Washington ? A federal judge on Friday rejected the Bush administration’s latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors and declared that the government illegally deleted Secret Service computer records.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that the deletions took place before October 2004 when the Secret Service transferred large numbers of entry and exit logs to the White House and then deleted copies of them.

The deletions ceased after the archivist to the United States instructed the Secret Service to stop the practice and after various private organizations went to court in an effort to gain access to the logs, according to papers filed in the case.

The deletions go back at least as far as 2001, the government’s papers added, the year President George W. Bush took office.