FBI proceeds with limited reform

WASHINGTON — The FBI pressed ahead Friday with plans to restructure its intelligence operations, even as the announced departure of CIA Director George J. Tenet stirred debate over the future shape of the nation's intelligence agencies.

Bureau officials offered details of a proposed intelligence service within the FBI, including a "directorate of intelligence," that would have budget authority over all FBI intelligence assets and programs.

The proposal amounts to a pre-emptive strike against congressional critics and others who say that a more sweeping overhaul of U.S. intelligence services is needed because of breakdowns exposed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

But the proposal is drawing criticism for being too timid; even bureau officials acknowledged that the approach is more evolutionary than revolutionary, in effect a somewhat more elaborate version of its existing intelligence office.

Tenet, who said Thursday that he would leave office July 11, is a staunch ally of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in opposing some more far-reaching reform proposals — including the creation of an independent domestic intelligence-gathering service, modeled after Britain's MI5, that would separate law enforcement agents in the FBI from domestic intelligence collection.

Critics of that approach argue that creating another agency would exacerbate many problems — including a chasm in intelligence sharing — that the Justice Department has spent the last three years trying to fix. And they warn that any dramatic changes in the intelligence-gathering bureaucracy while the nation remains under an elevated threat of terrorist attack also could be perilous.

FBI officials said that Tenet's resignation and the new proposal, unveiled by Mueller at a congressional hearing Thursday, were coincidental.

"The proposal was not meant to blunt anything," Maureen Baginski, the FBI's executive assistant director in charge of intelligence, said at a briefing for reporters. "The proposal really is the next logical step in developing the program."

Baginski — a former Russian teacher whom Mueller hired from the National Security Agency a year ago — stands as the presumed leader of the beefed-up intelligence organization, which would require congressional approval.