueller why he had told senators last May that the project would be delivered by the end of 2004, even after some people in the FBI were already aware that it was troubled.

Mueller said he accepted some of the blame for the problems with the Virtual Case File. “It was my expectation we’d have a substantial portion of VCF by the end of the year,” he said.