Gore’s Efficiency Review Studies FBI-DEA Merger : Law: The panel also is considering creation of a single agency to manage nation’s borders. A lone U.S. anti-crime bureau is described as unlikely.

Sweeping changes in federal law enforcement, such as folding the Drug Enforcement Administration into the FBI or creating a single agency to manage the nation’s borders, are under serious consideration by Vice President Al Gore’s panel on government efficiency.

To avoid duplication and infighting, one proposal calls for the President to establish a “Directorate of Central Law Enforcement,” modeled after the director of central intelligence, with the attorney general as the director.

“Currently, no one individual or department appears to have the clear authority to direct all law enforcement agencies to cooperate,” the proposal notes.

Administration officials discounted prospects that Gore’s panel, scheduled to announce its proposals Sept. 7, will call for creating a single federal law enforcement agency, because of long-held fears in the country of creating a national police force.

Even so, the recommendations are certain to set off controversy among congressional and other supporters of particular agencies and within the departments themselves. Congress would be required to pass legislation approving some of the changes.

Likely to be equally controversial would be the creation of a single agency to administer and guard the nation’s borders, tasks now handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, a frequent critic of duplication and turf wars, is scheduled to meet with Gore on Saturday to discuss the proposals of his National Performance Review. The Justice Department includes the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Gore also will meet this week with Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, whose department would be equally affected by the overhaul. Treasury includes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Customs Service.

Partly to discourage agencies and lawmakers from locking themselves into fixed positions, the panel is likely to recommend that a presidential commission study the realignment for three months and then propose steps to be taken over a five-year period.

The proposals also call for discouraging the trend to make federal crimes of offenses that have traditionally been state and local crimes, such as carjacking. Concern has grown among federal officials that federal attention to those crimes is sapping precious resources and diverting attention from other important problems.

Merging the DEA into the FBI is an idea that has been considered by at least four attorneys general. It has been rejected for reasons that include a difference in entry requirements for agents--the standards are lower for the DEA--and the advantages of having the drug war conducted by an agency with a single mission.

In a sign of the controversy awaiting a proposed merger, however, the DEA has made a counterproposal to reassign to the drug agency the 1,500 FBI agents assigned primarily to fight drugs.

Among other remaining obstacles to combining the agencies are differences in their foreign operations and in internal personnel policies.

The DEA’s 3,000 agents are covered by Civil Service, making it more difficult to fire them than FBI agents. However, that hurdle could be overcome by operating a separate personnel department for former DEA agents until the last of them retire or otherwise leave government, one advocate of the move said.

Top officials of both agencies met Wednesday with Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip B. Heymann to discuss remaining obstacles.