Report: FBI nibbling on CIA turf

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The FBI is expanding its efforts to collect and report intelligence on foreign figures and governments in the United States.

The move irks CIA officials, who have long deemed such work to be their domain, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The bureau's new ventures encroach upon an agency that has already seen the Pentagon expanding its military intelligence collections abroad and has been the subject of critical Congressional reviews.

"This is the kind of thing that the (director of central intelligence) ought to be standing up on his hind legs and making a fuss (about)," said a former senior CIA official. "This is a battle for survival."

The FBI is hoping to get assurances that the CIA will share information about its U.S. activities with the bureau.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and new CIA Director Porter Goss have been actively involved in the proposed changes, which must be approved by the attorney general and whomever is named as national intelligence director, the new post that will oversee all of the nation's intelligence-gathering agencies.

A tentative and classified draft of the procedures will be completed next month.