President Orders Interim Intelligence Reforms

WASHINGTON —  President Bush signed a series of executive orders Friday in a bid to strengthen America’s intelligence operations until Congress could act, but they fell short of reforms recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and several members of Congress.

In what White House officials called the most significant change under the new orders, the director of central intelligence will have greater power than in the past to help determine the budgets of the 15 intelligence agencies. But the nation’s top intelligence officer still will control only the CIA budget.

Under the current system, the CIA director runs day-to-day operations at the agency and also serves as the director of central intelligence, with nominal responsibility for other intelligence agencies. Members of the Sept. 11 commission had urged separating those two positions, but the White House said it could not do so under existing law.

The White House is preparing a legislative package for further reforms -- including creation of a national intelligence director with a rank similar to Cabinet members’, to coordinate foreign and domestic activities of all U.S. intelligence agencies and to serve as top intelligence advisor to the president. That official would outrank the CIA chief.

In a background briefing for reporters, a senior White House official declined to say whether the president would ask Congress to give the proposed national intelligence director, known as the NID, greater control over intelligence budgets -- especially those now controlled by the Pentagon, as the Sept. 11 commission had urged.

“We will work with Congress to ensure the NID has all the authority they need to do their job,” the official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the president had gone as far he could under the law to overhaul the intelligence community and that Congress must enact further changes.

A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the new order appeared more symbolic than substantive.

“Under statute, the [director of central intelligence] already has significant budget authority,” the official said. “He just can’t exercise it. If he wants to transfer funds from one agency to another, for example, as long as the secretary of Defense or whoever says no, he’s done. That doesn’t change” under the executive order.

R. James Woolsey, who served as CIA chief and director of central intelligence from 1993 to 1995, said: “The problem had nothing to do with budgets or the secretary of Defense. The problem was coordination of domestic and foreign intelligence -- the FBI and CIA not talking together.”

In his orders, the president also created a National Counterterrorism Center that officials said would work with a similar CIA-run facility -- called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center -- to help coordinate planning and operations by intelligence, law enforcement, military and diplomatic agencies. The Sept. 11 commission had recommended such a center.

The president also signed an order designed to promote greater sharing of information and coordination among intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, as well as state and local governments. A fourth order established a board to safeguard civil liberties.

Bush’s action follows several devastating critiques of U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq. It comes amid an intense election-year debate over how best to reform the intelligence system.

Although critics called the White House changes modest and of limited effect, the action gives Bush a potentially powerful political tool.

The new executive orders are designed to “improve our ability to find, track and stop terrorists,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman.

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee for president, criticized the White House reforms as too little, too late during a town hall-style meeting in the San Francisco suburb of Daly City.

Noting that Bush initially had resisted creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Sept. 11 commission, Kerry said, “Finally, dragging and kicking, they’ve come to the table each time. Now they say they’re willing to embrace it, a director of national security, but they’re not willing to embrace it because they won’t give him budget authority.”

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the changes, but senior CIA officials reviewed the proposed executive orders before Bush signed them.

Several congressional committees have worked through the August recess to draft intelligence reform legislation. Indeed, another congressional proposal -- at least the fourth in recent weeks -- was offered Friday.

The author, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, reacted coolly to the president’s order.

“This interim step is certainly needed, but at the end of the day, Congress is going to have to enact comprehensive reform, and we need real leadership from the president to get it done,” Rockefeller said.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, last week recommended dismantling the CIA and reassigning its staff.

“I commend the president for taking this initial step as we look forward toward further reforming and transforming our intelligence community,” Roberts said.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement that they were pleased with the orders. “However, executive orders are only steps and ultimately will not be able to substitute for the legislation we hope to move,” they said.

Senate leaders have given the committee the task of studying recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission and producing legislation by Oct. 1.

But in a sign that the overhaul could face significant resistance, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Friday that he opposed some of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission.

“The commission failed, in my opinion, to recognize that changes have taken place since 9/11,” he said. “I intend to speak out as forcefully as I can to try and make the Senate think about what we’re doing.”

Times staff writers Richard Simon, Michael Finnegan and Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.