Senator proposes breaking up CIA

Roberts said the CIA would not be abolished, only "re-ordered"

A top Republican senator has proposed an overhaul of US intelligence which would create a national intelligence tsar and effectively break up the CIA.

Senator Pat Roberts said he was pushing for a National Security Protection Act to build on the findings of the commission on the 11 September attacks.

Democrats broadly welcomed the plan though the party's senators said they had not been consulted.

Mr Roberts will outline his ideas to White House officials on Monday.

Senator Roberts said he was acting early before electioneering "took over".

It's not a tablet written in stone Pat Roberts Should the CIA be broken up?

He said he feared the White House would not move aggressively enough to meet the demands of the 9/11 commission or family members of victims before the November presidential election.

"And then we'll fuss about it and then the campaign will take over and we won't get anything done," he told US broadcaster CBS.

Splintered CIA

Under the senator's proposed bill:

• a national intelligence director (NID) would be appointed with budgeting powers over the departments of treasury, energy, homeland security and defence intelligence

• the CIA's three main departments - science and technology, operations and intelligence - would be split into three separate agencies, each placed under an assistant NID

• the Pentagon would have to surrender control over three of its largest intelligence departments.

The bill builds on the 9/11 commission report published in July which called for the appointment of a powerful national intelligence director who could force the country's intelligence agencies to co-operate.

Up for debate

Senator Roberts, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he had the backing of eight out of nine Republicans on the committee.

Roberts said security transcended any departmental interests

Acknowledging he had not consulted either Democrats or the Bush administration, he said he was open to suggestions.

"It's not a tablet written in stone," he said. "If anybody wants to make changes or if anybody that wants to lob a brick bat or two... we're perfectly ready."

Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, told CBS the bill should have been put to his party too.

"I think it's a mistake to begin with a partisan bill no matter what is in it," he said.

However, Rand Beers, national security adviser to Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, welcomed the bill, saying it was close to Mr Kerry's own proposals.

A spokesman for the White House, Brian Besanceney, would only say that the administration looked "forward to reviewing the details of Senator Roberts' proposal".