WASHINGTON – The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration yesterday to seek criminal charges against the New York Times for reporting on a secret financial monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King, a Republican of New York, blasted the newspaper’s decision last week to report that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money transfer records.

“I am asking the attorney general to begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times – the reporters, the editors, and the publisher,” Mr. King said. “We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous.”

The conservative lawmaker called the paper “pompous, arrogant, and more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people.”

Conservatives have expressed outrage against the press ever since the Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times first reported on the money-monitoring program, but Mr. King’s call for a criminal prosecution is the strongest denunciation to date.

Mr. King said he thought investigators also should examine the reports by the Journal and Los Angeles Times, but said the greater focus should be on the New York Times because of its previous reporting on a secret domestic wiretapping program.

A Times spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment yesterday.

When the Times chose to publish the story, it quoted its executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government’s arguments for withholding the information, but “remain convinced that the administrations extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift – the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

After the disclosures of Swift monitoring, Democrats and civil liberties organizations questioned whether the program violated privacy rights.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of America, but it does not execute those transfers.

The service generally doesn’t detect private, individual transactions in America, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

Mr. King said he would send a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales formally requesting a criminal investigation into the report.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday that it was too early to talk about investigating the newspaper.

“On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it’s premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it’s premature to say that the administration is entirely correct,” Senator Specter said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, said the paper acted responsibly, both in last week’s story and in reporting last year about the wiretapping program.

“Its pretty clear to me that in this story and in the story last December that the New York Times did not act recklessly,” Ms. Dalglish said. “I think in years to come that this is a story American citizens are going to be glad they had, however this plays out.”