Robert S. Mueller III, who became the F.B.I. director just a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will complete his 10-year term on Sept. 4, having led the in-progress effort to transform the bureau into a domestic intelligence agency.
A small team led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been evaluating potential successors and, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, has reached certain views about the ideal candidate.
In particular, officials said, the administration wants someone who shares the philosophy and has the management abilities to press forward with changing the bureau’s culture, so that agents focus less on solving already-completed crimes and more on uncovering potential threats — even at the expense of accumulating arrests and convictions.
Possible contenders include James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general; Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago; Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner; Ronald K. Noble, a former enforcement head at the Treasury Department who now leads Interpol; and Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former assistant attorney general for national security.
Officials say the administration is also looking for someone who will be easily confirmed and who will be respected both inside the bureau and elsewhere in the intelligence community.
Finally, they say, they want someone with the character to be a strong leader during a crisis and to maintain an appropriate level of independence, but who would keep a low political profile and focus on operational matters while deferring to the White House and the Justice Department on policy issues.
In many ways the administration appears to be looking for a clone of Mr. Mueller, who worked relatively smoothly with four attorneys general of widely divergent personalities and political views, under both a Republican and a Democratic president.
“Bob is a hard person to replace,” Mr. Holder told reporters last week. “He has done a really excellent job in transforming the F.B.I. He is a person who has the confidence of the people in the F.B.I. and people in the intelligence community. He’s a person I’ve worked with for a number of years — he’s a friend. He has the president’s confidence as well. So we want to make sure the person picked to be his successor will be able to fill those really large shoes that he leaves.”
Mr. Holder said the administration wanted to have the next director in place by the time Mr. Mueller is required to step down. He hinted that a nomination could come as early as May, though other officials said that later was more likely. The Senate has been slow to vote on Justice Department nominees lately; by contrast, in 2001, the Senate confirmed Mr. Mueller less than a month after his nomination.
It is not clear whether there is a front-runner for the job.
Most of the high-profile potential nominees come with advantages and disadvantages.
Mr. Comey, a career prosecutor who was the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York before his elevation to deputy attorney general, earned a reputation for independence by leading — with Mr. Mueller at his side — an internal Bush administration revolt in March 2004 over the legality of the program of surveillance without warrants, forcing the White House to modify the program.
Mr. Comey is now identified as a Republican political appointee, which could make it easier for him to win confirmation, but the Obama administration might also be reluctant to signal that it could not find a Democrat for the job. Mr. Comey also now has a well-paying job at Lockheed Martin and may be reluctant to leave it.
Mr. Fitzgerald, a longtime prosecutor and a holdover United States attorney from the Bush administration, also has a strong reputation for independence, as leader of the investigation into the leak of the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.
Like Mr. Comey, Mr. Fitzgerald now has the public identity of a Republican political appointee. Moreover, his demonstrated willingness to challenge the Bush White House could give its current occupants pause, though they would never say so in public.
Mr. Kelly, by contrast, is a Democrat with a strong law enforcement résumé. Before becoming commissioner of the New York Police Department, he was a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration and supervised the United States Customs Service, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has endorsed him for the F.B.I. position.
But Mr. Kelly would be 70 at the start of his 10-year term. In addition, his efforts to expand the Police Department’s counterterrorism intelligence-gathering capabilities have led to turf-war friction with F.B.I. officials. He also helped scuttle Mr. Holder’s signature plan to prosecute the Sept. 11 defendants in Manhattan.
Mr. Noble, too, is a Democrat who oversaw the Treasury Department’s enforcement arm for a period during the Clinton administration. He has global stature as the first American to be elected to lead Interpol, developing ties that would resonate with the F.B.I.’s increasing presence overseas. But he has less operational experience than other candidates and is somewhat less well-known in Washington.
Mr. Wainstein is the candidate most closely associated with Mr. Mueller, whom he worked with first as the F.B.I. general counsel and then as his chief of staff. Later, Mr. Wainstein became the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, then led the Justice Department’s national security division. Since leaving the department, he has frequently testified before Congress about national security legal policy issues. Like Mr. Comey and Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Wainstein is now identified as a Republican appointee — though he, too, was a longtime federal prosecutor and is generally respected on both sides of the aisle.
At least two prominent figures are said to have made it clear that they do not want to be considered for the job, including Merrick B. Garland, a federal appeals court judge, and Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general and a member of the Sept. 11 commission.
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