WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s independent inspector general on Monday criticized a former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis K. Burke, for leaking to Fox News a document in June 2011 about a federal agent who was raising alarms about the gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. He called the prosecutor’s actions “particularly egregious” misconduct that was “wholly unbefitting a U.S. attorney.”

The 21-page report, by the office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz, filled in new details about the reaction of the Phoenix prosecutor’s office to the furor over a botched investigation into a gun-smuggling network. Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed hundreds of weapons to reach criminal hands.

Mr. Burke, who resigned in August 2011, was the United States attorney in Arizona at the time of the investigation, which ran from late 2009 to early 2011. He admitted shortly before his resignation that he had been the source for a document obtained by Fox News about the A.T.F. agent, John Dodson, who helped disclose risky tactics used in the case.