PHOENIX - Gov. Janet Napolitano is escalating her war of words with federal officials over efforts to recruit Border Patrol officers to go to Iraq, accusing the Bush administration ofputting that country's national interests ahead of the United States.

In a new letter Tuesday, Napolitano and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson chided Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for awarding a contract to DynCorp International. That firm is trying to find 120 people with border patrol experience to help train Iraqis to guard their own frontier.

What concerns the governors is that some of those people are being recruited from our own Border Patrol "by tax-free salaries and exorbitant bonuses that dwarf the current compensation they receive from a sister federal agency.''

DynCorp is offering more than $134,000 a year plus a $25,000 bonus. By contrast, Border Patrol officers make between $35,000 and $55,000.

DynCorp officials acknowledged that seven of the first 30 people they recruited and sent overseas actually were active Border Patrol officers at the time.

"This is a short-sighted and misguided prioritization that has serious safety implications for U.S. citizens,'' the governors wrote.

"This administration needs to decide whose security is more important, America's or Iraq's,'' the pair continued. "We believeAmerica comes first.''

Officials at the State Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

President Bush announced last year plans to add an additional 6,000 Border Patrol agents to the current 12,000. At the same time he placed the same number of National Guard troops along the border on a temporary basis - and only in a support role - while the agents were hired and trained.

The 2,400 Guard soldiers in Arizona is going to be cut in half by the end of September, though the number of new agents is just a fraction of what was promised.

Napolitano and Richardson sent a similar letter more than a week ago to the president about the DynCorp contract. There has been no reply.

And Napolitano, separately, has complained in writing to Ralph Basham, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, about a program by that agency which asks active officers to volunteer for assignment in Iraq, also to train officers there. The department provides a 70 percent bonus plus extensive overtime pay.

That letter, too, has yet to get a response. But Russ Knocke, press secretary to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, has said having Border Patrol help out in Iraq is consistent with his agency's mission to protect the country.

He said Chertoff believes "it is far better to be fighting the enemy overseas than it is to be fighting them on our soil.''