CRAWFORD, March 6: Investigators probing whether top aides to US President George Bush illegally leaked the name of a covert CIA agent have requested records of telephone calls from Air Force One, the White House said on Friday.

"We are, at the direction of the president, cooperating fully with those who are leading the investigation," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters as Mr Bush awaited Mexican President Vicente Fox at his ranch here.

Mr McClellan had been asked about a report in New York's Newsday newspaper that US Justice Department officials looking into the leak subpoenaed records of such conversations in the week before the agent's name was published.

The investigators are hunting for who told columnist Robert Novak that Valeriee Plame, wife of a prominent critic of the war in Iraq, was an undercover CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction. The disclosure may be a crime.

Mr McClellan said that the investigators, whose probe began in October, asked that their letter seeking the records be kept private.

Newsday reported that the justice officials also want records from a little-known White House task force called the Iraq Group, created in Aug 2002 to plan how to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

"We're still in the process of complying fully with those requests. We have provided the Department of Justice investigators with much of the information and we're continuing to provide them with additional information," said McClellan.

Valerie Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly revealed last year that he had investigated charges that Iraq sought uranium from Africa and reported back to the Bush administration that they were false.

Mr Bush used the allegation subsequently in his State of the Union speech last year, and Mr Wilson has contended that the administration leaked his wife's identity to punish him for his disclosure.

Ms Plame's name and her CIA ties were revealed in a July 14 opinion column by Novak, who sourced it to two senior administration officials.

Newsday reported that investigators now want records of telephone calls to and from Air Force One from July 7 to 12, while Mr Bush was visiting several African nations.-AFP