A liberal anti-corruption group won permission from a federal judge yesterday to take sworn testimony from the head of the Justice Department’s civil division in a case seeking information about a decision made last year to cut sharply a financial demand against the tobacco industry.

Judge Emmet Sullivan’s ruling faulted the government for purporting to grant expedited treatment to a Freedom of Information Act request from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and then failing to turn over any records about the tobacco-related decision for more than 10 months.

In 2005, the Justice Department retreated from its long-standing position in a racketeering lawsuit against tobacco firms that the companies should be required to fund a $130 billion, 25-year program to encourage people to quit smoking. The government’s reduced claim, for a $10 billion, five-year program, drew howls of protest from anti-tobacco forces and dissent from government attorneys assigned to the case.

“What we suspect is the Bush administration wanted to make big tobacco happy and they dropped the award,” an attorney for the citizens’ group, Melanie Sloan, said.

“It was totally meaningless to tell us they’d expedite our request. Here we are a year later and they didn’t give us anything.”

Judge Sullivan said he was “troubled” by some of the government’s claims, including one that a two-hour search for records took four months to complete. He noted that the Justice Department asserted it would cost more than $90,000 to search for the records.

A Justice Department spokesman, Charles Miller, declined to comment on the ruling. However, at a hearing in April, a government attorney called the request for depositions “a frolicking detour” aimed at improper questioning of the officials about their actions in the tobacco case.

While the Judge Sullivan granted permission to depose the civil division chief, Robert McCallum, and three other officials, the judge suggested the questioning would be limited to the issue of delays in handling the group’s request for data. The judge said the depositions would last no longer than five hours in total and be overseen by a federal magistrate.

An authority on freedom of information litigation, Alan Morrison of Stanford University, said an order permitting sworn questioning in such cases is “very uncommon.” He said most of the records will probably be deemed exempt from release, but the Justice Department may have to disclose evidence of contact with outsiders about the sharply reduced financial demand. “While the tobacco companies have an absolute right to communicate with government officials, they don’t have a right to keep those communications secret,” Mr. Morrison said. “If tobacco companies were making arguments to the chiefs that they weren’t making to the Indians, you have a pretty good idea of what may be going on.”

President Bush has nominated Mr. McCallum as ambassador to Australia, but Senator Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, is blocking confirmation because of concerns about the handling of the tobacco case.