Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin has complied with a House Energy & Commerce Committee request for information on his management of the FCC by delivering the committee 40 boxes of files, a committee official confirmed.

Democratic and Republican leaders made the request for the records in March in a letter to Mr. Martin as part of the committee's oversight and investigations panel inquiry into the operation of the FCC.

According to the letter, the probe was incited by complaints from current and former FCC employees and other sources. Those complaints allege that Mr. Martin’s oversight of the FCC has resulted in a secretive agency at which staffers aren’t allowed to talk to each other or sometimes to the commissioners, commission orders or potential agenda items get delayed without explanation and reports sometimes seem to get written or rewritten to meet certain objectives.

The panel is headed by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. An aide said the congressman would not comment on the probe.

“The subcommittee’s staff is continuing to review documents provided by the FCC as part of the ongoing investigation into the management of the agency,” the aide said.

An FCC spokesman also declined comment.

The committee, which was originally expected to hold a hearing on the results of its investigation in the spring, now is expected to hold one this fall.

Congressmen previously have been critical of Mr. Martin, with some of them upset about the FCC’s media-ownership rules changes and others unhappy with Mr. Martin’s efforts to get cable operators to offer channels a la carte.

The latest probe goes deeper, however.

In March Mr. Stupak and House Energy Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and their GOP counterparts on the committee, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., and ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote Mr. Martin demanding extensive information on how the FCC operates.

At the time the committee said it was probing information “from current and former FCC employees and other sources, which we have reason to believe is credible” about management practices “that may adversely affect the commission’s ability to discharge its statutory duties.”

The March letter requested details of delays in formally issuing commission orders, putting issues up for consideration among commissioners and directives limiting FCC employees’ ability to communicate with employees of other agencies.

It also asked about job reassignments made to higher-level agency officials and about discussions held with contractors prior to the FCC undertaking studies used in developing new media-ownership rules.

In addition, it sought information on how a decision was made about which commissioner would represent the agency at the World Radiocommunications Conference in Geneva.

Finally it asked about the development of a report suggesting that cable concentration warranted additional FCC regulation and whether the FCC’s staff was barred from providing information gathered to other FCC commissioners.