Washington ? The Bush administration pushed back Monday against harsh criticism of its nominee to head the CIA, including from top Republicans, as it sought to allay concerns that Gen. Michael Hayden is too closely tied to the military and to the president’s domestic spying program.

President Bush, whose popularity was built on his response to terrorism, now faces a likely fight for his nominee to run the nation’s premier intelligence agency, even though his party controls Congress. Most expect the Senate will confirm Hayden, but the level of resistance from within the Republican Party is a measure of Bush’s falling political fortunes.

Republican leaders, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., have voiced everything from concern to criticism of Hayden’s nomination. Hastert told a Chicago radio station Monday the appointment was a “power grab” by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who oversees the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies.

Hastert’s comments reflect a concern, voiced by others as well, that Hayden’s close ties to Negroponte could signal a diminution of the CIA’s role. Hayden has served as Negroponte’s deputy since an overhaul of the intelligence-gathering community last year.

Reacting to this criticism, Bush, at an Oval Office announcement of Hayden’s nomination, emphasized the general’s long service in the intelligence field and promised he would bring honor to the CIA. More notably, Negroponte, in an unusual hourlong White House briefing, promised the CIA would remain a first-rank institution, with its central missions bolstered.

While outgoing director Porter Goss was never popular among the CIA’s rank-and-file, some administration officials fear that the agency’s workforce could react even worse to a new period of uncertainty, with a controversial new director who is a close ally of Negroponte.

The appointment of Hayden, 61, an Air Force general, could further discourage CIA operatives engaged in a long-running turf war with the Defense Department for control of intelligence. The agency can ill afford more erosion of morale, after five years of battering for failing to avert the Sept. 11 attacks, blame for miscalculating Saddam Hussein’s arsenal and the departure of senior operatives forced out by Goss.

Recognizing this, Bush and Negroponte on Monday went out of their way to reassure CIA insiders. Negroponte praised the agency and promised that, contrary to some press reports, he had no intention of taking away the CIA’s job of intelligence analysis and leaving it responsible only for information gathering.

Intelligence gathering has bedeviled Bush since Sept. 11, 2001, when the CIA and other federal agencies failed to detect the suicide hijacking plot. When Bush wanted to invade Iraq, the CIA served up assurances and some sketchy details on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that, in fact, have yet to be found.

“It’s pure chaos” at the CIA, said retired Army Gen. William Odom, who once served as director of the National Security Agency, the electronic eavesdropping agency that Hayden ran for six years. “It’s possible that they know what they’re doing. But if I had to bet, I wouldn’t put very much money on what they’re doing.”