SUPPORT GROWS IN U.S. FOR DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

WASHINGTON - Despite fierce opposition from the FBI, support is
growing in Washington for the creation of a domestic intelligence
agency that could take over intelligence gathering and
counterterrorism from the bureau.

The idea will likely get its strongest boost this week when the joint
congressional intelligence committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks unveils its recommendations, including one that stops just
short of endorsing the proposal and calls for a year-long study of the
concept.

At issue is whether the FBI, historically a law enforcement agency
charged with combating such mainstream crimes as bank robbery and drug
trafficking, should continue trying to recast itself as one-stop
shopping for terrorism prevention or whether that job could be better
handled by a separate agency with that single mission.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and many bureau officials - as well as
civil libertarians - are against forming such an agency, which could
be modeled after MI5, the British domestic intelligence service.

Civil liberties groups fear such an agency would bring back the days
of domestic spying on Americans and would have little or no oversight
to protect citizens from unwarranted wiretaps or other violations of
their privacy.

But the FBI, weakened by persistent criticism and waning support on
Capitol Hill, may not be able to fend off the appeal of a new agency,
which could become part of a Cabinet department such as the Department
of Homeland Security or an independent agency like the CIA.

In recent months, the FBI has lost the confidence of some
congressional leaders who believe the bureau has not moved fast enough
to combat terrorism and that the United States is no safer today than
it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Some of the most vocal support for a new agency has come from Sen.
John Edwards, D-N.C., who said in a recent speech that the FBI has not
been able to accomplish what a separate agency could. Last week he
visited Britain's MI5 agency for a tour.

"The law enforcement impulses of the FBI consistently trump
intelligence needs," he said. "Instead of attempting to turn the FBI
into something it isn't, we should establish a new agency that is
focused on gathering intelligence about terrorist threats here at
home." Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and a co-chairman of the joint
House-Senate investigating committees, asked Mueller to come to his
office several weeks ago to discuss the idea and whether the bureau is
accomplishing its new anti-terrorism mission. A Graham aide, Paul
Anderson, said the senator was only "somewhat more satisfied" after
the meeting that the bureau was doing a better job and could handle
the task.

Both Graham and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., another of the panel's
co-chairmen, have said on recent talk shows that they support
exploring the idea of a separate agency, citing the FBI's ingrained
culture of law enforcement. Graham, however, said he supports the idea
as long as the proposed agency was empowered to spy only on foreigners
in the United States, not U.S. citizens.

Forming such an agency would be a major threat to the bureau, which
has spent the past year restructuring itself to combat the terrorist
threat. Terrorism is now the bureau's number one priority, with much
of its traditional work in areas such as organized crime and drug
trafficking taking a back seat or being passed on to other agencies,
including the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Without terrorism, several bureau officials said, the FBI could seem
irrelevant next to a new domestic intelligence agency. Some of those
concerns are already playing out with the new Homeland Security
Department's plans to create a special unit to analyze intelligence
from the FBI and other intelligence agencies.

The unit within Homeland Security is to review intelligence reports
and, in some cases, raw data from the field to look for patterns and
seek out terrorist activity. The FBI has spent the past year building
its own almost identical unit, borrowing agents from the CIA to do
so.

Homeland Security's plans taken together with talk of a new agency has
left some FBI officials feeling besieged. Officials are planning to
mount a counterattack this week, pulling together talking points to
debunk the idea of a clone of MI5 and similar agencies in Canada and
Australia.

"Proponents of an MI5-type agency often idealize the concept but
ignore the reality," said bureau spokesman Bill Carter. "There have
been many problems (with such agencies)." He said that officials from
some countries have been asking the FBI for advice on how to model
their domestic intelligence agencies more like the bureau.

"It would be extremely disruptive, time consuming and expensive to set
up a new agency," he said. "The FBI has changed dramatically since the
attacks and is on the cusp of where it needs to be to lead the fight
against the war on terrorism."

But others aren't so sure. A task force of former intelligence and
technology experts fashioned by the Markle Foundation, a New
York-based think tank, said in an October report that the FBI should
not be the lead agency in collecting and analyzing terrorism-related
intelligence.

"The FBI has a huge amount to do trying to pursue terrorism and law
enforcement," said Zoe Baird, the Markle chairwoman. "It's not
surprising they haven't been able to do both."

A study of a possible separate agency is one of several proposals
expected to be unveiled as early as Wednesday as part of the joint
congressional committees' report on its investigation into the
attacks. Committee staffers said they expect the issue of creating a
new agency to be one of the more contentious issues.

The draft report, based on hearings throughout the summer and fall,
also calls for a new Cabinet-level director of national intelligence
who would outrank the director of central intelligence, who on paper
oversees a dozen or so intelligence agencies but in reality only has
all-important budgetary authority over the CIA.