WASHINGTON – Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans have proposed removing the nation’s largest intelligence-gathering operations from the CIA and the Pentagon and putting them directly under a new national intelligence director.

The committee chairman, Senator Roberts, a Republican of Kansas, unveiled yesterday the most sweeping intelligence reorganization proposal offered by anyone since the September 11 commission called for major changes. In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Roberts acknowledged that full details had yet to be shared with either the White House or Senate Democrats.

“We didn’t pay attention to turf or agencies or boxes” but rather to “what are the national security threats that face this country today,” Mr. Roberts said of the proposals supported by eight GOP members of the Intelligence Committee. “I’m trying to build a consensus around something that’s very different and very bold.”

He immediately ran into some resistance from a Democrat on his own committee. Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, said that before appearing with Mr. Roberts on the CBS show neither he nor the committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, had seen the full proposal.

“I think it would be better to start on a bipartisan basis,” Mr. Levin said. “I think it’s a mistake to begin with a partisan bill no matter what is in it.”

The national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Rand Beers, welcomed Mr. Roberts’s proposal and described it as very similar to Mr. Kerry’s proposals. But he added that bipartisan support would be needed as well as leadership from President Bush.

“Bush still appears to be dragging his feet and resisting any real changes,” Mr. Beers said.

The White House was a bit more noncommittal. “We look forward to reviewing the details of Senator Roberts’s proposal,” said a White House spokesman, Brian Besanceney. “We have taken nothing off the table.”

The commission that investigated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks called for a powerful national intelligence director who could force the nation’s many agencies to cooperate.

Up to now the debate has focused on how much power to give that official rather than on retooling agencies. Most Democrats have supported the commission’s proposal that the new director have authority over hiring and spending by the intelligence agencies. President Bush has endorsed creating the position but has not reached a final decision on what powers the office should have.

Mr. Roberts said his aides had spoken with White House officials and would share the details of his proposal with them today.

Mr. Roberts’s plan would put the CIA’s three main directorates – Operations, which runs intelligence collection and covert actions; Intelligence, which analyzes intelligence reports, and Science and Technology – into three new separate and renamed agencies, each reporting to a separate assistant national intelligence director. It also would remove three of the largest intelligence agencies from the Pentagon. Although the measure would essentially dismantle the CIA, Mr. Roberts said in a paper he released: “We are not abolishing the CIA. We are reordering and renaming its three major elements.” “No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security,” the paper said.

A congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there would be no CIA director, and the agency’s parts would have new names under a new management structure. Despite Mr. Roberts’s assertion that he wouldn’t abolish the CIA, some intelligence officials think that sounds exactly like what he is trying to do. Some intelligence officials think Mr. Roberts’s proposal is “unworkable and could hamper the nation’s intelligence efforts at a critical time,” said one, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the debate. This official added that rather than eliminating barriers between agencies and bringing functions together, “it smashes them apart.”

Last week, the acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, a career agency employee, urged Congress to move carefully and argued that there had been dramatic improvement since September 11 in the sharing of information by various intelligence agencies.

Equally drastic changes were proposed at the Pentagon.

The nation’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency, which intercepts electronic signals around the world, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite pictures, would be removed from the Pentagon and put under the direct control of an assistant national intelligence director for collection.

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s human intelligence collection activity would become a separate agency, like the former CIA directorate of operations.

Both would report to the same assistant national intelligence director for collection. This official also would have direct line control over the FBI’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism units, although they would continue to operate within the FBI administratively and would still be subject to attorney general guidelines.

The Pentagon’s huge National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites, would work under an assistant national intelligence director for research, development, and acquisition.