Washington ? President Bush on Monday won crucial backing for a bill to put U.S. intelligence agencies under a single director’s control, setting the stage for congressional passage this week.

The White House secured the support of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., by changing the bill’s language to ensure the military’s access to intelligence from satellites or other sources would not be impeded by a national intelligence czar. Senate negotiators said they devised the language and that Vice President Dick Cheney had lobbied Hunter over the weekend.

Hunter’s support was thought to ensure that a majority of House Republicans would vote for the bill, even though another prominent committee chairman — Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis. — said he continued to oppose it.

Passage of the bill would be a political victory for Bush, who repeatedly has urged Congress to create a national intelligence director with authority over the budgets and personnel of America’s 15 spy agencies.

The president suffered an embarrassing setback last month when Hunter joined with Sensenbrenner, who leads the Judiciary Committee, to block the legislation the day that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., planned to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Since then, members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission and family members of the terrorists’ victims repeatedly have called on the president to spend some of the political capital he said he earned in his re-election to get the bill passed.

Bush’s ability to move the legislation — over opposition from the Pentagon and its backers — became a test of his political clout as he prepares to launch his second term. The president has said he plans to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda that will include efforts to restructure Social Security and alter the nation’s tax code. He is eager to demonstrate that the newly expanded congressional Republican majorities in the House and Senate are united behind his leadership.

In a statement Monday evening, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., co-authors of the Senate version of the bill, said the new language preserves “the strong budget and other authorities that the director of national intelligence needs to fight the war on terrorism and counter other emerging threats.”

Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the Sept. 11 Commission, said that its members were pleased with the compromise and “cautiously optimistic” that the bill would be signed into law by week’s end.

The legislation is based largely on the recommendations the commission made in its final report in July.

Mary Fetchet holds her son Brad's picture as she joins a vigil with other 9-11 victims' relatives outside the White House, in support for the intelligence reform bill. Fetchet's son was killed at the World Trade Center Tower 2. In the background Monday, legislators lined up to get cleared for a White House party.