The ranking member of a House committee is demanding answers from the Justice Department about recent reports in The New York Sun that intelligence agencies failed to cooperate with FBI investigations into leaks of classified material and that the FBI’s files on some leak probes have disappeared.

The top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia, said he was troubled by the Sun’s report last week that FBI documents showed at least three leak investigations appeared to have been closed after case agents repeatedly complained about a lack of cooperation from the “victim agency.”

“The FBI holds itself out as the premiere investigative agency for the United States. As such, I find it hard to believe the FBI closes espionage leak investigations simply because another agency refuses to cooperate,” Mr. Davis wrote Friday in a letter to Attorney General Gonzales.

At a press conference last month, President Bush again decried leaks of classified information. “It’s an ongoing problem,” the president said. “At some point in time, it would be helpful if we can find somebody inside our government who is leaking materials, clearly against the law, that they be held to account.”

Mr. Davis wrote, “How can we ensure, as the President requested, those who leak classified information ‘be held to account,’ if the Department of Justice (DOJ) does not insist on pursuing investigative leads?”

The Sun’s report about the alleged non-cooperation with leak probes was based on documents obtained under a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by this reporter. The released records were heavily redacted to protect classified information, privacy, and investigative methods, the FBI said.

The Sun reported last month that a declaration filed by the FBI in connection with the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit indicated that 22 of 94 files believed to relate to recent leak investigations were missing from the bureau’s file room with no indication of who had removed them.

Mr. Davis asked Mr. Gonzales to provide information on how the chief of the Justice Department’s Counterespionage Section, John Dion, responded to the FBI’s requests to close the leak investigations. The congressman also asked for details on what happened to the missing files.

A Justice Department spokesman told the Sun last week that Mr. Dion believes agencies generally provide good cooperation with leak probes. Prosecutors declined to discuss ther individual cases in which problems were reported.

Mr. Davis’s letter Friday questioning the Justice Department’s actions on classified leaks came one day after the congressman joined with the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, to complain that prosecutors were being too aggressive in pursuing leaks of secret grand jury testimony in an investigation into steroid use in professional sports. Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters are facing possible jail time for refusing to name their sources in that case.

“At most, the violation at issue is a breach of a court-sanctioned protective order,” Messrs. Davis and Conyers wrote in a letter also addressed to Mr. Gonzales. “While the sanctity of a protective order is an important interest, this case is significantly different from others involving a breach of national security, terrorism, or serious criminal conduct.”

The two congressmen asked Mr. Gonzales to withdraw the subpoenas to the journalists.