Senators urge Bush to choose CIA director

WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- Senior U.S. senators have called on President George Bush to name a new CIA director as quickly as possible, the BBC reported Sunday.

The previous head of the CIA, George Tenet, left office Sunday.

Senators John Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said filling the post was an urgent priority because of the threat of a new terror attack on the United States.

The two men were behind this week's report on CIA failures leading up to the Iraq war.

Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said every member of Congress knew there was likely to be an attack on the U.S. between now and the presidential elections in November.

Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the committee, said he feared the CIA was not currently in a position to prevent such an attack. He said the intelligence agency was trying, in difficult circumstances, to change attitudes and practices which dated from the Cold War.