President’s Appointees Subject of Federal Probe : Privacy: Aides may have examined records of Bush officials. Incident follows campaign scandal involving search for Clinton’s passport file.

A State Department investigation has turned up evidence that some Clinton Administration appointees may have violated the law by retrieving and disclosing information from the personnel files of former officials of the George Bush Administration, the department said Tuesday.

Spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters that Sherman M. Funk, the department’s inspector general, forwarded the findings to the public integrity section of the Justice Department for possible prosecution. A decision by the Justice Department is expected shortly.

The investigation was launched in early September after the Washington Post reported that the Clinton appointees had retrieved the stored files of about 160 Bush-era State Department officials and were gossiping about two of them, Elizabeth M. Tamposi and Jennifer Fitzgerald.

The incident followed allegations during the 1992 presidential campaign that Bush Administration officials had searched the passport file of then-candidate Bill Clinton looking for derogatory information about Clinton and his mother, Virginia Kelley.

Tamposi was the Bush Administration official in charge of the State Department passport files during the 1992 campaign, and she allegedly headed the search. She later was fired by the Bush White House for her role in the incident.

Fitzgerald was a longtime aide to Bush who served in the Administration as his deputy chief of protocol. Her State Department file reportedly was empty.

If the Justice Department does decide to prosecute the latest case, it could result in a similar embarrassment for the Clinton Administration. Unauthorized retrieval and disclosure of information from personnel files would be a criminal violation of the federal privacy act.

John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s criminal division, said Tuesday that his agency will begin reviewing the State Department findings immediately. “We have an active file going and have had for some time,” he said.

If the Justice Department decides against prosecution, the report will be returned to the State Department for possible administrative action. McCurry said that details of the report will not be made public until the issue has been decided.

Officials declined to name the Clinton appointees cited in Tuesday’s report.

Like the Bush-era investigation before it, the investigation has become the object of partisan infighting. Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have been pressing the Clinton Administration to take action on the matter.

McConnell, whose former administrative assistant, Janet Mullins, was a focus of the earlier investigation into the search for Clinton’s records, has tried to force the issue by holding up Senate confirmation of five nominees to State Department posts.

Funk had pledged to McConnell that he would deliver the recommendations to the Justice Department by Monday, and he sent them just before midnight to meet the self-imposed deadline.

McCurry said Tuesday that Secretary of State Warren Christopher had not been told about the findings in Funk’s report before it was sent to the Justice Department but that he was briefed late Tuesday and did not object to the way the case was being handled.

Under department regulations, the inspector general may pursue such actions independently and take whatever steps he believes are warranted. However, officials said that Funk would not have forwarded the file to Justice if he did not believe there were possible law violations.