DENVER -- 7NEWS has learned that information in an attack ad against gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter may have been illegally leaked to the Bob Beauprez campaign and that the source is Cory Voorhis, a federal agent working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Voorhis accessed a federal crime database and may have illegally passed confidential law enforcement information to the Beauprez campaign.

Voorhis is a registered Republican who lives in Morrison, according to a government source who was briefed on the investigation. Sources are remaining anonymous because of an ongoing FBI investigation into how the information was leaked to the Beauprez campaign.

Beauprez held a news conference Friday morning, praising the source as a hero and defending the controversial ad.

"Several months ago we were approached by a source in federal law enforcement that had seen firsthand Bill Ritter's despicable policy of purposely putting deportable criminal aliens right back into our communities only to commit crimes again. Our source saw a terrible wrong that needed to be made right and he blew the whistle," Beauprez said.

"Our source, in my opinion, performed a great act of courage and public service in bringing this story to the public domain," Beauprez said. "This guy in law enforcement saw that the law wasn't being enforced."

Beauprez would not publicly confirm the identity of the source because he said he didn't want to destroy a good, decent, career law enforcement officer and he said it would compromise the ongoing law enforcement investigation.

"I would not throw a good and decent man to the wolves just to gain personal, political advantage or satisfy Bill Ritter's desire for retaliation, retribution or his election," Beauprez said.

He praised the source as being courageous for stepping forward and for performing the "greater good by telling the public what they need to know."

He made no apologies for the TV commercial and how it was put together, saying it is accurate.

"I think the public has the right to know that Bill Ritter put a heroin trafficker back on the street who went on to be arrested for the sexual abuse of a child. Bill Ritter has never denied that he did this," Beauprez said. "Now Mr. Ritter has embarked on a witch hunt, demanding that my campaign release the name of our source. Instead of explaining why it is that Bill Ritter put dangerous criminal aliens back into our community when they should have been deported, he wants to destroy the life and the career of a good man who blew the whistle -- a conscientious member of law enforcement who exposed the reckless policy embraced by Bill Ritter."

Ritter's campaign responded by reminding voters that whatever the motive, whatever the purpose, a law may have been broken.

"We should not have political campaigns and negative attack ads that source information from an illegal place," Ritter said Thursday, after Beuprez's news conference. "We're trying to elevate the public's trust in our abilities to lead, our abilities to govern. The way to do is not to utilize information that was illegally obtained and then hide your source and then turn around and call a lawbreaker a whistle blower."

Ritter's camp has already released an ad about the federal investigation, accusing Beauprez of dodging responsibility. The announcer in the Ritter ad says, "Congressman Bob Beauprez says, 'I want you to hold me accountable.' Now Beauprez's campaign is under federal criminal investigation for illegally using an FBI database."

The ad has already hit the airwaves.

Beauprez said Thursday that he is standing by the man who tipped them off but does not know him personally.

"I never met the man. I've never talked to the man," Beauprez said. "We did not ask that any law be violated, certainly. We had every reason to believe that this was legal information, information that was in the public domain because he said, 'Look here.' And we looked and verified the accuracy of that information."

When asked if Voorhis broke the law, would Beauprez still consider him a hero, Beuprez responded, "I think he did the right thing."

Beauprez said that his campaign is cooperating fully with law enforcement officers and providing everything they know to investigators, including the name of the source.

The campaign ad in question attacks Ritter as being soft on crime, saying that an illegal immigrant had been let off easy by the former district attorney only to commit serious crimes in California. The man used different identities for the Colorado case and the California case, and Ritter said the only way to link the cases was to illegally access a crime database for political purposes.

He said that Beauprez is trying to distort his record as district attorney and said prosecutors make plea-bargain deals all the time and some of them backfire.

The Beauprez campaign maintains that it did nothing illegal. Sources close to the investigation tell 7NEWS that Voorhis approached campaign manager John Marshall with the information because "the agent was so upset with Ritter about this case and other cases and that (the agent) was familiar with (the cases) in the normal course of his job."

The federal agent gave the Beauprez campaign specific identification, including names, aliases, and date of births that matched up with the illegal immigrant that Ritter had plea bargained in Colorado three and a half years ago. The agent told Marshall specifically what cases to examine in California and Oregon.

So the Beauprez campaign sent a researcher to the courthouse in San Francisco and got a printout of the case in question -- complete with the FBI number the federal agent had given the campaign.

Marshall confirmed it was indeed a federal law enforcement agent who approached the campaign unsolicited. He declined to confirm the name of the agent.

"The congressman did not call up and ask for information," Marshall said. "A source in federal law enforcement came to us, not vice versa. The congressman has not spoken to the source, the source came to me."

Marshall reiterated that the campaign went to public records to confirm the information. He said he thought the information given by the agent to him was lawful, credible and accurate.

"Never did we think it was obtained by any illegal activity," Marshall said.

So far, neither Marshall nor any campaign staff have been interviewed by the FBI.

The question is: did the Beauprez campaign know, or should it have known, that the information leading them to an explosive immigration case could have been obtained illegally?

Using the federal criminal database for any purpose besides law enforcement is punishable by fines, and up to a year in prison.

Beauprez, who represents the 7th Congressional District in the Denver suburbs, has trailed Ritter in recent polls on the race to succeed GOP Gov. Bill Owens, who cannot run again because of term limits.

The CBI launched its probe after Ritter said his campaign could not verify information in an attack ad aired by Beauprez through public records, raising the possibility that the information was illegally obtained from a federal database.

The CBI has said the information came from the National Crime Information Center, a federal database available only to law-enforcement officials. The CBI then asked the FBI to join the criminal probe.

Beauprez's attack ad says Ritter agreed to a plea bargain with a suspected illegal immigrant and that the suspect was not deported. The suspect was later arrested in California on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor, the ad says, questioning Ritter's judgment as district attorney.

Reporters found that the person arrested in Colorado was listed under a different name and date of birth than the man arrested in California, according to the Ritter campaign. When questioned, the Beauprez campaign said it was the same person because federal criminal databases carried the same FBI numbers in both cases.