Bush chooses new CIA chief

US president George W Bush has chosen Porter Goss, head of the House Intelligence Committee, to be the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

A senior administration official said Bush planned to announce the selection of Goss at the White House today.

Goss, a Republican congressman from Florida, has been mentioned prominently in speculation about a successor to departed CIA Director George Tenet.

Bush’s decision comes in the wake of the president’s embrace of a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the September 11 terror attacks: creation of a new intelligence tsar to oversee the activities of the CIA and more than a dozen other intelligence agencies.