WASHINGTON – Republican senators are puzzling over how to ensure full release of a long-awaited independent counsel’s report that alleges obstruction at the highest levels of the Clinton administration but which omits by court order a large narrative chunk that some conservatives think could be damaging to the former first lady, Senator Clinton.

The New York Sun reported exclusively on Monday that a 10-year probe by independent counsel David Barrett into allegations of tax fraud by a former housing secretary under President Clinton, Henry Cisneros, would culminate in a report alleging a coordinated effort to obstruct the investigation by Clinton administration officials who were looking to protect Mr. Cisneros.

Mr. Barrett’s final report, which was released yesterday, confirmed that the second half of the investigation was complicated by a former chief of the public integrity section of the Department of Justice, Lee Radek, and a former assistant chief counsel for criminal tax matters at the IRS, Barry Finkelstein. It also implicated a former attorney general, Janet Reno.

“After a thorough reading of the report, it would not be unreasonable to conclude, as I have, that there was a cover-up at high levels of our government, and it appears to have been substantial and coordinated,” Mr. Barrett’s office said in a statement issued with the report.

Democrats have cast the $21 million investigation as a waste of time and funds, citing it as the best evidence yet that the independent counsel statute that expired seven years ago squandered taxpayer money. And Messrs. Radek and Finkelstein hotly reject the claims against them in an appendix to the report.

But Republicans are reserving judgment on the report, about 120 pages of which was ordered removed by a three judge panel that oversaw Mr. Barrett’s investigation, until they see it in its entirety.

“There will be a movement to get the whole thing out,” a top Republican aide said last night. “The American taxpayers have paid an enormous sum to get this report, and the American taxpayers expect to read it.”

Republicans are said to be weighing two options in pursuit of full release. One is to have the three-judge panel release the redactions on the grounds that the full Senate should be able to make a judgment on its potential value to the public interest. Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, is said to have seen the report already. Republicans say that they should be able to see it, too.

Another option, which Republican sources described as less desirable, would be to insert language into an unrelated piece of legislation that would order full release of the report against the wishes of the judicial panel. The Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, of Iowa, inserted language into a Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill in October that would have resulted in full disclosure of the report, but that language was diluted in committee by House of Representatives staff, a source familiar with the investigation said.

Mr. Grassley is now poised to make another attempt at inserting the request into another bill when the full Congress returns to session at the end of the month.

“As we continue digging into the details of the report, I’ll know just how significant the redactions are and will be able to determine how to proceed in the coming months,” Mr. Grassley said yesterday in a statement.

Republicans in the Senate said privately last night that they are consulting with lawyers to explore their options. They said aides would be sifting through the Barrett report in the coming days to determine whether already published portions raise serious questions about the parts that were not. Calls to the offices of Messrs. Levin and Barrett were not returned.

At issue in the Barrett report are allegations that Messrs. Radek and Finkelstein, neither of whom were appointed by President Clinton, made an unprecedented move to have the independent counsel’s investigation of Mr. Cisneros relocated to Washington, D.C., from a regional office in San Antonio. The report hints that the two men were acting on orders from above to bury the case as a way of protecting Mr. Cisneros and Mr. Clinton, whose administration was the focus of two other independent counsel investigations at the time.

As a key piece of support for his obstruction claims, Mr. Barrett cites a memorandum written in 1997 by a former chief of the criminal investigation division for the IRS’s South Texas District, John Filan. Mr. Filan accuses Mr. Finkelstein of ordering associates at the IRS to “kill the case” against Mr. Cisneros and of working with Justice Department officials to ensure that tax evasion claims against him were not referred to Mr. Barrett for prosecution.

“The analysis of this case and the conclusions drawn by assistant chief counsel (criminal tax) are just plain wrong,” Mr. Filan wrote in the memorandum. “The evidence in this case clearly proves Cisneros knowingly and willfully signed and filed false and fraudulent income tax returns.”

Mrs. Clinton’s office declined to comment on whether redacted portions of the report should be released, as did a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, Jay Carson. Mr. Carson instead criticized Mr. Barrett, calling his claims of obstruction an attempt to justify the time and expense of an investigation that did not lead to prosecution. Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI. He paid a $10,000 fine and was pardoned by Mr. Clinton on Mr. Clinton’s final day in office.

“It is clearer than ever today that this report wasted $21 million in taxpayer funds and 10 years of digging, and today produced no results,” Mr. Carson said. “And Mr. Barrett’s feeble allegations of a cover-up are laughable given that the Bush Administration has been in charge during the majority of this investigation. It really is clear that he is only grasping for excuses to justify his expenses and fruitless witch hunt.”