Investigators for a House panel probing the Bush administration’s handling of initial reports about Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death are seeking interviews with former White House spokesmen and speech writers.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is seeking to question former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, Communications Director Dan Bartlett, and three other aides, according to a letter that panel’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman of California, sent this morning to White House Counsel Fred Fielding.

Mr. Waxman is also asking the White House whether it has “any documents that would explain how and when the White House learned of Corporal Tillman’s death by friendly fire.” Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the panel, also signed the letter.

Messrs. Fielding, Bartlett, and McClellan didn’t return calls seeking comment. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said administration officials have “seen the letter and will respond appropriately.”

Tillman, who quit professional football to join the U.S. Army Rangers after the September 11, 2001, attacks, died in April 2004 in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. His brother has testified to Congress that government officials told “deliberate and calculated lies” to conceal that Tillman wasn’t slain during a heroic battle against America’s enemies.

After initially withholding documents demanded by the committee, the White House allowed committee investigators to review between 400 and 450 pages of documents and e-mails, the letter said.

The committee plans to hold a hearing August 1 on what Defense Department officials knew, and it is seeking testimony from a former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and a retired Joint Chiefs chairman, General Richard Myers. The panel also wants interviews with former White House speechwriters Michael Gerson and John Currin and former spokesman Taylor Gross.

Army officials continued to say Tillman died from hostile action for weeks after Army Major General Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan at the time, warned three other generals in an April 29, 2004, memo that Tillman may have been killed by fellow American troops.

“I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country’s leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public,” General McChrystal said.

President Bush mentioned Tillman in a May 1, 2004, speech to the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner. The committee is seeking earlier drafts of that speech along with the e-mails among White House communications staff and speechwriters.

“It appears that it may have been an inquiry from one of the White House speechwriters, John Currin, that led” General McChrystal to warn top military officers in Washington, the letter said.

Defense Department Inspector General Thomas Gimble said in a March 26 report that Army commanders recommended Tillman for the Silver Star for gallantry in action, while withholding evidence of friendly fire from his family for five weeks.

Mr. Gimble recommended that the Army examine for possible punishment nine senior officers involved in three “deficient” probes of the 2004 incident in Afghanistan and in a false citation for the Silver Star.

The failure to follow Army regulations in those investigations contributed to “perceptions of concealment,” Mr. Gimble said this year.