"Nobody Gets Out Alive" The Caucus Room restaurant on Ninth Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., has always billed itself as a "nonpartisan" restaurant, if such a thing is possible in the nation''s capital. Perhaps bipartisan would be a better description: it was partly owned by a prominent Democrat (the power lobbyist Tommy Boggs) and a Republican (the Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour). Its somewhat clubby atmosphere, wood-paneled walls, and steak-and-American fare made it the ideal venue for the studiously nonpartisan FBI director, Robert Mueller, and the former deputy attorney general James Comey when the two met there for lunch in the spring of 2011. It had been nearly ten years since the horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Center had transformed the FBI from a sometimes overly methodical organization focused on crimes that had already occurred into a potent antiterrorist and counterintelligence organization that tried to anticipate and prevent them.

Mueller had taken up his post just a week before 9/11, and he and Comey, who was then at the Justice Department, had met twice daily for the so-called threat briefing, a rundown on every conceivable terrorist threat, until Comey left the Justice Department in 2005. Mueller''s office had recently called Comey to suggest a lunch with the director the next time Comey was in D.C. Comey was now living in Connecticut, working for one of the world''s most prominent and successful hedge funds, Bridgewater Associates. After years of almost uninterrupted government service, he was finally making some money (his annual salary at Bridgewater was $6.6 million in 2012, according to his financial disclosures), more than enough to put his five children through college. Before joining the Justice Department, Comey had been the U.S.

attorney in Manhattan and before that had worked as a federal prosecutor. Rudolph Giuliani had hired him as a young assistant in 1987, when the future New York City mayor was seizing headlines and magazine covers and cracking down on Ivan Boesky and other Wall Street criminals. Comey and Mueller hadn''t seen each other for several years, and Mueller was now nearing the end of the FBI director''s ten-year tenure. "Who''s going to replace you?" Comey asked, mostly out of idle curiosity. (Mueller couldn''t be renominated; Congress had restricted the FBI director''s term to ten years.) "You know, maybe you should," Mueller replied. Comey wasn''t sure he was serious. "Why would I want to do that, when I was already your supervisor?" "When was that?" "When I was deputy attorney general, you reported to me," Comey reminded him.

"Noooo . ," Mueller answered, drawing out the one syllable. "Yes, you did," Comey said. He drew an organization chart on the paper table cover, with a dotted line connecting the FBI to its superiors at the Department of Justice. "Well, maybe on paper, but this is a much better job," Mueller said, smiling. "You should consider it." Comey was flattered, but firmly declined. He wasn''t about to move his family again after disrupting their lives and moving them to Connecticut.

That didn''t stop the press from speculating that Comey might succeed Mueller (also mentioned were Comey''s good friend Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, and Raymond W. Kelly, New York City''s police commissioner). Attorney General Eric Holder told The New York Times that President Obama basically wanted a clone of Mueller, whom the president described as "the gold standard." In May, Obama said he''d seek Congress''s approval to extend Mueller''s tenure by two years, through the 2012 presidential election. Comey wasn''t exactly a clone of Mueller: Robert Swan Mueller III came from a far more affluent background, born in New York City in 1944 into the East Coast establishment. His father captained a navy submarine chaser in World War II before becoming a successful DuPont executive and stressed the importance of honor, principle, and public service to his son.

As Mueller told the author Garrett Graff, "You did not shade or even consider shading with him" when it came to the truth. Mueller followed his father to St. Paul''s for boarding school and then Princeton, where he played varsity lacrosse. By contrast, Comey''s grandfather was a patrolman in Yonkers, New York. His father sold oilcans to gas station operators and later scouted gas station locations for an oil company. Money was tight. After the family moved to suburban Allendale, New Jersey, when Comey was in fifth grade, he was bullied and felt like an outsider at his new school. When he was a senior in high school, an armed intruder broke into their house while he and his younger brother were home alone.

The man held them at gunpoint while ransacking closets and drawers and then locked them in a bathroom. The boys managed to escape through a window, only to be captured again outdoors. Fortunately, the sounds attracted a neighbor and his dog, and Comey fled back into the house and called the police. The gunman was never found, and the terrifying incident haunted Comey for years. But his survival instilled an appreciation for what mattered in life-not wealth or recognition, but "standing for something. Making a difference," as he later put it. In this regard, he and Mueller were closely aligned. In what Mueller has repeatedly described as a formative experience in his life, a lacrosse teammate, David Hackett, a year older than Mueller and someone he admired intensely, volunteered to serve in the U.

S. Marines following graduation. Hackett was killed in Vietnam in 1967 during a heroic effort to rescue fellow marines trapped by an ambush, which only intensified Mueller''s resolve to follow his example by enlisting. Mueller underwent intensive training in Ranger School and was deployed to Vietnam in 1968. Even in the jungle, he shaved every day and made his bed. He was wounded by a gunshot to the thigh; after recovering, he returned to combat duty before being transferred to the Pentagon. He received numerous awards, including a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. "Perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute," Mueller told Graff, much as Comey''s brush with death inspired a similar ambition.

For both men, the importance of integrity has been a recurring theme. As Mueller told graduates of the College of William & Mary, Comey''s alma mater, in 2013, "As the saying goes, ''If you have integrity, nothing else matters. And if you don''t have integrity, nothing else matters.''" He continued, "The FBI''s motto is Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. For the men and women of the Bureau, uncompromising integrity-both personal and institutional-is the core value." That Mueller himself had tried to recruit Comey to run the FBI spoke to the deep bonds they''d forged while Comey was at the Justice Department. They weren''t especially friends and never socialized together (it wasn''t clear to Comey that Mueller socialized with anyone apart from his family). But they shared something deeper, something Mueller had witnessed firsthand at the bedside of an ailing attorney general, John Ashcroft.

It was the same quality that Comey had almost instantly perceived in Mueller, and why it was Mueller whom Comey had summoned to Ashcroft''s hospital room on a fateful night seven years earlier. Nothing had done more to solidify Comey''s reputation for a willingness to do what he believed was the right thing pursuant to the law, no matter what the political consequences, than his swift and decisive actions as acting attorney general in March 2004, less than three years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks had led to a drastic revision of antiterrorist tactics, including warrantless government surveillance of the phone and email records of countless U.S. citizens. Comey was U.S. attorney in Manhattan soon after the attacks, and he''d often walked by the ruins, watching firefighters and cleanup crews hard at work under dangerous conditions. He knew the importance of the government''s antiterrorist efforts.

At the same time, he understood the importance of civil liberties. After Comey was appointed by President George W. Bush as deputy attorney general in 2003, Justice Department lawyers convinced him that the National Security Agency''s surveillance program, code-named Stellar Wind, had no lawful justification. It plainly violated a law passed by Congress that strictly limited electronic surveillance within the United States. Jack Goldsmith, who headed the department''s Office of Legal Counsel, called Stellar Wind "the biggest legal mess I''d seen in my life." The program was so sensitive that it had to be renewed every forty-five days, with the latest deadline, March 11, fast approaching. Even though it had routinely been authorized, Comey concluded that the program had to be stopped, or at least substantially modified, to comply with existing law. On March 1, Comey discussed his concerns with Mueller, someone cleared to discuss top secret national security information and in whom he had developed a deep sense of trust.

In Mueller, Comey had found a kindred spirit, someone whose reverence for the law-the primacy of the law-matched his own. At his confirmation hearings to become deputy attorney general, Comey had been asked how he would handle politically sensitive or controversial investigations. Comey had responded, "I don''t care about politics. I don''t care about expediency. I don''t care about friendship. I care about doing the right thing. And I would never.