FBI'S FREEH REFUSES WHITE HOUSE REQUEST FOR CHINA INFORMATION.

Byline: David Johnston The New York Times

The White House tried last month to obtain sensitive counterintelligence information from the FBI about Beijing's plans to influence American politics, but FBI Director Louis Freeh rebuffed the inquiry, administration officials said Monday.

The FBI material was sought by Charles F.C. Ruff, the new White House counsel, for a briefing of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In a Feb. 18 letter to Jamie S. Gorelick, the deputy attorney general, people who have seen the letter said, Ruff posed a series of questions about what federal investigators knew or suspected about the involvement of Chinese officials and citizens in a purported plan to make illegal contributions to American political campaigns.

Ruff said he was seeking the information on behalf of the National Security Council. At the time, Albright was preparing for a trip to China, scheduled for late February.

Ruff, who said Monday that there was nothing improper about his request, stressed in the letter that the White House wanted ``information only concerning the activities of officials and nationals of the People's Republic of China'' and not American citizens.

A reply was prepared, with the approval of top Justice Department officials, but Freeh, who was traveling in the Middle East at the time, intervened and ordered the document withheld, federal law enforcement officials said.

The officials said Freeh had decided to stick to his earlier decision that no information relating to possible influence buying by China would be provided to anyone in Congress or the executive branch. Freeh, officials said, was worried that whatever information was passed on would leak and that the FBI would be criticized for sharing information with the president's aides, officials said.

The FBI director's refusal of the White House's request was a vivid example of the tensions among the White House, the Justice Department and the FBI, which have escalated in the unfolding investigation of the financing of the 1996 presidential campaign.

The dispute over Ruff's request also may help explain why Freeh has seemed so personally at odds with the White House, to the point where the FBI argued publicly with the president this month over accounts of briefings that the FBI had provided to the NSC at the start of the China investigation.

In addition, the exchange showed the extent to which the investigation has tied the relationships among federal agencies in knots. Indeed, some government lawyers suggested Monday that it was Freeh who had erred by withholding the information from the White House and thus leaving the secretary of state without critical information at a time when she was embarking on a diplomatic mission to Beijing.

These officials said Freeh, who had been accused in Congress of maintaining a cozy relationship with the White House, simply had decided not to risk further criticism.