WASHINGTON—The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to hold a hearing later this month concerning financial disclosure advice the Federal Reserve Bank of New York gave to American International Group Inc. during the height of the financial crisis, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Ed Towns, D-N.Y., announced Friday.

“More than one year after the first federal bailout of AIG, the American people continue to question where their tax dollars were really sent when the government rescued this company,” Rep. Towns said in a statement. “I continue to believe that a comprehensive review of the rise and fall of AIG, and the involvement of counterparties, can provide a useful vehicle to understanding how inadequate regulations, cheap money, risky business deals and, in some instances, corruption led to the current economic crisis.”

“In question are e-mail exchanges that emerged this week between lawyers at FRBNY and AIG which indicate that AIG was advised to withhold key details from the public about the terms of the insurer’s federal bailout,” said the committee in the statement announcing the hearing, which is slated to occur sometime during the week of Jan. 18.

According the announcement, the committee will ask Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who served as president of the FRBNY when the government began its financial assistance to AIG in 2008, and Thomas Baxter, who has served as general counsel and executive vp of the legal group at the FRBNY since 1995, to testify.

Meanwhile, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee wrote a letter to that committee’s chairman—Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.—asking for a similar hearing.

“Unfortunately, disclosure and transparency have been sorely lacking when it comes to congressional and public review of the circumstances surrounding AIG’s bailout,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., in a letter dated Jan. 7. “For months, the public was prevented from knowing the names of AIG’s counterparties and the extent to which AIG fulfilled its obligations to those firms. We learned today that it was the New York Fed that stepped in to prevent public disclosure of this information by deleting the counterparty names and payment information from AIG’s draft regulatory filing. This calculated attempt to withhold important information from the public and market participants runs counter to the principles of our capital markets,” he wrote.

“There is no more urgent business before the committee, and this hearing should be given the highest priority,” wrote Rep. Bachus.