When I first came to Washington in the 1970s, a friend took me on a tour of the national monuments, topping it off with a stop at Harvey’s, the plush restaurant where J. Edgar Hoover had a regular table with his longtime FBI sidekick, Clyde Tolson.

Only the high and mighty stopped for a friendly word with Hoover, who in his 48 years running the FBI collected dirt on politicians and hounded civil rights leaders like the head of an American Gestapo. The waiters seemed terrified.

In Hoover’s day, only those reporters who could be counted on to carry water for the FBI got face time with senior G-men.

No longer.

Researching a piece on changes at the Bureau since 9/11, I was invited to spend hours in the headquarters building that bears Hoover’s name, and hours more over cabernet and cigars in nearby restaurants with FBI officials eager to tell me about all the changes they’d made to thwart al Qaeda plots.

John Miller, the FBI’s top spokesman, knew going in that I was skeptical of FBI claims of great progress in its counterterrorism mission, which is transforming the bureau from a legion of arrests-obsessed federal cops into first-rate intelligence types who never arrest anybody.

Miller, an affable former TV reporter who’d interviewed Osama bin Laden in his cave three years before 9/11, tried a gambit that would have spun Hoover in his grave: He and his colleagues talked my head off for weeks and drowned me in data.

And in the end, I remained unpersuaded. In a 6,000-word May 1 CQ Weekly (pdf) cover story, I sided with reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, private commissions, think tanks and my own sources inside and outside of the FBI and other agencies to conclude that, however well intentioned and impressive its array of new programs, the FBI was having a tough time shedding decades-long habits as a law-and-order outfit to make room for counterterrorism.

I prominently did report, however, that when questioned in an FBI whistleblower case, the bureau’s top counterterrorism officials could not answer simple questions about al Qaeda and the Islamic factions out to destroy us and our allies.

It would take “decades” for the FBI to virtually grow a second head for intelligence work, a top former intelligence official told me, “maybe a generation.”

That seemed to sum it up: Progress, but no end in sight.

I called Miller a couple days after the story ran — to mostly very enthusiastic reviews from my sources and others. I told him how much I appreciated his help with the piece.

“You always hurt the one you love,” he cracked.

At my request, however, he provided me with a detailed critique, excerpts from which follow. Since I’d spent eight full pages in the magazine making my case, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give Miller — whose views I’d already amply reported in the piece — more space here for a rebuttal.

Miller first took issue with my reporting on the testimony of FBI counterterrorism chief Gary Bald (who resigned last week) about Islam in the whistleblower suit.

Bald had said he not only didn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite — the two main warring factions of Islam in Iraq and elsewhere — but that it didn’t matter whether he or any other counterterrorism manager did.

Miller called my recounting of the testimony “heavy handed.”

“In his deposition, [Bald] actually makes a good point. A leader needs to drive the organization forward. If he is the executive in a counterterrorism operation in the post-9/11 world, he does not need to memorize the collected statements of Osama bin Laden, or be able to read Urdu to be effective. He needs to be a leader, a manager and a driver of change. Challenging any leader on those qualities is fair game. Playing ‘Islamic Trivial Pursuit’ was a cheap shot for the lawyers and a cheaper shot for the journalist. It’s just a gimmick.”

Miller also disagreed with my characterization of the outcome of some FBI-Justice Department terrorism cases.

And he said I left some other important cases out — which I did, because they weren’t relevant to the piece’s focus on the FBI’s transformation efforts.

Miller cites as successes “the recent case in Toledo where they discussed attacking the president’s motorcade in Toledo and after nixing that, moved on to a plot to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. One member of the cell tried to go there twice.”

Miller added, “You did not mention the Los Angeles case in which the terrorist group JIS, spawned from a Folsom Prison cell, may have been days away from launching a planned mass murder. You do not mention the case brought down in Atlanta and New York last month charging two men in connection with discussions to attack oil refineries and other targets on US soil.”

Fair enough, although I saw those as more representative of the FBI’s traditionally excellent criminal investigations.

But as long as we’re on the subject, I also didn’t bring up the case of the still at-large “anthrax mailer.”

Miller’s main point was that the FBI’s legendary criminal investigative prowess is blending well with the post-9/11 emphasis on terrorism at the FBI and agencies like the CIA.

It’s worth quoting at length, because his argument involves cases that make use of information from detainees, phone tapping and even immigration enforcement, three of the most controversial tactics at the government’s disposal.

“Example: the CIA provides information from a detainee that he attended bomb-making training in an al Qaeda camp with another individual who is now in Chicago. The FBI takes that lead and investigates the man in Chicago. An informant might be used to engage the subject to corroborate the information. If there is a sufficient legal basis, electronic surveillance may be used.”

“Then,” Miller continues, “suppose the same person turns up in contact by telephone with known terrorist suspects overseas.

“Two strategies may be considered: One is to continue the investigation to learn more about his associates and activities to uncover other members of a potential cell.

“On the other hand, if we are confident that he was trained in the camps as a bomb maker, but uncertain that he is part of an active terrorist cell, we may use other crimes committed such as identity theft, fraud or immigration violations to cause an arrest or deportation.

“That,” Miller said, “is how terrorist activity or potential terrorist activity is disrupted before an attack.”

Miller also took issue with my interpretation of statistics showing only 184 terrorism-related convictions out of 6,400 cases brought since 9/11.

“That is because we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing,” he maintained. “We are using all legal powers at our disposal to arrest those who are, or are reasonably suspected, of being involved in terrorist activity, especially if they are violating the law in some other way.”

The arrests could be for loitering, spitting on the sidewalk, running a red light.

“We would be criticized for not taking those opportunities. When you look at the filings in these cases, they document the actual violation of law that they are charged with” — not something directly terrorist-related, he said.

“In many cases there is other information of great concern that caused those people to come on to the FBI’s radar screen.”

Overall, Miller said, the steady flow of criticisms from the media begin to feel personal.

“For the men and women of the FBI, for the agents and the analysts who work long hours and sometimes have sleepless nights thinking about what lead or strategy they might not have considered, these constant assessments of failure in the midst of real success must get tiring.”

“I do appreciate the time you spent with us to do the homework and that our side and even some supporters from outside the Bureau were included,” he says.

“I just wish that someone would ask the critics to actually document their case the way we are asked to document ours.

“I don’t think they would have much to show behind their old, tired sound bites. Imagine what they’d be saying if we were actually getting it wrong.”

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.