The steps announced by the White House embrace most of the dozens of changes recommended three months ago by a nine-member presidential commission that reviewed the law that created Negroponte's post. Among other things, the commission had warned that Negroponte's control over the FBI remained too vague to allow him to effectively direct its counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations, and to coordinate them with the work of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The changes allow Negroponte to use his authority over budgets and appointments to exercise control over new national security divisions to be established at the FBI and the Justice Department.

The White House decision to reorganize the FBI and the Justice Department's national security operations had been previously known, along with a plan to allow Negroponte a voice in choosing an official to head that FBI operation. But the plans announced Wednesday reinforced the view that the White House wants Negroponte to extend his authority over the FBI, which has a tradition of fierce independence, in order to coordinate intelligence operations inside the United States as well as abroad.

The commission had said that while the director of national intelligence was expected to oversee all 15 American intelligence agencies, that ''in the case of the FBI, the DNI's tools for ensuring influence remain troublingly vague.''

The announcement followed a 90-day review by Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush's homeland security adviser, of recommendations issued on March 30 by the commission headed by Laurence Silberman, a federal appeals court judge, and Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator and governor of Virginia.