Officials: Pentagon Probed Finances

In his confirmation responses, Gates said that an internal Pentagon review of the program "found procedural weaknesses" and that "steps are underway to correct these deficiencies."

Whitman, in a discussion of the financial-records requests, said that only four U.S. military entities are authorized to ask for them -- the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center, the Criminal Investigation Service of the Army and of the Navy, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

All of these entities are overseen by CIFA.

Whitman declined to discuss individual cases in which the authority had been used, although one U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue said it was utilized in an investigation of a contractor working at the Guantanamo Bay naval facility who appeared to have unexplained income.

In comments attributed to unnamed military intelligence officials, the Times said that the financial records of Capt. James Yee -- a Muslim chaplain at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was charged with aiding prisoners there -- had also been obtained. Espionage charges against Yee were eventually dropped by the government.

The CIA declined yesterday to comment on its use of the financial-records authority. An intelligence official said that the CIA usually asks the FBI to obtain financial records involving U.S. citizens in terrorism investigations because the bureau has the authority to compel cooperation. "There have been a handful of instances, in very rare circumstances over the years, that the CIA has used" its authority to request such records on its own, the official said.

Staff writers Walter Pincus and Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.