WASHINGTON — The State Department said it has crawled out from under the mountain of passport applications that had overwhelmed its offices, and that average processing time has fallen from months to six to eight weeks.

But skeptics say the backlog could return once the agency disbands the special task forces dealing with the problem.

Last week, scores of federal workers who had been posted to Bucharest, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, Seoul and other foreign capitals instead were processing passports in a half-empty office just south of the National Mall in Washington. Two other teams, in New Orleans and Portsmouth, N.H., also have been drafted.

In the Washington office, boxes of passport applications from California, Minnesota, Massachusetts and a handful of other states lined the walls. Workers scanned them into a digital database by hand, eyeballing the handwriting, photos, attached birth and naturalization certificates for signs of fraud before stamping them "approved."

"There's never a lull," said John Crippen, 43, a foreign service officer from Little Rock, Ark., assigned to the task force with his wife before they begin new jobs in Juarez, Mexico.

The task force of 153 processes about 10,000 to 11,000 passports a day, flagging about 1,000 for problems. Another 53 workers are assigned to New Orleans, 63 to Portsmouth and 52 to various other offices. Many of the workers, mostly from the civil and foreign service, have been retrained for eight-week stints here, where they live in hotels or temporary apartments.

But critics, including members of the passport workers' union, say the temporary task forces are an expensive patch that fails to address the need for more experienced passport processing staff.

As of July, the State Department had issued about 14 million passports for the year, up from 12.1 million in the same period last year. Officials expect to issue 23 million next year, 26 million in 2009 after and 30 million in 2010.

New federal rules require that air travelers to nearby countries, including Mexico, have passports, rather than just driver's licenses or birth certificates.

After the rules took effect in January, the processing backlog left travelers waiting months for passports and, in some cases, missing trips. Congress was inundated with complaints, and held a hearing in June to demand solutions. Soon after, the temporary task forces were set up.

New workloads may be ahead. A waiver for fliers who had applied for but not yet received passports expires this month, and land and sea travelers will need passports starting in January.