Congressional hearings began this week into charges that the University of California's laboratory management system is steeped in a culture of corruption and cover-up that has cost taxpayers millions.

Los Alamos National Laboratory was the focus of attention for an oversight subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Wednesday. But Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is also being investigated by the FBI and Department of Energy. The probes come as UC is vying for federal dollars to build and run a new national bioterrorism research facility.

Whistleblowers said Wednesday that university officials engaged in a massive cover-up of widespread theft and fraud at the labs, and that the wrongdoing and cover-ups continue to this day.

At Los Alamos, one employee attempted to buy a Mustang with her lab-issued credit card; another got cash advances at a casino. Taxpayers paid for purchases such as hundreds of pairs of binoculars, costing as much as $3,000 each; while 300 to 400 computers went missing. All of it escaped the attention of UC, which has held multi-billion dollar contracts to manage the labs for 60 years.

This week's hearing is not the first time UC has been called on the carpet about laboratory mismanagement. Two featured whistleblowers were security executives who testified that they thought they had been hired last year to help with a clean-up campaign that followed earlier hearings, but instead found out that they were supposed to lend a hand with the cover-up.

"Your main job is to protect the lab, its image, its PR and ultimately to protect the contract," Steve Doran said he was told when he pushed UC employees to cooperate with FBI investigators. A lab security investigator turned whistleblower, he claims he was fired in retaliation for refusing to use his good relations with federal agents to thwart the probes.

UC has replaced a few top managers and is negotiating reassignment and pay cuts with some others. Gregory Friedman, inspector general of the Department of Energy (DOE), told lawmakers that unless it can be shown top management at the lab was aware of the thefts at Los Alamos, it will fall to the taxpayers to foot the bill.

Bruce Darling, UC interim vice president for laboratory management, apologized to the committee for what he termed "business practice failures."

While the hearing's focus was on Los Alamos, lawmakers also had questions about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where life scientists work alongside physicists to develop devices such as electronic "sniffers" to detect biological warfare agents.

Los Alamos has abandoned a so-called "loyalty oath," a requirement that auditors swear allegiance to the university, Darling said. Under questioning, he said he did not know whether Livermore's auditors were likewise asked to serve the university's interests before all others. If they were, he said, the practice would stop.

Doran reeled off a list of names of people he said had stymied his work and the FBI probe, and said little had changed, despite the long-running scandal.

"All but one of these people still remain in positions of authority and are working actively to conceal evidence," he said.

Under pressure from the committee, UC rehired Doran to serve as consultant, along with former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Glenn A. Walp, also a whistleblower.

Problems at Lawrence Livermore have also spawned a crop of whistleblowers, particularly among security employees. Mathew Zipoli, one of several whistleblowers fired after reporting security concerns at Livermore, was reinstated in recent weeks, said Tom Carpenter, West Coast director for the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group that aids and advises whistleblowers. But another, Charles Quinones, has been dispatched to the Gulf for military service, said Carpenter.

"The UC labs have made it a policy and a long-standing practice to retaliate against whistleblowers to demonstrate to other employees the necessity of keeping their mouths shut," Carpenter told The Scientist.

UC has raised questions about the accuracy of the information coming from whistleblowers, and denies retaliatory firings.