The decision by state ethics officials to ask the district attorney of Albany County, David Soares, to investigate perjury allegations against a former top aide to Governor Spitzer is coming under increasing scrutiny in Albany political circles.

Under speculation is whether the perjury referral made by the Commission on Public Integrity was influenced by a motive to protect Mr. Spitzer.

The commission is conducting a probe into allegations that the governor’s office may have committed ethical violations by involving the state police in an alleged attempt to discredit the Republican Senate leader, Joseph Bruno.

Some Republicans and legal experts are wondering if the commission’s request that Mr. Soares examine alleged inconsistencies in sworn statements by the governor’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, was an attempt to bury potentially damaging information contained in the aide’s testimony to the ethics body.

If the commission finds fault with the Spitzer administration, it is obligated to make public a notice of reasonable cause. It has a fair amount of flexibility in determining whether to release testimony it collects in the course of an investigation that turns up wrongdoing.

When it completes its probe, the commission will likely face pressure from Senate Republicans to make public the testimony of Mr. Dopp and other administration officials. For Republicans, a critical issue is whether the testimony contradicts Mr. Spitzer’s public assertions that he had no knowledge of the special measures taken by the police to gather Mr. Bruno’s travel records.

While witnesses who receive subpoenas from prosecutors are not under the same secrecy obligations imposed on the grand jury processes, the commission could cite the confidentiality of grand jury proceedings as a justification for concealing Mr. Dopp’s testimony.

A similar tactic is frequently employed by defense attorneys who try to protect their clients by encouraging prosecutors to subpoena damaging documents as a way to shield them from the public eye.

At times, “people who hand things over to the district attorney’s office in response to a grand jury subpoena will cite the secrecy of the grand jury processes that don’t necessarily bind them,” a former state prosecutor in Manhattan, Thomas Curran, who is now with Ganfer & Shore LLP, said.

A spokesman for the commission denied that political motive was involved in the referral.

The district attorney’s office has opened an inquiry into allegations that Mr. Dopp’s sworn testimony before the commission didn’t match the content of a sworn statement he made earlier to the attorney general’s office, which conducted its own probe of the administration and found no illegal wrongdoing.

Sources say Mr. Soares, who may have empanelled a grand jury in the matter, is, in part, focusing on a portion of a two-paragraph July 22 statement by Mr. Dopp in which he said: “I now recognize that any request for State Police records relating to those travels should have been handled through other channels, and I regret any appearance of impropriety that was created by the manner in which this information was sought and obtained.”

Mr. Dopp is alleged to have contradicted that statement by later telling ethics officials that he didn’t see anything improper with the way in which he gathered the records and released them to the press, sources said.

Mr. Dopp resigned as the governor’s communications director following a July report by the attorney general’s office that suggested Mr. Dopp misled reporters about his alleged attempt to gather records from the state police concerning Mr. Bruno’s use of police escorts during fund-raising trips to New York City. He now works at a lobbying firm in Albany.

The district attorney’s office of Albany subsequently conducted a criminal probe and concluded that the administration had not violated any laws.

Administration officials declined to say if Mr. Spitzer has testified before the commission.