Treasury demands investigation into O'Neill's 'secret papers'

The United States Treasury has demanded a formal investigation into whether its former chief Paul O'Neill displayed a secret document in a television interview at the weekend in which he accused President George Bush of planning an invasion of Iraq from the moment he came to office in January 2001.

The announcement last night by a department spokesman sounded very much like an effort by the Bush administration to punish the plain-spoken former treasury secretary for comments that already have become a major embarrassment for Mr Bush.

The complaint was based on Mr O'Neill's appearance on the CBS 60 minutes programme on Sunday evening, and specifically "on the document as shown on 60 Minutes that said 'secret'", Rob Nichols, the Treasury's assistant secretary for public affairs said.

The document was apparently one of thousands that Mr O'Neill made available to the journalist Ron Suskind for his book The Price of Loyalty, dealing with the former cabinet member's tumultuous period in government before he was forced to resign by Mr Bush in December 2002.

It is not unusual here for a departing government official to take papers with them - but few have done so as copiously as Mr O'Neill, who has never concealed his anger at his summary ejection from the administration. The result has been a damning act of revenge - certainly by far the most explicit insider's account in the three years of this exceptionally disciplined presidency.

Mr O'Neill's claims - that Mr Bush was bent on toppling Saddam long before the attacks on 11 September 2001, and that he had not seen one shred of serious evidence that the Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction - have been seized upon by Democratic candidates as further proof that the country was duped into going to war last March.

Mr Bush was trying to downplay the controversy, going out of his way yesterday to speak kindly of his former appointee at a meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, where he is attending a Summit of the Americas. He would not be drawn on the specific charge, noting that his administration had inherited an official policy of regime change in Iraq from Bill Clinton. Administration officials have have been busy disputing the former treasury secretary's charges, about Mr Bush's disconnected management style, saying that in meetings, the President was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf people".

Mr O'Neill said: "I'm an old man and I've made plenty of money. They can't hurt me."