US President George W Bush "has directed full cooperation with this investigation," White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said in a memorandum directing White House staff to save any materials potentially tied to the case.
That could be expected to include items such as e-mails, telephone logs, internal memos, personal notes regarding who leaked that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The information appeared in a July 14 Washington Post column by syndicated conservative writer Robert Novak.
Releasing such information to the press could carry a heavy prison term for the perpetrator.
"We were informed last evening by the Department of Justice that it has opened an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee," Gonzales wrote.
"The Department advised us that it will be sending a letter today instructing us to preserve all materials that might be relevant to its investigation.
"Its letter will provide more specific instructions on the materials in which it is interested, and we will communicate those instructions directly to you.
In the meantime, you must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the Department's investigation," said Bush's official lawyer.
The disclosure came after the former diplomat revealed that the Bush administration had sent him to Africa to look into a charge that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa and wrote that he had discredited the allegation.
Despite a warning by the US State Department's intelligence service that the charge was "highly dubious," the accusation wound up in Bush's January "State of the Union" address, sourced to the British government.
The White House later confessed that Bush should never have uttered the allegation.
A week after Wilson's disclosure, Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as saying that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that White House aides had leaked that information.
Wilson himself has refused to confirm his wife's occupation but linked Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, to the leak. – Sapa-AFP.
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