The Republican chairmen of the two House committees with NASA oversight responsibility have charged publicly that senior leadership at the space agency may have been involved in the leak of classified information to China and other nations, and that a federal criminal probe into the charges has been dropped under “political pressure.”
The charges were raised Feb. 8 in letters to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, jointly signed by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) who chair the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, respectively.
“We have been informed of an investigation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the NASA Office of the Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies have been working on since 2009 relating to the alleged illegal transfer of ITAR-controlled technology by individuals at the NASA Ames Research Center,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. “It is our understanding that this illegal technology transfer may have involved classified Defense Department weapons system technology to foreign countries, including China, potentially with the tacit or direct approval of the center’s leadership.”
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