ASHINGTON - Political pressure from Vice President Al Gore's deputies was ''one stimulus'' driving a hurried, mistake-prone effort by federal authorities to naturalize about 1 million new citizens in 1996, including thousands of possible criminals, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report issued yesterday.
The three-year investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general's office rejected assertions by Republicans and other critics that the ''Citizenship USA'' program was created specifically to build a ''Clinton voter mill,'' to turn out new citizens more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans.
But the report found evidence that some staff members assigned to Gore's ''reinventing government'' reform team tried to play a role in the citizenship effort because they ''hoped for a political benefit.''
Things became so heated in one meeting between White House and Justice Department immigration officials early in 1996 that a top deputy to Attorney General Janet Reno angrily asked one of Gore's aides to leave after the aide pushed for Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to accelerate the already rapid pace of naturalizations, the investigation found.
The findings, coming from within the Clinton administration, could tarnish Gore's presidential campaign as he struggles to divorce himself from scandals that have dogged the administration.
Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House panel on immigration, promised a congressional hearing.
But Jim Kennedy, a spokesman for the vice president, said that ''after an extensive review, the inspector general's report confirms what we have consistently said about Citizenship USA - namely that it was an effort designed to reduce the backlog of citizenship applications and not to further any inappropriate political ends.''
