Berkley questions contract award

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003 | 11:22 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., today questioned why an agency within the Department of Energy has given a $200 million contract to an engineering firm that is part of a controversy involving a fired department whistle-blower.

Berkley suspects that the former employee, Jim Mattimoe, was fired from a quality assurance job with the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain program because the department didn't like his criticism of the program. Mattimoe was fired by his firm, the Energy Department contractor Navarro Research and Engineering, after he questioned methods used to address concerns raised internally about Yucca.

The Department of Labor later ruled Mattimoe was unfairly dismissed.

Now Berkley is irked that Navarro has been given more lucrative work with the department for another job within the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages work at the Nevada Test Site.

The hiring of Navarro "leads to the appearance that either Navarro was rewarded for silencing (Mattimoe's) concerns" about Yucca, or that the NNSA didn't adequately research Navarro's past, Berkley wrote in a sharply worded letter today to NNSA chief Linton Brooks.