Bush Lays Out Intel Agenda

President George W. Bush has ordered new measures to bolster the CIA in combating weapons of mass destruction and other threats, directing an agency that lawmakers have accused of engaging in "group think" to present "diverse views" to policy-makers.

The new steps came as part of a response to the Sept. 11 commission's report, presented last summer. In measures he approved last Thursday and announced late Tuesday, Bush elaborated on how he will respond to two recommendations he had previously embraced.

He directed Attorney General John Ashcroft to press ahead with a "specialized and integrated national security work force" within the FBI. This group includes agents, analysts, linguists and surveillance experts who seek to cultivate "an institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security."

Bush also ordered Ashcroft to improve intelligence information sharing throughout the government.

The Sept. 11 commission urged that the CIA, among other things, beef up its analytic capabilities, build on its human intelligence capacity, strengthen its foreign-language programs and recruit a more diverse force of spies, "so they can blend more easily in foreign cities."

Bush ordered the CIA to bolster its ability to combat weapons of mass destruction through analysis that "routinely considers, and presents to national security policy-makers, diverse views."

As far as the intelligence bill Bush is pushing for, defying President Bush, two influential Republican House chairmen – who led opposition dooming legislation based on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations — said they won't change their minds without Senate concessions.

"It'll be tougher now because the well got even more poisoned by the senators and their supporters thoroughly criticizing Duncan Hunter and myself by name on the talking head shows yesterday," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday.

There was nothing left but recriminations on Monday, with most of Congress heading home for Thanksgiving and Mr. Bush still on an overseas trip. No meetings of the bill's negotiators have been planned.

The House and Senate scheduled Dec. 6-7 meetings just in case a deal is reached.

Mr. Bush personally lobbied House Republicans and told reporters Sunday that "it was clear I wanted the bill passed." But Sensenbrenner and House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter spoke against the bill in a House GOP meeting Saturday afternoon, forcing Speaker Dennis Hastert to pull it.

CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports the bill would create a powerful new national intelligence director with control over all intelligence budgets, including the Pentagon's. But Pentagon brass, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, argued it could handcuff their ability to get urgent satellite and other intelligence to troops on the battlefield.

The intelligence community was highly criticized in a Senate Intelligence Committee report this summer on its estimate about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

In the unanimously approved report, senators concluded that the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

Bush also said in the new directives that the CIA should increase the number of "fully qualified, all-source analysts" by 50 percent.

All-source analysts are trained to study a variety of intelligence, including imagery and intercepts, and produce reports or briefings for policy-makers. Critics say bureaucratic walls inside and between intelligence agencies often inhibit all-source analysts' ability to truly see all sources of information.

CIA staffing numbers are classified, so the current number of such analysts is not known.

The president delayed action on one contentious recommendation. He told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA director Porter Goss to review within 90 days a commission recommendation that lead responsibility for undercover paramilitary operations should shift to the Pentagon.