The FBI is requesting the archives of a dead journalist to use as evidence in next month’s trial of two former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

In January, a U.S. attorney working on the case against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman called the widow and son of the late columnist, Jack Anderson, looking for classified documents the lawyer believed the lobbyists had slipped to the reporter, according to Anderson’s son, Kevin Anderson.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Anderson said bureau investigators wanted to comb the archives “to see if Rosen and Weissman’s fingerprints were on the documents.” Mr. Anderson, however, soon became suspicious because “from the time period they were talking about, Jack was not meeting with people or talking with people. He was pretty much homebound.” Jack Anderson suffered from Parkinson’s disease during the last 15 years of his life, before his death in December. A lawyer for the Andersons yesterday sent the bureau a letter informing it that the family would not cooperate with the investigation.

The FBI’s quest for the Anderson archives, first reported yesterday by Scott Carlson of the Chronicle of Higher Education, illustrates the lengths to which the federal bureaucracy is going to plug holes in classified material. For the first time, not only is the Justice Department prosecuting two private citizens for the receipt of classified information in the case against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman, but the government since 2001 has formalized a policy to take previously declassified documents off the shelves of the national archives.

This month, the National Archives and Records Administration published two previously secret memoranda of understanding that formalized the process by which the CIA and other agencies literally can erase parts of the public record.

A spokesman for the FBI yesterday asserted the federal government’s right to any classified documents obtained by individuals, living or dead. “There is no legal basis under which a third party can retain as part of an estate classified documents,” Special Agent Bill Carter said yesterday. “The documents remain the property of the U.S. government. They contain information such as sensitive sources and methods. The U.S. government has reasonable concern over the prospect that these classified documents would be made available to the public at the risk to national security and in violation of the law.”

Mr. Carter added the bureau might use legal means to compel the family of the columnist to comply with its wishes. “If the Andersons refuse to cooperate, then we would have to discuss with the Department of Justice about how to proceed,” he said.

The fact that the bureau is seeking to redact classified documents from Anderson’s files is poetically just. Among the columnist’s targets was a former FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. Anderson also made President Nixon’s enemies list, and aides to Nixon discussed the possibility of smearing the journalist by leaking a rumor that he was a homosexual.

Anderson wrote his fair share of scoops based on classified information. In 1971,he broke news on America’s decision to arm Pakistan secretly in its war with India, a story that won him the Pulitzer Prize. During the Watergate scandal, Anderson got his hands on a transcript of grand jury testimony, but was forced to return it to the judge.

Mr. Carter yesterday asserted the government’s sweeping new interpretation of the espionage statute. “No private person, whether they be a reporter or private individual, may possess classified documents that were illegally provided to them,” he said. Until the Justice Department prosecuted Messrs. Rosen and Weissman in part for partaking in a conspiracy to obtain classified materials, the federal government never went after the recipients of leaks.

“It won’t end until there is significant pushback. This is the FBI testing the limits of its power. This time they may have finally gone too far,” the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, Steven Aftergood, said yesterday. “The problem is not enough people have gotten angry. They assume this is normal or everyone is acting in good faith and everyone is not acting in good faith. These agencies are taking advantage of heightened security concerns after 9/11.”

In its quest for Anderson’s old files, the bureau approached his widow only a month after her husband’s funeral, and visited the home of Anderson’s biographer. Agents also tried to get George Washington University, which is keeping the files for now in storage, to give them a peek.

A George Washington University professor and Anderson biographer, Mark Feldstein, yesterday said he found it hard to believe that anything in the columnist’s files related to the Aipac investigation, which has focused on discussions between the two former lobbyists starting in 2002 with a former Pentagon Iran analyst, Lawrence Franklin.

“I have been through these boxes. I told the FBI that I was surprised about how little there was. If you look at Anderson’s career, he was sick for the last 15 years. The columns have not done much on Israel, Iran. He did not break any scoops of classified documents in the last 15 years. This was a fishing expedition through a dead reporter’s archive,” Mr. Feldstein said.

Anderson’s son yesterday said that the quest for the documents could have a chilling effect on national security journalists of this generation. “Whoever made the decision to instigate the review of these papers obviously waited until he had passed in order to get these,” Mr. Anderson said. “What the government is saying to you and people in your profession is that we are not only going to harass you but your widow as well. I think that’s outrageous.”