Albuquerque, N.M. ? Another congressional committee has asked for federal oversight at Los Alamos National Laboratory, while critics questioned a newly released audit.

The House Committee on Science has asked the General Accounting Office to review the laboratory’s credit-card program, inventory controls and security systems.

“We ask that you undertake a thorough review of the management systems at LANL as they pertain to purchase-order or credit-card abuses, property loss and, most importantly, facility security,” committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert, R-N.Y., and ranking member Ralph M. Hall, D-Tex., wrote in a Dec. 13 letter to GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker.

“The review should examine management practices at all levels at least since the start of the current director’s tenure at LANL.”

The lab is facing mounting scrutiny over allegations of purchase-card abuse, missing lab equipment and cover-up by officials.

“We are particularly interested in how management reacts and has reacted to reports of missing property that may have security implications,” Boehlert and Hall wrote.

The Science Committee letter added that there had been reports of hundreds of computers missing from LANL. One former investigator, Glenn Walp, has said many of the computers were brand new.

The FBI, Energy Department Inspector General, House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Finance Committee are all investigating allegations of purchase-card fraud, theft and cover-up at the lab.

A team of Energy Committee investigators was in Los Alamos this week interviewing current and former laboratory employees.

Committee spokesman Ken Johnson said the team left late Thursday. He would not comment on the audit report released last week by the lab.

The audit of Los Alamos’ purchase-card program was commissioned by lab officials after potentially fraudulent purchases by lab employees were discovered this year.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers audit team headed by former Energy Department Inspector General John Layton found $3.78 million of purchases in accounts that had not been reconciled. It also reported $790,000 in questionable transactions and $316,000 in disputed charges that had not been credited by the bank.