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WASHINGTON — Senators sharply questioned on Tuesday the White House's assertion that journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified material as new information emerged in the FBI's search for secret documents among deceased columnist Jack Anderson's papers.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., disputed a recent statement from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggesting that journalists could be prosecuted under espionage statutes for publishing unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information.

"It's highly doubtful in my mind that was ever the intent of Congress," said Specter, speaking before a packed hearing held to examine the FBI's probe into Anderson's papers .

But Matthew Friedrich, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, disagreed.

"The attorney general is not the first one to recognize the possibility that reporters are not immune from potential prosecution under these statutes," said Friedrich, citing legal experts and court rulings.

Friedrich declined to comment on the Anderson probe, citing a pending criminal case. The FBI's probe into Anderson's papers is tied to a case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are accused of receiving classified information and telling others about it.

The big question surrounding the Anderson papers is why the FBI would be interested in a dead journalist's papers.

Anderson's son, Kevin, said FBI agents told him that an informant was in the room when an agent for a foreign country passed his father a classified document. Kevin Anderson told the panel that the Anderson family would fight off every effort by the government — including contempt charges — to access his father's papers, which are now at George Washington University.

In the past, the FBI has said that if the Anderson papers contain classified materials, they belong to the government.