Bush supports creation of national intelligence director, counterterror center

By Deb Riechmann

President Bush on Monday endorsed the creation of a national intelligence director and a counterterrorism center his first steps to revamp the U.S. intelligence-gathering system to help prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

’’The work of security in this vast nation is not done,’’ Bush said, standing in the Rose Garden with the administration’s top national security officials.

In asking Congress to create the center and a national director who would oversee all 15 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, Bush embraced key recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission’s report.

Bush resisted the panel’s recommendation that the director control all intelligence budgets, and he also disagreed with the commission’s idea for placing both the counterterrorism center and the director post within the White House.

’’I don’t think that person ought to be a member of my Cabinet,’’ Bush said. ’’I will hire the person, and I can fire the person. ... I don’t think that the office ought to be in the White House, however.

’’I think it ought to be a stand-alone group, to better coordinate, particularly between foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence matters.’’

The president said he had no plans to summon Congress back into a special session this summer to address the proposed changes.

’’They can think about them over August and come back and act on them in September,’’ said Bush, who also called on Congress to change how lawmakers oversee the intelligence services. ’’There are too many committees with overlapping jurisdiction, which wastes time and makes it difficult for meaningful oversight and reform,’’ he said.

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who has endorsed all 40 of the commission’s recommendations, said Bush should call Congress back from its summer recess. ’’The time to act is now, not later,’’ the senator declared.

Kerry also criticized the president for rejecting the panel’s recommendation to put the national intelligence director in the executive office of the president, and give him control over intelligence budgets.

’’You give greater power and leverage to the person who is the national director if they are seen as speaking directly for the president within the White House,’’ Kerry said. ’’You also coordinate more effectively with the other agencies that you need to coordinate in order to summon the greatest possible response to protect Americans.’’

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the White House had a responsibility to the survivors of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to act more quickly.

’’President Bush is doing what has long been recommended,’’ she said. ’’Why has it taken three years?

She said she had called House Democrats back to Washington on Aug. 10 to discuss the commission’s work with commission members and she urged House Speaker Dennis Hastert to reconvene the House in August.

The president defended his record on homeland security, which has taken center stage in the presidential campaign with both Bush and Kerry dueling over their national security credentials. He said the administration has refocused the FBI on terror threats, created the Department of Homeland Security, set up the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and worked to ensure a ’’seamless spread of information throughout our government.’’

Bush’s new proposals came just after the announcement Sunday that authorities had uncovered a plot by al-Qaida to attack prominent financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J.

The increase of the government’s warning level in those cities ’’is a serious reminder a solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face,’’ Bush said.

In announcing his proposals, Bush said the national director of intelligence would be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Under the reorganization Bush is backing, the director would be the president’s principal intelligence adviser and the CIA would be managed by a separate director.

Currently, the CIA director not only heads his own agency but also oversees the U.S. intelligence community. But the CIA director presently has neither budgetary authority nor day-to-day operational control of the other agencies, most of which are in the Defense Department.

Briefing reporters at the White House, Bush’s chief of staff, Andy Card, defended the president’s decision not to give the director budgetary authority, saying the person who holds the post will have ’’tremendous clout’’ in developing budgets. The Defense Department’s spy agencies consume about four-fifths of government intelligence spending.

Bush said the national counterterrorism center, which would prepare the president’s daily terrorism threat report, would build on the analytical work already being done by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The new counterterrorism center will become the ’’government’s knowledge bank for information about known and suspected terrorists,’’ Bush said.

The director of the center would answer to the national intelligence director, once that position is created, Bush said. WASHINGTON (AP)

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/215/wash/Bush_supports_creation_of_nati:.shtml