Rules for new spies called restrictive

WASHINGTON -- CIA officials are not doing enough to allow field officers to recruit unsavory characters to infiltrate terrorist organizations, the chairman of a House homeland security panel said Tuesday.

Rep. Saxby Chambliss said the CIA guidelines hindering such recruitments have been altered since a congressional directive last fall ordered their elimination. But Chambliss, R-Ga., contends the changes have not gone far enough.

"As of today, those guidelines have not been rescinded," said Chambliss, chairman of the House Intelligence subcommittee on homeland security. "That's one of the continuing parts of the problem and the puzzle at CIA."

His criticism is part of a subcommittee report -- the unclassified parts of which were to be released Wednesday -- detailing intelligence failures that contributed to the Sept. 11 attacks and outlining ways to prevent future ones.

The report accuses the FBI of failing to communicate effectively among its different field offices and charges that the National Security Agency improperly used resources that should have been targeted toward Osama bin Laden.