WASHINGTON — President Bush urged Congress on Monday to create a director of national intelligence and called for the establishment of a counterterrorism center, two central recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"We are a nation in danger. We're doing everything we can in our power to confront the danger," he said, as authorities increased security measures to protect financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, N.J., after receiving information that Al Qaeda might attack them.
The director of national intelligence would serve as the president's chief advisor in that area but would not head a specific agency. The counterterrorism center would coordinate anti-terrorist operations across the government and prepare a daily threat assessment.
But Bush's proposals differed from the commission's recommendations in two critical ways. First, the president said the intelligence czar should not be part of the White House. Second, Bush said the new director should have "input" in, but not control over, the budgets of the country's 15 intelligence agencies.
Those differences, and other vague elements in his statement, ensured that his endorsement would serve more to promote debate over the recommendations than to decide them.
"The fate of these reforms turns vitally on the specifics," the commission's chairman and vice chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former U.S. Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, said in a joint statement.
White House officials indicated that it would be up to Congress to debate the specifics of the new post when it drafts the legislation to create it. They also insisted that changes in the intelligence agencies should take place in tandem with reform of congressional oversight of intelligence.
White House aides suggested that one reason the president kept his proposals imprecise was to allow for debate and bargaining with Capitol Hill, which has already begun holding hearings on the panel's 41 recommendations.
"This is the first outlining of our proposal. Of course, we're going to work on the details with the Hill. It's going to be a two-way process," said National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack.
Politically, the president's decision to back the reforms allows him to say he has accepted the commission's recommendations, which have proved popular and persuasive with the public and members of Congress.
