WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Rumsfeld defended his bureaucratic turf yesterday, urging Congress to move slowly on September 11 commission recommendations that would strip the Pentagon of its budgetary authority over most of the intelligence community.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s testimony comes as the White House has dropped hints it would support a fully empowered national intelligence director with the ability to approve budgets for 15 government agencies that collect intelligence.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not say he opposed creation of a national intelligence directorate with authority over the entire $40 billion annual American intelligence budget, but he cautioned that not all of the commission’s intelligence reforms should be enacted in a “single stroke.”

“It’s important that we move with all deliberate speed,” Mr. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.” We need to remember that we are considering these important matters, however, while we are waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great.”

At other points in the hearing, Mr. Rumsfeld said the budget-making process for the intelligence community, in which the director of central intelligence consults with the Pentagon on the annual budget, was working well.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, echoed that view, saying a national intelligence directorate may discourage innovative thinking.

Mr. Rumsfeld even countered the one recommendation from the commission that would give the Pentagon more authority – responsibility over the CIA’s covert operations.

“There are clearly things that the Central Intelligence Agency does that are covert that the Department of Defense ought not to do,” he said in response to a question from Senator Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island.

Should Congress and the White House move forward with implementing the recommendations, Mr. Rumsfeld would stand to lose the most authority.

While a standing executive order drafted by President Carter empowers the director of central intelligence to approve budgets for the agencies that plan and launch spy satellite missions, break enemy codes, analyze space imagery, and practice electronic espionage, the Pentagon oversees their daily budgets and retains the legal authority for their oversight.

Under the commission’s plan, the budgets for these agencies – the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency – would all be developed annually by the national intelligence director, sapping billions from the Pentagon’s budget.

“I think the viewpoint of the Defense Department would be that some of these agencies, NSA and NRO, are combat support agencies and crucial to supporting operations and planning,” intelligence author Jeffrey Richelson told The New York Sun.

“This is something the secretary of defense has to have some control over, if you are in the midst of a war or elsewhere. He has to make sure information is available not only to himself but commanders in the field, and if you cede power to an agency outside the Pentagon then he loses.”

Mr. Richelson, who wrote one of the most comprehensive recent books on America’s national security bureaucracy, “The U.S. Intelligence Community,” added, “The budget is a crucial means of controlling these agencies, these budgets are crucial to maintaining how he sees the overall mission.”

The president’s first proposal for a national intelligence directorate unveiled on August 2 would not give this new position authority to shape the annual budgets of the 15 intelligence agencies within the government. Recently, the White House has leaked stories to the Washington Post and other newspapers hinting that it would agree to give that post the budget-making authority called for by the commission. On Sunday, one commissioner, John Lehman, who was President Reagan’s Navy secretary, said he believe the president intended to endorse the stronger version of the national intelligence director.

Some sources close to the White House have speculated that the man who will fill the post of national intelligence director will be President Bush’s nominee for the director of central intelligence, Rep. Porter Goss, a Republican from Florida.

Mr. Goss is a former CIA operations officer who served in the House as the chairman of the committee that conducts oversight of the intelligence community.

Yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld, when asked directly for his view of a national intelligence director with budgetary powers, said, “the precise extent of such authorities and other issues are still under consideration.”

On August 6, he told the Chicago chapter of the Council on Foreign Relations, “Well, I’ve been giving my views to the president, and my public views will be affected by his decisions.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s view to move slowly on intelligence reform is shared by Senator Warner, the Armed Services Committee chairman.

In his opening statement yesterday, Mr. Warner said, “I’m ever mindful of the legislation to our national security structure, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, in which many of us on this committee were full participants. These were not considered in haste, and we must not be rushed to judgment in this case.”

Other powerful members of the Senate favor swifter action. At the hearing yesterday, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas said that he would be introducing legislation with Senator Rockefeller, the Democratic vice chairman of the panel from West Virginia, calling for the creation of national intelligence directorate.

Mr. Rumsfeld also defended the President’s announcement to reorganize America’s defense posture by bringing up to 70,000 troops home from positions in Europe.

“The Cold War is over,” he said. “We are not expecting a Soviet tank attack across the north German plain and it is appropriate to adjust that force posture.”