The FBI is moving forward with a major reorganisation amid criticism the agency missed clues that would have helped uncover the September 11 plot, congressional Republicans said yesterday.
The changes include injecting CIA analysts into the FBI, according to Republican Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
"I know the (FBI) director has personally tried to do some reorganisation. We`re going to hear a lot more about that in the days ahead," Goss told "Fox News Sunday." FBI Director Robert Mueller has already briefed lawmakers on the reorganisation plan, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said on CBS`s "Face the Nation."
An FBI spokesman confirmed some changes were in the works at the bureau, which is traditionally charged with domestic law enforcement duties, and said only an announcement would be made "in the near future." The CIA is responsible for intelligence-gathering overseas.
"Director Mueller has testified before that the FBI will be undergoing some reorganisation, and those plans have not yet been announced," FBI spokesman Steven Berry said.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said meanwhile that both US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney urged him four months ago not to push for an investigation into the events of September 11.
The South Dakota Democrat flatly contradicted Cheney, who denied recently he had warned Daschle against a probe.
Daschle and other Democrats favor a special commission to investigate intelligence failures before the September 11 attack in which airliners were hijacked and crashed into targets in Washington and New York.
Among other things, Democrats would like a probe of why the FBI failed to act on a Phoenix agent`s memo last summer about the possibility of al Qaeda members training at USflight schools, and complaints by a Minneapolis agent that FBI headquarters mishandled the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, suspected of intending to join the Sept. 11 hijackers.
But the Republican administration opposes a special commission, preferring an ongoing inquiry by the intelligence committees of Congress. U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice reiterated that stance on "Fox News Sunday."
Republicans emphasized the FBI is going to change its ways as a result of the problems exposed by Sept 11.
Florida Republican Goss said the agency is not now capable of doing the work needed to foil terrorist acts on U.S. soil.
"I think they`ve got to go through a big learning curve, a lot of readjustment," he said. "It`s a question of the training and the leadership, and I think we do have to do some serious rethinking and retraining," he said on Fox.
"We are sort of cross-training now. We are placing some CIA people in there ... I think that will be helpful," he said.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the CIA was dispatching more than 25 agency analysts to help reshape the FBI into an agency more focused on counter-terrorism.
Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said Mueller told the Senate last week that an FBI reorganization was in the works and the Post said he could begin announcing the moves as early as this week.
"He went into great detail about what some of the problems are, and recommendations, or actions that he is taking to change the way FBI operates. I can`t go into that yet because I don`t think it has been made public," Lott said.
"...It is appropriate that he is moving forward with some serious reorganizations of the FBI," he added.
The public face of changes at the FBI so far have included a string of bureau warnings of more possible terror attacks, including by scuba divers and pilots of small airplanes.
Daschle, on NBC`s "Meet the Press," said Cheney telephoned him on Jan. 24 to urge that no Sept. 11 inquiry be made, and that Bush followed up on Jan. 28 during a breakfast meeting at the White House.
"They didn`t want to take people off the effort to try to win the war on terror .... and that was the reason given me by both the president and the vice president," Daschle said.