By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - New U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said on Wednesday that coping with a grueling work schedule has proven to be one of the main challenges of his first two months on the job.

"I didn't quite anticipate that my day would start at least six days a week, and some days it's seven days a week, at four o'clock in the morning," McConnell, 63, said in a speech to senior federal employees.

"My biggest challenge, early, is just stamina. Can I stay with this?"

The retired Navy admiral, who is President George W. Bush's chief intelligence adviser, replaced John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in February. Negroponte is now deputy secretary of state.

McConnell is not the first senior U.S. intelligence official to gripe publicly about work demands.

Former CIA Director Porter Goss told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Public Library in March 2005 he was overwhelmed by his job as director of central intelligence, which included lengthy preparations for the president's daily briefing.

Negroponte took over leadership of the U.S. intelligence community from Goss a month later.

McConnell spent his public service career as a military intelligence officer and the 1991 Gulf War as an adviser to Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

For the past 10 years, McConnell has worked as a consultant with the private sector firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Speaking at a conference on excellence in government, McConnell said his daily schedule runs for about 16 hours, beginning with 6:30 a.m. preparations for meetings at the White House and often ending as late as 11 p.m.

"It was a little easier when I was a little younger. But that's what I'm adjusting to," he said.

McConnell is charged with leading the 16-agency U.S. intelligence community in an era of reforms intended to prevent another Sept. 11-scale attack on the United States.

McConnell told the audience the first phone call he got offering him the intelligence chief's job came from Vice President Dick Cheney.

Like Cheney and other senior officials, McConnell said the intelligence community should be freed from laws set in place to curb its powers during the Vietnam and Watergate eras if it was to fight Islamist militancy effectively.

"Many of the things that are being criticized today are absolutely essential for us to protect the nation," he said.

McConnell cited Bush's domestic spying program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant.

The program has been suspended while a secret federal court determines whether the program violated the law or overstepped the president's constitutional authority.

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