Posted by
ET1 United States Navy on Sunday, November 18, 2007 7:12:16 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Energy Department officials acknowledged
Thursday that they withheld information on an alleged Chinese
spying case from a House subcommittee last fall.
A department intelligence officer said he was told by
the deputy energy secretary not to talk about the case, a charge
the senior agency, official denied.
"We are very upset," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,
chairman of the House Armed Services military procurement
subcommittee. He said the two officials, testifying under oath
in a closed session in October, dodged specific questions about
spying activities at the department's national weapons
laboratories.
"I apologize," said Notra Trulock, the agency's special
adviser for intelligence.
He said he acted at the behest of former Deputy
Secretary Elizabeth Moler, who also testified at the hearing,
when he didn't discuss the investigation into possible Chinese
espionage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Trulock said Moler also edited written testimony he had
prepared for the hearing to delete references; to
counterintelligence operations.
Moler denied editing the testimony and said she only
told Trulock to limit his comments to the subject of the
national labs' foreign visitor program.
She said former Secretary Federico Pena had decided
at the time that because of the particularly sensitive nature of
the case, briefings to Congress should be limited to the House
and Senate intelligence committees. She said that was a common practice and that she had told Trulock to follow that policy.
"With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been more responsive," she said,
It was the second time this week that Trulock and Moler presented conflicting views before a congressional committee.
Monday, Trulock told the Senate Armed Services Committee that in July 1998, Moler prevented him from briefing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the Los Alamos case on grounds that the committee was out to harm the administration's China policy.
Moler strongly denied that she had blocked the briefing or was trying to cover up the case to protect the administration. "Those accusations are false," she repeated Thursday.