The U.S. Secret Service requested racial information from journalists attending a reception before last weeks' White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Reporters said they were offended that after furnishing the customary information -- name, date of birth and Social Security number -- they were also asked for racial information for those scheduled to attend.

The Secret Service said that it has been routine for many years to request such information of people who will be near the president, and that the information allows for quicker and more accurate searches of criminal databases. But a White House official from the Clinton administration told the Washington Post thatrace was not a field in the form it used to clear visitors into the executive mansion.

"It's offensive on the face of it," Edwin Chen, a Los Angeles Times White House reporter who is secretary of the correspondents' association, told the Post. "Why do they need to have race?"

Knight Ridder reporter Ron Hutcheson, the association's president, told the Post. "I just don't understand the need for it. There may be one, but I don't know what it is.

This isn't an isolated event.

-- In August, the Arizona Daily Star complained last year after a Bush-Cheney campaign official, on Secret Service instruction, called to ask for a photographer's race before she was allowed to photograph Vice President Cheney (read on