Brazil's attorney general has rocked his nation with allegations that Washington pays scores of Brazilian officials to spy on their government, including the president, and report directly to U.S intelligence agencies.   Attorney General Luiz Francisco de Souza made the charge Wednesday during a hearing before a committee of the lower house of Brazil's Congress.

De Souza told lawmakers that the spy operation was orchestrated by a group of about 100 Brazilian officials, police officers and specialists trained by Washington.

The spies have submitted reports on the activities of the Office of the President and the executive residence, in addition to tapping the official phone lines of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the current leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"Federal Police intelligence, which should serve national interests, is at the service of the U.S. government. This hurts our dignity and our sovereignty," the attorney general said. Several officers, among them drug-enforcement division chief Getulio Bezerra, have benefited personally from some of the $11.2 million the United States has sent to Brazil between 1999 and 2003, De Souza said.

The funds - which were not included in the national budget, according to De Souza - came from the FBI, the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration and were funneled through the U.S. Embassy in Brazil.

The Federal Police confirmed having received payments periodically and denied any irregularity in management of the funds, claiming they were part of a bilateral agreement to combat international drug trafficking, in place for five years. Judge Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, who headed the country's drug-enforcement office from November 1998 to March 2000 under Cardoso, backed up the attorney general's allegations, adding that he was willing to bring the case of U.S. espionage against the Brazilian government before Congress.

Fanganiello said he could confirm Souza's charges regarding an organized spy ring masterminded by U.S. intelligence agencies. The judge said that on several occasions he had complained to Brazilian authorities about the alleged U.S. spies, and that he stepped down because of pressure by those agents, who were bothered, he said, by his unwillingness to go along with the program.

He recalled how, several days after he was appointed to head the anti-drug office, he asked the Cardoso administration as well as Washington to explain the role of several U.S. Embassy officials in Brasilia whom he suspected were spies.

The judge said he had also requested additional information regarding bilateral cooperation agreements with the United States on combating drug trafficking inside Brazil.

Though he never received the level of assistance or information he considered necessary, Fanganiello said, he was able to determine that several FBI, CIA and DEA agents were carrying out what he viewed as illegal missions in Brazil.

"Many of those operatives did not respect established norms that ensure Brazilian sovereignty, because those agents did not notify Brazilian authorities about anything they were going to do or what they discovered," the judge asserted.

Fanganiello said he had learned that the CIA and DEA were depositing sums of money in the private bank accounts of a number of Brazilian Federal Police officials.

"They tried to justify it by saying that the money was to be used to fund anti-drug actions, but those deposits are illegal," the judge told EFE.

According to Fanganiello, the improper relationship between Brazilian and U.S. agents facilitated the tapping of Cardoso's telephone conversations by the Federal Police at Washington's request in 1998.