Lieberman says administration missed biological lab deadline

The Bush administration has missed a deadline to certify more than 500 research laboratories that use anthrax and other dangerous biological agents, partly because required background checks on thousands of employees are not finished, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said Wednesday.

A law passed last year set new safeguards on research involving potential bioterrorism agents, including that labs handling certain agents be certified to ensure they meet security requirements. The deadline for certification was Wednesday.

Lieberman, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said that as of Nov. 3, none of the 513 labs awaiting certification had actually gotten it, partly because the FBI still has 3,600 background checks on workers to complete, the Associated Press reported.

Lieberman called the delay particularly striking because the government received hundreds fewer applications from research labs than it had anticipated.

Last week, the administration "changed the rules" to allow labs that have submitted all the required paperwork to continue working under provisional certification, Lieberman said in a letter Wednesday to three government agencies in which he demanded an explanation for the delay.

Wednesday's deadline was not set in stone and it is taking extra time partly to ensure that each lab under review has met all the requirements, said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is overseeing much of the certification.

"I don't see it so much as a delay as just to make sure we're as thorough as possible," he said.

He could not provide specific numbers of provisionally certified labs or say if any had been denied certification.