A U.S. daily says CIA Director Porter Goss has told his new chief of spy operations this week to launch a much more aggressive espionage campaign.

Quoting a senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of Goss' plans, Thursday's USA Today said that the new espionage plan would use covert operatives to penetrate terrorist groups and hostile nations such as North Korea and Iran.

The reports called the new strategy a dangerous one in which agents could gather much better information but would run a much higher risk of being killed if discovered.

The reports added that the risky new strategy would be a sharp departure from the CIA's traditional style of human intelligence, in which field officers under flimsy cover as diplomats in U.S. embassies try to recruit foreign spies and gather tips from allied intelligence services.

The daily cited that such methods don't work with terrorist groups or in countries where the United States has no embassies, such as prewar Iraq or present-day North Korea and Iran.