In the wake of Central Intelligence Agency briefings Thursday on connections between North Korean and Syrian nuclear programs, the Bush administration is seeking to exempt North Korea from the so-called Glenn Amendment, which prohibits many U.S. dealings with state sponsors of terror.

Both Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., support loosening the restrictions, which they say would allow U.S. equipment to go toward taking apart North Korea’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and disposing of its radioactive material.

Biden said U.S. confirmation that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor, destroyed by Israeli bombs in September, underscored the need to continue talks with the country and pursue disarmament.

“To that end, Congress should swiftly enact legislation allowing the president to waive the Glenn Amendment restrictions that will otherwise prevent the United States from carrying out future nuclear dismantlement operations in North Korea or verifying North Korean compliance,” Biden said in a statement.

With that support, the exemption is likely to be included in the upcoming supplemental spending bill, a congressional aide said. The aide stressed that it would not represent a reward for the North Korean regime.

“This is just to allow the U.S. agencies to spend the money in North Korea to disable nuclear facilities,” the aide said. Members said the administration did not make any particular request of Congress in the briefings.

Also next week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will mark up a bill to authorize $16 million through 2012 for human rights and democracy programs in North Korea. The measure (HR 5834) calls human rights conditions there “deplorable.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers of both parties questioned the timing and intent of the intelligence briefings to the House and Senate Intelligence, Armed Services and foreign policy committees. Briefers included CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

“I think many people believe that we were used today by the administration ... not because they felt they had to inform Congress because it was their legal obligation to do that, but because they had other agendas in mind,” Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., ranking Republican on the House Intelligence panel, said after the briefing.

Some lawmakers said the briefings allowed the administration to make its case about the importance of a deal now being negotiated with North Korea and five other countries. The administration will need congressional cooperation to enact the deal; terms are likely to include lifting both sanctions and an arms embargo and removing the country from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But lawmakers were furious over the way the administration handled the issue.

“It will be much harder for them to go through the Congress and get these agreements approved because they have really damaged the relationship between Congress and the administration,” Hoekstra said.

“This is the selective control of information that led us into the war in Iraq,” said Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y. “And then we don’t get all of the information at the briefings that are even in the newspaper reports, which sometimes are a lot more accurate and more comprehensive.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoed that criticism.

“The timing of it is interesting,’’ the Speaker told reporters. “It’s another example of how members of Congress, especially on committees of jurisdiction, should have been briefed before.’’

“There are tensions that exist between the executive branches and the legislative branches on a range of issues in regards to who should know what when,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded.

Nonetheless, the briefing was a victory of sorts for the many lawmakers who had sought it since the September bombing. Revealing this information, they argued, would keep North Korea from getting off easy.

“This was withholding information from Congress in order to shape a policy,” said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who also wrote a strongly worded letter to key House appropriators laying out the case against North Korea.

Biden, Berman and Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the revelations underscore the need for more talks.

“It reinforced my feelings that the administration wasted six or seven years” without talking to North Korea, Levin said of the briefing. “The administration apparently is going to do something they criticized the Clinton administration for doing: talking to the North Koreans.”

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said he thought the administration was acting properly. “I think the administration took appropriate actions at the time they were required to do it,’’ he said.

Edward Epstein contributed to this story.

First posted April 24, 2008 2:45 p.m.