WASHINGTON – President Bush will issue orders as early as today to implement some reforms suggested by the Sept. 11 commission, but White House officials still are wrangling over the best way to create a new national intelligence czar.
Presidential advisers crafting the reforms Bush is to announce are not opposed to the panel’s idea for a national director of intelligence but were still deciding whether the post should be placed inside the White House, a senior administration official said Sunday on condition of anonymity.
The president will embrace the recommendations, “but that doesn’t mean everything is going to be exactly the same” as the panel has suggested, the official said.
The Bush administration says it has already taken steps that respond to some of the 40 recommendations the panel outlines in its report, which outlined intelligence lapses that led to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
In addition to proposals for the national director of intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, the White House said the president’s senior advisers were preparing recommendations on how best to move forward in the following areas:
* Hire and train more people to collect intelligence.
* Set standards for issuing birth certificates and other forms of identification, such as driver’s licenses, to reduce fraud.
* Disclose now-secret parts of the U.S. budget to let the public know how much is being spent on intelligence.
* Shift the lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, both clandestine and covert, to the Defense Department.
* Regularly assess the adequacy of the new Northern Command’s strategy to defend the United States against military threats, the only military command focusing solely on defending U.S. soil.
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