The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee called for a criminal inquiry into whether operators of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah “willfully misled” mine safety officials.

A committee investigation found that false reporting of mine conditions and insufficient oversight led to the August 2007 accident that left nine miners dead.

Chairman George Miller, D-­Calif., submitted a complaint to the Justice Department singling out mine manager Laine W. Adair.

The investigation found that Adair may have intentionally downplayed pre-existing problems with the mine in order to get U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) approval for plans to conduct a retreat mining operation in the south barrier of the site, where the collapse later occurred.

According to the report, another section of the Crandall Canyon mine had ruptured in March 2007, only two months before mine company UtahAmerican Energy submitted roof control plans to the MSHA. That explosion, or “bump” in miners’ terms, likely would have caused damage that went unreported, the committee report found, letting the MSHA approve the plans a month later.

“The plan should have never been submitted by the mine operator and should have never been approved by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration,” Miller said.

An attorney for Adair called the allegations “deeply disappointing and utterly unjustified.”

Adair, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refused to give a deposition for the committee’s report.

Miller levied criticism at the MSHA for not vetting the claims of the mining company thoroughly enough to discover discrepancies that Allyn Davis, regional director for the MSHA, identified in a deposition for the committee report.

“The agency also needs to do its job,” Miller said. “MSHA must not sit on their hands and wait for mine operators to bring information to them.”

The MSHA refused to comment on the substance of the committee report, calling Miller’s review “premature” and admonishing legislators to wait until the MSHA releases its own accident investigation in June to pass final judgment on what caused the mining tragedy.

“We will not have a complete picture of what went wrong at Crandall Canyon until the Mine Safety and Health Administration completes its investigation,” said the committee’s ranking Republican, Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California.

The requirement that the MSHA undertake a significant review of all retreat mining plans is one of several provisions in a bill (HR 2768) the House passed in January. But the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which concluded its own investigation into the accident in March and has also urged the Justice Department to conduct a criminal probe into its circumstances, has yet to take up the measure. The White House has threatened a veto of the bill.

Miller said the MSHA, in its present incarnation, likely would be unable to meet the demands of the bill, saying it needs more investigators and better technology in order to be able to meet its responsibilities.

“Our consultants used widely used computer modeling [to investigate the accident] that it seems MSHA had no capacity to run or even understand,” Miller said. “The rising price of energy is driving us deeper into mines, and I think it requires that MSHA get current.”

The Bush administration lowered its request for MSHA funding slightly in its fiscal 2009 budget, from the current $334 million to $332 million. Within the budget is a request that $11 million be used to hire additional mine safety enforcement personnel.