By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 2, 2003; Page A01

Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate allegations that Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday.

The poll, taken after the Justice Department announced that it had opened a criminal probe into the matter, pointed to several troubling signs for the White House as Bush aides decide how to contain the damage. The survey found that 81 percent of Americans considered the matter serious, while 72 percent thought it likely that someone in the White House leaked the agent's name.

Confronted with little public support for the White House view that the investigation should be handled by the Justice Department, Bush aides began yesterday to adjust their response to the expanding probe. They reined in earlier, broad portrayals of innocence in favor of more technical arguments that it is possible the disclosure was made without knowledge that a covert operative was being exposed and therefore might not have been a crime.

As the White House hunkered down, it got the first taste of criticism from within Bush's own party. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that Bush "needs to get this behind him" by taking a more active role. "He has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it," the outspoken Hagel said last night on CNBC's "Capital Report."

At the same time, administration allies outside the White House stepped up a counteroffensive that seeks to discredit the administration's main accuser, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, whose wife was named as a CIA operative. Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie gave a string of television interviews with the three-part message that the Justice Department is investigating, that the White House is fully cooperating and that Wilson has a political agenda and has made "rash statements."

"He is someone, given his politics, who is obviously prone to think the worst of this White House," Gillespie said by telephone.

With Tuesday's announcement that a full criminal investigation into the leaks was underway, the federal government's investigative apparatus began to reassemble. An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau has gathered a team of agents experienced in leak investigations to conduct the inquiry, from the inspections and counterintelligence divisions at headquarters and in the Washington field office. The FBI investigation will be overseen by the bureau's Inspections Division, which often handles specialized probes, one FBI official said.

At the White House, officials said they will examine their files and phone logs and preserve message slips and notes that could relate to the investigation. While Bush was quiet on the topic yesterday, the subject filled 22 of 24 pages in the transcript of the daily White House press briefing.

Bush press secretary Scott McClellan made clear he was limiting his public claims related to the probe. He said that he would not vouch for individual aides' innocence other than his statement that Bush senior adviser Karl Rove "didn't condone that kind of activity and was not involved in that kind of activity."

McClellan also limited his defense of White House aides to narrow legal grounds. On Monday, he said, "There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president's office as well."

Yesterday, McClellan did not deny that there had been any general White House effort to discredit Wilson at the time of the original leak. "The issue here is whether or not someone leaked classified information," he said yesterday, adding after the briefing: "I'm drawing a line here. I'm not going to play the game of going down other rabbit trails."

The move to circumscribe the White House response could have legal and political implications. Bush and his aides have made clear that they do not support naming a special counsel to investigate the leaks, but Democrats said Bush's Justice Department cannot lead an impartial probe.

Seeking to keep up the pressure on Bush yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and three other Senate Democrats wrote to the president repeating their call for a special counsel and asking for all White House senior staff members to sign a statement saying they were not responsible for the leak.

Justice Department regulations may make it difficult for Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to leave the matter to his career staff, as he has proposed, particularly if journalists who received the leaks are to be questioned. The regulations state that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media without the express authorization of the Attorney General."

The name of Wilson's wife and her status as a CIA employee were published in a syndicated column days after Wilson wrote an article casting doubt on the administration's claim that Iraq had sought nuclear materials in Niger. The columnist, Robert D. Novak, quoted two senior administration officials.

On Saturday, a senior administration official told The Washington Post that before Novak's column appeared, two top White House officials called at least six journalists and disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife. The senior administration official said the leak was "meant purely and simply for revenge." Wilson had been sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to examine the nuclear claims.

Both the White House and the Republican National Committee assailed Wilson for retreating from his charge that Rove was responsible for the disclosure and for his newly acknowledged role in the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Wilson said he gave $2,000 to Kerry's campaign and has participated in three or four of the campaign's conference calls about foreign policy.

At the Capitol, aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) distributed paper sacks labeled "Leak Hyperventilation Bags."

Still, most White House allies were careful not to dismiss the significance of the allegations. Gillespie was asked by MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday evening whether the potential crime involved was worse than Watergate. "You know, yeah, I suppose in terms of the real-world implications of it," Gillespie said. "It's not just politics. It's people's lives."

Disclosing the name of a clandestine operative -- which can jeopardize the agent's contacts -- can be a crime, but that determination depends on factors that include whether the disclosure was intentional, whether the leaker knew the person was a covert agent and whether he or she knew the government was taking steps to conceal the agent's covert status. "Was it known that information was classified information?" asked McClellan, who pointed to statements this week by Novak saying he did not know Wilson's wife had undercover status.

McClellan suggested at a briefing yesterday morning that Bush would want aides to take polygraph tests if requested by the FBI. " 'Full cooperation' is full cooperation," he said, referring to Bush's remarks on Tuesday. Asked in the afternoon, he said, "That is a hypothetical, and that is not where the process is."

McClellan said in the morning that he did not know if any White House aides had contacted the Justice Department with information. By afternoon, he was referring such questions to Justice, saying he would have no reason to know. McClellan said he could not say when Bush first learned of the leak. "I looked into it, and I just don't know," he said.

In the Post-ABC News poll, 34 percent thought it likely that Bush knew in advance about the leaks. Bush's overall support slipped to 54 percent from 58 percent in mid-September. That level is the lowest of his presidency but still respectable by historical measures. There was a high degree of suspicion directed toward the administration. Only 29 percent said the investigation should be handled by the Justice Department, while 69 percent favored a special counsel with autonomy from the administration.

Assistant polling director Claudia Deane and staff writers Dan Eggen, Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.