President Obama said Thursday that he is asking Congress to extend the term of FBI Director Robert Mueller, saying the rare exemption is needed for continuity and "for the sake of our nation's safety and security." The unexpected request comes as the White House had been searching for a successor for Mueller, 66, who is facing mandatory retirement in September because he is subject to a 10-year term limit. Under the White house scenario, Mueller would serve two more years and then the president elected in 2012 would choose his successor for a decade. Key lawmakers indicated their support.
MCCAIN: TORTURE DIDN'T YIELD BIN LADEN TRAIL
None of the crucial information that led the CIA down the trail to Osama bin Laden came from coercive interrogation techniques, Sen. John McCain said Thursday, contradicting the accounts of U.S. officials. McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has opposed the U.S. use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques to elicit information from detainees. He said CIA Director Leon Panetta told him that the hunt for Bin Laden did not begin with information from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, and that the name of Bin Laden's courier came from a detainee held in another country. Panetta, however, also wrote that some information came from detainees who were subject to harsh interrogations, a U.S. official said.
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