The FBI agent who stands accused of accessing bureau computers for a notorious Hollywood private eye is no stranger to controversy.

Mark Rossini, 46, was a favorite go-to guy for national security reporters when he worked in the FBI's media relations office. He had come to the job after several years working with the CIA and other intelligence agents at the National Counterterrorism Center, in Virginia.

Tall, handsome and gregarious, Rossini enjoyed schmoozing with reporters over good cabernet and cigars at Les Halles, a French restaurant around the corner from the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.   

Over the past year the recently divorced counterterrorism specialist had also been squiring his raven-haired actress girlfriend, Linda Fiorentino, to the Palm and other top restaurants in Washington and New York.

The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days.

The FBI denied Rossini and Miller permission to participate in the book or the PBS "NOVA" documentary, which is also being written and produced by Bamford, on grounds that the FBI "doesn't want to stir up old conflicts with the CIA," according to multiple reliable sources.

Lots of spook literature these days: Especially noteworthy are two new ones -- two! -- by former CIA operative Gary Berntsen, whose memoir of leading the first agency team into Afghanistan after 9/11 and cornering Osama bin Laden, Jawbreaker,  read like a true-life thriller.  

Now comes The Walk-In (written with novelist Ralph Pezzullo), a fictional thriller involving an Iranian defector that seems awfully close to reality, even as it follows conventional plot lines -- renegade CIA agent saves the world and all that.  Pub date is Aug. 12.