Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri has controversial plans to expand the country's National Intelligence Agency. The agency intends to open offices at the provincial and municipal level and to build a new university devoted entirely to intelligence training. Officials defend the move as a way to prevent terrorist attacks in the sprawling Muslim country. But critics regard it as a regression to Indonesia's recent past under longtime dictator Suharto. Kelly McEvers reports from Jakarta.

Kelly McEvers: It's expected that a presidential decree will increase the size of the intelligence agency, allowing Megawati to circumvent the legislature.

Indonesia's first anti-terrorism laws also were enacted by presidential decree. That was just after the October 2002 bombing on the resort island of Bali that killed more than 200 people.

Megawati's government was sharply criticized after that attack, especially the intelligence agency, known here by its acronym BIN, for failing to take the

terrorism threat seriously. BIN has been expanding since then. And Megawati recently broke ground on a BIN-sponsored intelligence school on the northwestern island of Bataan. (Soundbite of ground-breaking ceremony)

McEvers: At the ceremony, Megawati said the military will no longer play the dominant role in intelligence. She was referring to the so-called New Order era under Suharto when a 300,000-strong army helped keep the dictator in power by maintaining a culture of fear. Security analyst Ken Conboy, who has written a book on the history of Indonesian intelligence.

Mr. Ken Conboy (Security Analyst; Author): Traditionally the military intelligence agency during the New Order was by far and away the most powerful, the most influential, the most capable intelligence organization in Indonesia.

McEvers: But then, in 1998, amid economic collapse and mass street protests, Suharto fell.

Mr. Conboy: After '98 things started to change, slowly at first, but it quickly gained momentum after 9/11 in the States. There was a civilian intelligence agency that jumped to the front of the pack and has really been carving out a niche for itself as, I would say, the premier intelligence agency in Indonesia now.

McEvers: Yet critics say there are still troubling connections between the new intelligence agency and the old apparatus under Suharto. The chief of BIN himself is a former military general who also holds a powerful position in Megawati's government. In recent months BIN has been fighting to increase its capabilities, not only to gather intelligence but to apprehend and detain suspects as well.

Foreign governments like the US, Britain and Australia will provide support to the BIN school. They also are working closely with the national police. US officials say strengthening both the intelligence and the police, similar to the CIA and the FBI, is a more democratic approach to fighting terror because neither agency will become too powerful.

US officials will not say how their own intelligence agents might be influencing BIN. Reformers say this sets a bad example in a fledgling democracy. Smita Noto Susanto heads the Center for Democratic Reform.

Ms. Smita Noto Susanto (Center for Democratic Reform): Because the United States decides what the agenda should be and, by terrorism, not promoting democracy, then I am very pessimistic that we will ever make it to a democracy like we anticipated in 1998.

McEvers: One former BIN official, who asked not to be identified, suggested that the old way of gathering intelligence under Suharto might have been more effective than the so-called democratic approach. Back then interrogations were enforced with the threat of a pistol shot. Nowadays, he said, potential informants are befriended, taken to lunch, offered money. Democracy, he said, can be so expensive.