Members of a House investigations subcommittee grilled two NASA lawyers Thursday about their roles in destroying videotapes related to accusations of impropriety against the agency’s inspector general, Robert W. Cobb.

NASA General Counsel Michael Wholley and Paul Morrell, the chief of staff for NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, were questioned about the destruction of DVD recordings of their April meeting with the inspector general’s staff.

At the time of the meeting, a federal oversight board had recently concluded an investigation into allegations that Cobb quashed inquiries about safety and punished whistleblowers to protect the space agency’s reputation. In response to the investigation’s findings, which have not been made public, NASA sent Cobb to managerial training, causing some lawmakers in the House and Senate to seek his resignation.

The April meeting was called to give the inspector general’s staff an opportunity to discuss with Griffin, Cobb and others the results of the investigation and the actions taken against Cobb.

“Mr. Wholley made a conscious decision to destroy the DVDs” even though the two lawyers “knew that the Cobb matter was a subject of interest by the oversight committees” and “knew the DVD of the meeting would be subject to disclosure,” said Brad Miller, D-N.C., the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. “It is impossible not to conclude the worst from that conduct.”

Wholley said the meeting was intended to be an internal matter and that there were explicit instructions not to record it. As a result, Wholley said he destroyed all copies of the recordings himself so they would not be considered “government records” subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

“I did not believe there was any reason for these copies to exist and become filed and become federal records” that could be requested under FOIA, Wholley said. “I did not consider fully the political aspects of this. Nobody regrets more that I can’t produce that particular DVD.”

Subcommittee ranking Republican F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin said he will ask the Justice Department to investigate the destruction of the DVDs, which he argued are government property since they were made with federal resources.

Sensenbrenner said some people at the April meeting suggested that the independence of the inspector general’s office was undermined because Cobb himself appeared there with Griffin.

“Congress would have benefited from reviewing a tape of that meeting,” Sensenbrenner said. “It is therefore unfortunate that these tapes were destroyed.”

Miller said his subcommittee will hold a series of hearings into the matter.