Bombings Make a Bitter Bookend for F.B.I.’s Director

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, NYT

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III was awakened at home close to 1:30 a.m. on April 19 as one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was in cardiac arrest and the other was on the run.

By 3 a.m., after an F.B.I. agent had used a fingerprint scanner on the dying suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in a hospital emergency room to learn his identity, Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, had arrived in a suit and tie at his agency’s headquarters in downtown Washington.

His agents gave him the bad news: two years earlier, the F.B.I. had interviewed, and closed its file on, Mr. Tsarnaev. Mr. Mueller took it in without showing emotion, his aides said. He turned to a deputy and ordered the release of the information — knowing it would call into question whether the F.B.I. failed to head off one of the most spectacular attacks on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Now, Mr. Mueller’s 12-year tenure under two presidents is facing scrutiny, months from his longtime plans to step down in September, as hearings begin on Capitol Hill into what happened in Boston and why.

(More here.)