GOP Plan Calls for Revamping Intelligence

Roberts's plan, outlined in a paper released yesterday, would create new agencies of the CIA's main directorates: Operations, which collects intelligence and directs covert activities; Intelligence, which analyzes information; and Science and Technology.

At the Pentagon, both the NSA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency would be put under the direction of an assistant national intelligence director. The human intelligence program within the Defense Intelligence Agency would also be removed from the Pentagon.

In outlining the proposal, Roberts said, "No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security." The paper also said: "We are not abolishing the CIA. We are reordering and renaming its three major elements."

But the senior intelligence official said little would be left at the CIA under the plan. "That's exactly what it would do: demolish the agency," the official said. "This goes way beyond anything reasonable."

Roberts's proposal came a day after the Sept. 11 commission officially closed, although its members have vowed to campaign for intelligence revisions.

Hours before its midnight demise, the panel released two lengthy staff reports containing new details about al Qaeda fundraising and about how the Sept. 11 hijackers obtained U.S. visas and entered the country on numerous occasions.

The FBI knew about suspected al Qaeda fundraisers before the attacks but did not adequately address them, one report said. It added: "Gaps appear to remain in the intelligence community's understanding of the issue."

The second report said hijackers lied on their visa applications, overstayed U.S. visas or falsified their passports. It found that ringleader Mohamed Atta should have been stopped for extra scrutiny in July 2001, the last time he reentered the United States.

In reference to "the myth that the hijackers' entry into the United States was 'clean and legal,' " the report said: "It was not."