George Hahn

One would have thought that the life of a Marine and David's death in Vietnam would argue strongly against following in his footsteps.

But many of us saw in him the person we wanted to be, even before his death.

Mueller went on.

A number of his friends and teammates joined the Marine Corps because of him, as did I.

The Marines live by a code, semper fidelis, Latin for always faithful, to the Constitution and the country, to the Corps, to their fellow Marines, and to the mission.

Mueller served three years on active duty before attending law school.

After a brief stint in private practice, he joined the Department of Justice.

Years later, reflecting on a lifetime of service, Mueller said, I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam.

There were many who did not.

And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute.

Mueller's contributions read like a John Grisham novel.

After rising through the ranks as a prosecutor, he oversaw cases against Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, and the terrorists who bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

But it's the work Mueller did outside the spotlight that reveals his character.

In 1995, two years after leaving the DOJ for private practice, Mueller volunteered to return in a lesser role, as a line prosecutor.

One day he called me, out of the blue, and asked if I could use a homicide prosecutor in my office, recalled the chief federal prosecutor in Washington at the time, Eric Holder Jr., later Barack Obama's attorney general.

Our nation's capital was a city in great distress.

We were called the murder capital of the United States.

For the next three years, Mueller prosecuted murder cases, helping to bring down the city's homicide rate.

His greatest contribution, however, was leading the FBI for 12 years in the aftermath of 9-11, restoring public trust while reforming the Bureau to address the systemic failures that had allowed the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Fealty to his mission sometimes put him at odds with the presidents he served.