WASHINGTON: The Bush administration, until now considered one of the most effective ever at controlling information, is suddenly struggling to plug leaks that threaten political embarrassment and, officials say, harm to national security.

FBI investigators last week had been interrogating staff of a Congressional panel probing intelligence failures of Sept 11, and may take the unprecedented step of using lie detectors on them.

After a public display of anger by Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials have begun an inquiry into who gave newspapers draft war plans for a possible attack on Iraq.

And the State Department took the highly unusual step last week of detaining a news reporter at its Foggy Bottom headquarters in an effort to find out who leaked a classified diplomatic cable that contained embarrassing information on the department’s visa programme.

Top administration officials have said from the beginning of President Bush’s term that they are serious about enforcing the laws that make it a crime to leak classified documents. But not until now has it become fully apparent how vigorous they are willing to be.

The cases also demonstrate the limits on how tightly any administration can control the flow of information. Although Bush’s team is well known for keeping the lid on — even cabinet members were unaware of Bush’s plan to create a new homeland security department — the President’s team has not been able to control everyone in the executive branch or Congress.

And questions are beginning to arise about the wisdom of even trying to root out the sources of recent leaks.

William Kristol, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle, said the government should only mobilize against leaks that genuinely threaten lives and national security.

“There’s not much evidence that any of the leaks here are of that character,” said Kristol, who is now editor of the Weekly Standard magazine.

The leaks investigation on Capitol Hill was launched last month after news organizations, citing Congressional sources, disclosed contents of a classified briefing by the ultra-secret National Security Agency.

In closed-door testimony, NSA officials reportedly acknowledged that the agency had intercepted Al Qaeda messages on Sept 10 saying “tomorrow is zero day” and “the match begins tomorrow” but had not translated the messages from Arabic until Sept 12.

Within hours of the NSA officials’ testimony, those messages were being reported on television and the Internet.

Angered by the disclosure, Vice President Dick Cheney called the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees demanding a crackdown.

Among the questions staff faced was whether they would be willing to submit to lie detector tests, according to one aide.

The aide said that to his knowledge the legislative branch has never submitted to lie detector tests by the executive branch. If the FBI is serious about pursuing polygraph tests, the aide said, it could set the stage for a showdown between the branches.

One aide said that when asked the question, he replied by saying that members of the committee, and not their staffers, would have to make such a decision.

The Pentagon inquiry began after the local dailies published the broad outlines of a planner’s proposal for attacking Iraq. The proposal called for the Pentagon to use land, air and sea-based forces to hit the country from three directions.

Rumsfeld said that the document appeared to be from a lower level planner.—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service.