President Bush urged Congress again yesterday to pass the intelligence restructuring bill, but key House opponents appeared to remain firm as some dissenters began to emerge in the Senate.
With Congress returning tomorrow for a short session to pass the omnibus fiscal 2005 spending bill, the White House said it will delay sending a letter from the president to House and Senate leaders while administration and congressional staffs work out a strategy to get the stalled measure passed.
 
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As opposition builds in the Senate, it does not appear to be abating in the House. A House leadership aide said yesterday: "There are a lot of members with concerns about the bill, and they don't understand why the bill -- with its flaws -- must be done immediately."
The bill would create a national director of intelligence (DNI) to oversee the foreign and domestic operations of the 15 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. It would also establish by law a national counterterrorism center to coordinate all intelligence activities related to the war on terrorism.
In his radio address, Bush noted that he has already implemented many of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, including the creation of the counterterrorism center, but he urged the legislators to pass the compromise House-Senate bill "so I can sign these needed reforms into law."
Attention has been focused on the House's failure to vote on the measure because of the opposition of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). On Friday, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, gave notice that the legislation could face problems in the Senate if several concerns such as Hunter's about the chain of command are not satisfied.
Warner said in a statement that he was "working with several conferees, other concerned senators and the administration to resolve these issues . . . before the conference report becomes law." Although the Senate version of the bill passed overwhelmingly in October, some members recently sent a letter to the measure's sponsors saying that some details need to be reviewed.
Some of the senators have grown wary about quick passage of the legislation because of questions raised by four former CIA directors in the past summer's hearings, congressional aides say. George J. Tenet, who retired recently as CIA chief, criticized the proposed separation of the national director of intelligence from hands-on control over the CIA, an issue brought up in the summer.
White House negotiations with congressional leaders continued yesterday while Bush attended the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.
Bush delayed for the second day sending a letter to Capitol Hill that will include a final plea for passage and language that is designed to assuage the misgivings of the Republican holdouts. White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said that the delay is "a good sign" because it shows that "everyone is interested in the fine print, and in making sure the fine print is to everyone's liking and addresses everyone's concerns."
Under the bill, which could come up for a vote this week, the director would become Bush's chief adviser on intelligence, but he would only "monitor the implementation and execution" of intelligence operations carried out by the 15 agencies.
"I don't think you should separate the leader of this country's intelligence from a line agency," Tenet said at a conference last week. "This person has to be leading men and women every day and taking risks."
William H. Webster, who led the CIA from 1987 to 1991, said in an interview last week that he, too, has problems with the bill. He said that because the new director of national intelligence would not be directly in charge of CIA's clandestine operations, "he cannot be accountable for those operations."
Webster also said he believes the counterterrorism center director should not be a presidential appointee and that he should be accountable to the director of national intelligence.
John E. McLaughlin, who retired on Friday as deputy CIA director, is known to feel the same way, though as a government employee he has publicly supported Bush's version of the bill. In the summer, however, during testimony before Warner's committee, McLaughlin asked: "Can substantive and management responsibilities be separated" and "will responsibility and accountability be harder to pin down" if "substantive matters," such as direct control over CIA operations and analyses, are not directly run by the DNI?
Richard J. Kerr, who capped a 32-year agency career as deputy CIA director from 1989 to 1992, compared the proposed director of national intelligence to the Wizard of Oz. "He is behind this curtain appearing to manipulate all these things but is disconnected and has very little involvement in the real substance."
