WASHINGTON - The Republican and Democratic leaders of the congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks plan to issue a final report this week calling for the appointment of a new Cabinet-level director of national intelligence who would outrank the director of central intelligence, government officials say.

But the congressional leaders have agreed not to assign blame to any government officials for the intelligence failures before Sept. 11 and instead will emphasize proposals for changes to make sure that such devastating attacks never happen again.

The final report, summing up the joint panel's nearly yearlong inquiry into the government's performance before Sept. 11, is based on evidence of missed signals at the CIA, the FBI and other agencies, and will include many of the findings that the panel's staff made public in a series of interim reports released at hearings this year. The report is coming just days after President Bush signed legislation creating an independent commission to investigate the attacks. Bush named Henry A. Kissinger, a former secretary of state, as head of the commission, which will pick up the case as Congress is letting it go. The independent panel is certain to plow through much of the same material already reviewed by the congressional panel.

After extended private negotiations late last month, the four top lawmakers on the joint inquiry agreed among themselves on the most important recommendations to include in the final report. They tentatively plan to present a draft to the full panel for a vote as early as Tuesday. The four lawmakers - Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat; Sen. Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican; Rep. Porter J. Goss, a Florida Republican; and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader - are expected to confer again tomorrow to review a written draft of the report that includes the recommendations they settled on last month.

Officials cautioned that it was unclear how their draft would be received by the committee's other members, or whether it would be revised as they sought a consensus.

The leaders stopped short of endorsing one of the most contentious ideas for intelligence change being widely debated in Washington - the creation of an additional domestic intelligence agency like the British MI-5 - even as they recognized the FBI's weaknesses in conducting domestic counterterrorism operations. Deep concerns over civil liberties and other constitutional issues have made both the administration and Congress reluctant to endorse the idea.

The proposal to create a director of national intelligence closely mirrors legislation introduced last summer by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. Feinstein said in June that a director of national intelligence was necessary to "coordinate our intelligence and anti-terrorism efforts" and to make certain that "the sort of communication problems that prevented the various elements of our intelligence community from working together effectively before Sept. 11 never happen again."

One person, the director of central intelligence, is supposed to have authority over the entire American intelligence community, including the CIA. In reality, however, the director is most directly responsible for managing the CIA, while other agencies within the vast intelligence community have day-to-day managers of their own.