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Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing’s minute on human rights, reported the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from on every side of the world. One of the lawmakers said he’d been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said four of his computers were compromised beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of the computers at his global human rights subcommittee were attacked in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf reported that following one of the attacks, a car through license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.

During the same time limit, The House International Relations Committee — now known as the House Foreign Affairs Committee — was targeted at least once by someone working inside China, said committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil.

Wednesday’s disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a regulation laptop computer for the period of a examine to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the advice to seek to hack into Commerce Department computers.

The Pentagon continue month acknowledged at a closed House Intelligence committee meeting that its boundless computer network is scanned or attacked by outsiders more than 300 the masses epochs each epoch.

Wolf said the FBI had told him that computers of other House members and at least one House committee had been accessed by sources working from inside China. The Virginia Republican suggested that Senate computers could have been attacked as well.

He said the hacking of computers in his Capitol Hill office began in August 2006, that he had known about it according to a long time and that he had been discouraged from disclosing it through people in the U.S. government he refused to identify.

“The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue,” he said. “Every time I’ve started to behave something I’ve been told ‘You can’t finish this.’ A lot of people be the refer of made it very, very hard.”

The FBI and the White House declined to comment.

The Bush administration has been increasingly reluctant publicly to discuss or acknowledge cyber attacks, especially ones traced to China.

In the Senate, the office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate’s subcommittee on humanitarian issues, asked the sergeant at arms to overhaul whether Senate computers have been compromised.

Wolf declared the first computer hacked in his office belonged to the staffer who works on human rights cases and that others included the machines of Wolf’s chief of staff and legislative director.

“They knew which ones to get,” said Dan Scandling, who currently is attached leave of absence from his job as Wolf’s chief of staff. “It was a very sophisticated operation,” he aforesaid. “The FBI verified that it had been bestowed.”

Smith before-mentioned the attacks on his office computers were “very much an orchestrated effort.”

He said that after the first intrusion in December 2006, “that was the last time” his office put the names of dissidents on its computers.

Smith said the intrusions were discovered then House technicians rest a virus that seemed designed to take down control of the computers. Technical experts who cleaned the computers reported that the attacks seemed to come from the People’s Republic of China.

In Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no proximate comment on the allegations by Wolf and Smith.

Last week, China denied the accusations regarding Gutierrez’s laptop and the alleged effort to hackle Commerce Department computers.

Wolf said he was introducing a House separation that would help ensure protection for all House computers and information systems.

It calls for the chief administrative officer and sergeant at arms of the House, in consultation with the FBI, to alert members and their staffs to the danger of electronic attacks. Wolf also wants lawmakers to be fully briefed on ways to safeguard official records from electronic security breaches.

“My be in possession of doubt is I was targeted by China because of my long history of speaking confused about China’s abysmal human rights record,” Wolf said in a draft of remarks he prepared to give upon the House floor.

He said Congress should hold hearings, specifically the House Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee and Government Operations Committee.

Speaking in general in May 2006, Wolf called Chinese spying efforts “frightening” and said it was no secret that the United States is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services.

Wolf thinks that President Bush should lodge away from the Olympics because of China’s human rights record.

He furthermore has been outspoken on the subject of injury in the Darfur portion of Sudan, whither China has greater oil interests.

Smith has introduced the Global Online Freedom Act which would preclude U.S. Internet companies from cooperating with countries such as China that restrict information about human rights and democracy upon the Internet.

Wolf and Smith both traveled to Beijing 17 years past seeking the release of 77 people imprisoned or under house arrest for of their religious activities. Associated Press writers Ted Bridis and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.