Washington – President Bush, embracing 70 of the 74 recommendations of a blue-ribbon intelligence commission, said today he was creating a national security service within the FBI to specialize in intelligence as part of a shake-up of the nation’s disparate spy agencies.
A fact sheet describing the White House’s broad acceptance of the panel’s suggestions said that three more of the recommendations would be studied and that one recommendation – which was classified – was being rejected. The decisions come after a 90-day review led by the National Security Council’s homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend.
The changes being adopted include directing the Justice Department to consolidate its counterterrorism, espionage and intelligence units. Bush also will ask Congress to create a new assistant attorney general position to help centralize those operations.
Along with the list of changes being heeded, Bush also issued an executive order freezing assets of individuals or groups involved in activities related to the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
In March, a nine-member commission led by Republican Judge Laurence Silberman and former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb put forward a scathing 600-page report on the intelligence community and its ability to understand and protect against the threat from weapons of mass destruction.
Bush asked for the Robb-Silberman review in early 2004 after it became clear that prewar intelligence on Iraq was flawed. After a 13-month investigation, the commission concluded the intelligence community was “dead wrong” in almost all of its prewar findings on Iraq’s arsenal.
Bush also asked the commission to study the sweeping intelligence reform law that Congress passed in December, which created a new national intelligence director to oversee the 15 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.
Among the 70 changes being accepted by the administration were: -Forming a new National Counter Proliferation Center – with a staff of less than 100 – to coordinate the U.S. government’s collection and analysis of intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The task is now performed by many national security agencies.
-Asking Congress to reform its oversight of the intelligence community, a controversial proposal that could provoke turf wars and other difficulties on Capitol Hill.
– Putting CIA Director Porter Goss in charge of all overseas human intelligence, or traditional spy work, done by government operatives.
-Proposing legislation that would extend the duration of electronic surveillance in cases involving foreign agents.
