By Jonathan Nicholson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury requested a probe on Monday of how a possibly secret document appeared in a televised interview of Paul O'Neill, as a book criticizing the Bush administration that uses material supplied by the ex-Treasury secretary hits the stores.
In the book about his term as Treasury chief, O'Neill, who left the job in December 2002 in a shake-up of President Bush (news - web sites)'s economic team, criticized White House policies and provided author Ron Suskind with thousands of administration documents.
O'Neill said the Bush administration had been looking for a justification to oust President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) since early 2001, long before the Sept. 11 attacks that year.
Nichols did not specify the topic of the specific document that led to the decision to ask the Inspector General's office to look into it.
"It's based on the (CBS program) '60 Minutes' segment, and I'll be even more clear -- the document as shown on '60 Minutes' that said 'secret,"' Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols told reporters at a weekly briefing.
Nichols said the probe will focus on how possibly classified information appeared on a television interview as one of O'Neill's papers.
According to a summary of the segment on CBS's web site, Suskind said one of the briefing materials O'Neill had included a paper marked "secret" that was titled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq (news - web sites)."
"We're asking them to simply look into the '60 Minutes' segment and then take appropriate steps, if necessary," Nichols said. However, he said the legal threshold for asking for an inquiry was "very low."
Asked if seeking the probe may look vindictive, Nichols said, "We don't view it in that way."