Congress to Seek Legislation for CIA-FBI Cooperation : Espionage: Intelligence panel concludes a presidential order requiring the agencies to jointly investigate counterspies isn’t working.

Concerned about continuing lapses of the kind that permitted the most damaging counterspy ever to operate at the CIA, congressional intelligence committees have decided to push for legislation requiring the agency to cooperate with the FBI in investigating counterspies, according to congressional sources.

The committees have concluded that a May 3 presidential directive has not succeeded in closing the gaps in CIA-FBI cooperation that became apparent with the arrest this year and subsequent guilty plea of Aldrich H. Ames, the sources said. Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, sold the former Soviet Union and later Russia some of his agency’s most sensitive secrets.

Among other things, the CIA failed to advise the FBI for two years that Ames initially had given suspicious responses in a 1991 polygraph examination, even though the FBI had joined in hunting for a suspected mole, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) has noted.

As a result of the rising concern, the intelligence panel has passed legislation, in the form of an amendment to the 1995 budget authorization, that would make the FBI director responsible for counterintelligence and would mandate CIA cooperation.

That language goes considerably beyond Clinton’s directive, which strengthened the National Security Council’s authority over counterintelligence, designated a senior FBI official to head a key counterespionage group at the CIA and directed CIA officials to work at the FBI. Clinton’s order also created new policy and operations boards to coordinate and oversee the work.

Clinton’s directive marked the 11th presidential attempt over the last two decades to achieve interagency cooperation on counterintelligence.

“Not one of them has worked,” said a congressional source familiar with the issue. “Now we’re on the 11th and still the FBI doesn’t get full cooperation. So, instead of a healing process, there’s more bad blood.”

The source declined to provide examples of failures to cooperate but said the CIA has raised the issue by citing its need to protect its “sources and methods.”

But another source familiar with the dispute said the concerns arise primarily because CIA Director R. James Woolsey has indicated at the agency that he does not have confidence in the arrangement spelled out by the directive.

Last month, Woolsey and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in support of the presidential directive. But sources said Freeh since has agreed with senior committee officials that only legislation can solve the problem permanently.

Robert B. Bucknam, Freeh’s chief of staff, declined to comment on the reports.

Woolsey argued in his testimony that giving the FBI overall counterintelligence responsibility would bring back the rivalries that once existed between the FBI and CIA.

Referring to the National Counterintelligence Center at the CIA, created by Clinton’s directive, Woolsey said: “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 Center.”

On May 24, Freeh named Edward J. Curran to serve as chief of the counterespionage group at the CIA center. Curran was formerly assistant special agent in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.

The counterintelligence bill won committee approval by a vote of 16 to 1 after a last-ditch effort to alter it failed. The committee voted down an amendment, suggested by the White House, that would have given the CIA director the authority to circumvent the FBI by telling the President that CIA information could not be shared with the bureau. The committee concluded that there are no circumstances under which the FBI could not be told about counterspies and counterespionage.

Congressional sources contended that the CIA has not undertaken the kind of internal reforms that might improve counterintelligence work.

A senior CIA official countered that some of the ideas put forward recently are in fact old ideas or “bad ideas whose time has come again.”

But several sources said they were disappointed by the lack of reforms at the CIA since Woolsey took over last year. Former CIA Director Robert M. Gates had begun an overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community. Woolsey said during his confirmation hearings he would continue those changes.

Woolsey has focused primarily on streamlining the intelligence budget and personnel under pressure of budget cutbacks, while trying to ensure that the United States does not lose its competitive edge, a senior CIA official said.

However, a congressional intelligence source said that “there’s no game plan. People are holding on to their turf and jurisdictions and Woolsey has not come forth as a leader to say the Ames case is a perfect example of what’s wrong with this community. He hasn’t said this is how to restructure and alter mission. Some changes are going on, but not enough.”