Clinton Alters Counterspy Net in Wake of Ames Case : Espionage: The NSC is strengthened and FBI official heads key group at the CIA. But intelligence panel leaders in Senate call the changes inadequate.

Moving to close holes in the U.S. counterspy network revealed by the Aldrich H. Ames case, President Clinton on Tuesday ordered revisions in the nation’s counterintelligence structure.

Clinton’s revisions, contained in a presidential directive, strengthen the power of the National Security Council over counterintelligence, designate a senior FBI official to head a key counterespionage group at the CIA as well as CIA officials to work at the FBI, and create new policy and operations boards to coordinate and oversee the work.

But Clinton’s changes, announced at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, were received with skepticism from panel leaders, who argued that the revisions stop short of the needed reforms.

Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) angrily accused CIA Director R. James Woolsey of posturing in opposing a Senate bill that would deal with the problem by giving the FBI overall counterintelligence responsibility.

The moves came against a backdrop of differences in the cultures and missions of the CIA and the FBI, worsened by rivalries and a failure to share information. Those divisions have persisted, despite attempts to resolve them over the years, and they seemed to culminate in the Ames case.

Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran with access to some of the agency’s most sensitive secrets, drew a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole last week after admitting that he had served as a mole for the Soviet Union and later the Russians since 1985.

“The root cause of the Ames case--the things that enabled him to gravely damage our national security for so long--were counterintelligence procedures and programs that did not work,” FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told the committee.

The CIA failed to advise the FBI for two years that Ames’ 1991 polygraph results were suspicious, even though the FBI had joined in the hunt for a mole at the agency, DeConcini has noted.

Freeh joined Woolsey in contending at the hearing that giving the FBI director overall counterintelligence responsibility, as provided for in a bill introduced by DeConcini and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), would ignore the “critical roles played by the CIA in counterintelligence.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick contended that the legislation is “too blunt an instrument” for the delicate job of assigning counterintelligence responsibilities, arguing that the task should be left to the presidential directive.

Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) expressed skepticism about the presidential directive, calling it “a rather complicated procedure that may soothe some egos” and saying that he favors what he regards as the legislation’s clearer approach.

Kerrey said he does not find giving the FBI overall responsibility “such a problem, given what’s at stake--the nation’s security, not whether the FBI and CIA get along.”

Gorelick, noting that Clinton had signed the directive only Tuesday morning, suggested that executive branch officials might not have had an opportunity to fully brief the senators on details of the changes.

DeConcini, citing closed-door testimony by an FBI official assigned to the CIA who told of numerous occasions when he could not obtain information from the agency, argued that the problem is in getting counterintelligence information from the CIA’s operations directorate to whatever interagency units are established by the President.

But Woolsey countered: “I can’t conceive of a substantive issue being raised--whether a polygraph (result), a foreign intelligence agent’s report . . . that does not come to the (National Counterintelligence) Center” that Clinton’s order establishes. The order provides that a senior FBI executive will serve as chief of the center’s counterespionage group.

The sharpest exchange occurred when Woolsey maintained that giving the FBI overall counterintelligence responsibility would bring back the overseas rivalries that existed between the FBI and CIA in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

“Those kinds of statements are just the exact posturing that does nothing constructive here,” DeConcini said.

Citing 10 efforts to achieve FBI-CIA cooperation since the intelligence agency was created, DeConcini said: “Time and time again, it has not worked out. What makes you think you can make this work is beyond me.”