March 22 (Bloomberg) -- No laws were broken when the U.S. Treasury Department released documents to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who presented them to an author to write a critical book on President George W. Bush, the department's inspector general said in a report.

``No criminal statutes were violated,'' according to the report, which was made available through a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

O'Neill, who was fired by the president in December 2002, was the main source for the book, ``The Price of Loyalty,'' written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind and published in January by Viacom Inc. He gave Suskind 19,000 documents that crossed his desk during his 23 months at the department and which were given to him on his request months after he left government.

Among them was a page that later appeared in a CBS profile of O'Neill which was stamped ``Secret.'' The airing of that document prompted the Treasury to refer the release of data and O'Neill's use of it to Jeffrey Rush, the department's inspector general.

While Rush found no laws had been broken, his probe concluded that 140 documents containing ``national security'' or ``sensitive'' information had been given to O'Neill. Had they been properly marked as ``classified'' they would have been withheld, it said.

Compact Disc

O'Neill received the documents in a single compact disc and two DVDs after he asked David Aufhauser, then the department's general counsel, for them, the report said. While methods were applied to reviewing the data that had been used when providing data to previous secretaries, Aufhauser said ``he assumed full responsibility for the lack of review,'' it said.

Upon receipt of the materials, O'Neill told the inspector general that he had assumed they contained only unclassified material and passed them to Suskind without looking at them.

Suskind's book, which reached No. 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, accuses Bush of being disengaged and uninterested in policy and claims his administration began planning to oust Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency within weeks of taking office in January 2001. It has spent eight weeks on the New York Times' bestseller list for nonfiction, most recently at No. 4.

O'Neill `Disappointed'

O'Neill was ``disappointed'' with the book because it focused more on events rather than his ``ideas,'' according to a memo, contained in the report, of an interview with the former secretary.

The current secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, told Congress in a letter last month that a preliminary review of the documents O'Neill gave Suskind for the book found some were classified and pledged the department would improve its handling of internal material.

``The issue is extremely important to the department and the secretary,'' said Rob Nichols, assistant Treasury secretary for public affairs, in a briefing with reporters. ``We have already taken steps to train additional personnel in the handling of classified documents.''

Editor: Miller, Golle

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy at skennedy4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 22, 2004 13:57 EST