WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday handed Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte broad authority over America's disparate and often-competing spy agencies, bringing U.S. domestic and foreign intelligence operations more closely under White House control.
Bush ordered the changes three months after a presidential commission issued a withering indictment of the intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war. The commission said that a poorly coordinated intelligence community in the U.S. was producing work that was becoming "increasingly irrelevant."
The president adopted nearly all of the panel's 74 recommendations and took other steps toward completing the first overhaul of the U.S. intelligence apparatus since World War II.
In one of the most significant moves, Bush ordered the consolidation of the FBI's counterterrorism, intelligence and espionage operations into one National Security Service. The new office will be part of the FBI, but Negroponte will have authority over its budget and priorities -- a move intended to reduce barriers between domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering.
Wednesday's changes further defined the post of director of national intelligence. The job was the centerpiece of an intelligence bill adopted by Congress in December, and Bush chose Negroponte for the post in February.
Serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, Negroponte holds a new job that oversees all 15 intelligence agencies scattered throughout the government, putting him in a position to quickly communicate White House wishes to a wide network of spies.
"If there was any doubt about the DNI's authority, and whether the president was going to empower the DNI, that shouldn't remain today," said Frances Townsend, the White House domestic security advisor who was assigned by Bush to coordinate the administration's response to the commission recommendations.
The president's action Wednesday represented "a fundamental strengthening of our intelligence capabilities," Townsend said. "It's not simply a moving of boxes. It's not simply a restructuring."
Negroponte will be in charge of implementing the reorganization, which still could encounter opposition within agencies that long have been protective of their individual shares of the U.S. intelligence budget, estimated to be $40 billion a year.
