“Career civil servants” have been coming out of the woodwork with reports of lax security practices at NASA since Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) raised the issue publicly, and the powerful committee chairman may call some of the whistleblowers to testify publicly about their charges.
Wolf cited Obama administration documents in warning that a “sustained attack” on U.S. trade and national security secrets by China and “other nations of concern” warrants more rigorous efforts to protect secrets than NASA management has shown. “It is a problem, and I’m not going to stand by,” Wolf said during a March 13 hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, science, justice and related agencies, which he chairs. “I’m going to pursue this thing.”
Wolf’s only witness at the Wednesday hearing — NASA Inspector General Paul Martin — testified that his office shares many of Wolf’s concerns about protecting the agency’s secrets, and argued that policies and laws are in place to do so. The problem, he said, is in “how well they’re executed on a day-to-day basis.”
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