The US Treasury Department has called for an investigation into whether its former head leaked secret documents in a new book.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill appeared on a US news programme to promote the book in which documents marked "secret" were shown.

A Treasury department spokesman said it had asked its inspector general to see if disclosure laws were violated.

Mr O'Neill was sacked from the US Government in December 2002.

The BBC Washington correspondent says that despite a statemanslike response from President George W Bush, the reaction behind the scenes has been vitriolic.

Our correspondent says that the episode is a reminder that not all senior Republicans think Mr Bush has made the right choices at home or abroad.

Bush response

Responding to Mr O'Neill's comments - which come a week before Mr Bush is due to make his annual State of the Union address - the US president said that, as with previous US administrations, he had been for regime change in Iraq.

However, he suggested, the task had only become urgent after the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001.

Mr O'Neill made the statements in an interview with the CBS "60 Minutes" news programme on Sunday.

He has contributed to a book on the Bush administration called The Price of Loyalty by journalist Ron Suskind, for which the former secretary provided thousands of documents for research purposes.

Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols said that, although it was customary for officials to take documents when they left office, a document marked as secret was shown on the programme.

He said the proposed probe would focus on how possibly classified information appeared on television and the inspector general could then "take appropriate steps, if necessary", he was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

Mr O'Neill accused Mr Bush of planning for an invasion of Iraq within days of coming to office, saying the US president was looking for an excuse to oust Saddam Hussein.

He added that, as a member of the US president's national security team, he never saw any evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

'Backstabbing' claim

Mr O'Neill also gave an unflattering account of Mr Bush's leadership style in the interview, saying that at cabinet meetings the president was like a blind man in a room full of deaf people.

Mr O'Neill was sacked from the US Government after nearly two years in his position over differences with the Bush administration.

But the current Commerce Secretary, Don Evans, told CNN that the president liked nothing better than vigorous discussion in cabinet.

"He drives the meetings, tough questions, he likes dissent, he likes to see debate," he said.

Republican Representative Mark Foley of Florida also accused Mr O'Neill of delivering a "blatant stab in the back".

I would suspect that certain elements in the Bush administration are in favour of a global change in governments which do not share thier views; Paul WOlfowitz,etc. They are the ones building up a case against countries which they believe are opposed to the US; China, Russia,France, etc.

But to say that cabinet meeting are a case of the blind sitting with the deaf is a bit of an exaggeration in my view. They`ve got a couple of guys with a tendency to push thier own views of things and I believe the debates would be robust in nature. And sometimes that results in confusing policy stances. But at the end of the day, it seems to go somewhere at the very least.

Which is not to say it could not be better.

is O'neil just bitter, or is he being truthful?

I don't think O'neil is being bitter, I think he's telling the truth, and they would like to shut him up.

Politics and intrigues..o1o1l1ol

Ciao

thats who the Bush administration handles dissenters. Tom Ridge and his bully boys will probably use the Patriots Act to torment Oneill and his wife. This government is just one step removed from Fascism, I do believe.

Guys, what happened in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA agent who was opposed to the war? Was anyone in White House held to account for that?

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