WASHINGTON -- In an unprecedented move, the FBI has asked Senate security officers to enlist select committee staffers in a search for e-mails from Energy Department whistleblower Notra Trulock, WorldNetDaily has learned.

Staffers on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee tell WorldNetDaily that they received a memo late last week advising them to turn over any "e-mail messages" from Trulock over the "last five months."

Trulock, Energy's former counter-intelligence chief, is under FBI investigation for allegedly leaking classified information. He has not been charged with any crime.

"I was shocked when I got it," an aide to an Armed Services committee member said about the memo.

"We're a separate branch of government," added the staffer, who asked not to be named. "And our e-mail traffic is supposed to be protected by the speech-and-debate clause."

Trulock, who resigned last year, has criticized senior Clinton appointees in the department for ignoring security problems at the nation's nuclear weapons labs. He says they even stopped him from briefing Congress on Chinese espionage so as not to upset the administration's "strategic partnership" with communist China.

He has also said the FBI scotched the investigation into Chinese spying at the labs, including the Wen Ho Lee case.

Armed Services has held hearings into security lapses and leaks at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Trulock has testified in closed session before the panel, a staffer confirmed.

The Judiciary committee, meanwhile, is continuing to investigate the FBI's and Justice Department's handling of the Lee case. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is heading the probe. It's not clear if he has heard from Trulock.

The memo to Judiciary committee staffers, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily, was sent July 20 by e-mail.

"URGENT REQUEST -- PLEASE OPEN IMMEDIATELY," the subject line reads. "The Office of Senate Security has asked that everyone search their e-mail for any e-mail message received from a person named 'Notra Trulock' within the last five months. (You can search your in-box, trash or archive folders using the search button on the main menu of CC:mail.) Please notify me immediately if you discover an e-mail from this person. Thanks for you [sic] help, Jared Garner, Security Manager."

Garner heads security for the Judiciary committee. He did not return phone calls.

Senate aides say that Garner was following orders from Office of Senate Security Director Mike DiSilvestro. They say FBI agents visited DiSilvestro in his office and asked him to cooperate in the hunt for Trulock e-mail.

DiSilvestro did not return several phone calls to his office, which is located at the top of the Capitol Building. It holds classified documents in a room inside a room where members of Congress and cleared staff can go to read them.

The FBI move, described as "heavy-handed" by one staffer, comes on the heels of a recent controversial search of Trulock's home.

On July 14, FBI agents took Trulock's personal-computer hard drive from his Virginia town house. The agents did not show a search warrant to either Trulock or his landlord. She let them into his flat only after reportedly being threatened.

The FBI says it was looking for classified documents in Trulock's home because it suspects he has somehow compromised U.S. intelligence.

Trulock insists he kept no classified information on his computer and claims the FBI's move is part of an ongoing effort to retaliate against him for speaking out against the Clinton administration.

In this month's issue of The National Review, Trulock penned a 3,000-word report taking Clinton officials to task for -- ironically enough -- failing to protect the nation's military secrets.

An Armed Services staffer says everything in his article is based on unclassified Energy material.

However, Trulock reportedly also is shopping around an unpublished 62-page manuscript about the administration's handling of the Los Alamos spy case. A CIA official reportedly tipped off the FBI that the manuscript may disclose classified material.

Staffers say Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is not cooperating with the FBI in the e-mail matter and has consulted with the Senate legal office to get a reading on lawmakers' rights to protect such communications.

"I have no comment on that," said Chris Williams, a foreign policy aide in the leader's office.

Paul Longsworth, a staffer for the Armed Services committee, confirmed the directive, but stopped short of saying who it involved.

"The committee was notified by security about some issues related to e-mails," Longsworth said. "I really can't comment on (Trulock). It's a security issue that involves e-mails. It's very sensitive."

Judiciary committee aide Kent Cook, however, confirmed that the Senate security office, at the FBI's request, is trying to trace communications from Trulock.

Cook says he's already searched his in-box and trash for e-mails from Trulock. "There's nothing in mine," he said.

He says the request is a first.

"We've been asked to go through our e-mail before for viruses," Cook said, "but nothing like this."

The aide to an Armed Services committee member says the FBI told security that Trulock allegedly funneled some secret data to the Hill and that the FBI wants to stop it from advancing any further.

But the staffer thinks the FBI's request "looks more like a fishing expedition" to find out whose ears Trulock has on the Hill.

"This seems like more retaliation against whistleblowers in this administration, particularly at the Energy Department," the aide said.

Indeed, there has been a pattern of retribution against national security whistleblowers during the Clinton-Gore years, most notably when China is involved:

• Pentagon official Jonathan Fox testified last year that he was threatened with losing his job if he didn't certify China as a nonproliferator of nuclear arms to pave the way for an administration plan to share critical nuclear technology with China. The White House needed a rush OK in advance of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit.

• Pentagon officials tried to break into another Pentagon whistleblower's computer as he testified last year on the Hill. Export-control officer Peter Leitner warned that Clinton appointees were trying systematically to dismantle controls on military-related exports to China.

• Energy Secretary Bill Richardson effectively fired Edward McCallum, who headed Energy's Office of Safeguards and Security for nine years, three days after he testified before the so-called Rudman Commission, which was charged with helping fix lab security problems.

In charges strikingly similar to ones leveled against Trulock, Richardson claimed McCallum "may have committed a serious security infraction" involving allegedly classified information. Richardson's charge never stuck.

McCallum wrote reports to Clinton appointees at Energy, arguing for, among other things, tighter screening of Chinese visitors to the labs.

• Los Alamos nuclear weapons physicist Robert Henson was fired in 1995 after he tipped off Trulock about the Chinese heisting design data about the prized W-88 warhead.