Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) criticized U.S. Capitol Police for taking three weeks to discover an alleged explosive device in a truck parked on Capitol Hill in February.

In the Subcommittee on Capitol Security’s first-ever public meeting Wednesday, ranking member Lungren raised his concern to Capitol Police Chief Phillip Morse and chairman Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.).

On Feb. 8, members of the Capitol Police bomb squad allegedly discovered a device that consisted of shotgun shells and a container of BBs taped to a canister of gun powder in a truck they say was driven by Michael Gorbey.

Gorbey, 38, was arrested Jan. 18 and charged with carrying a loaded shotgun and manufacturing a weapon of mass destruction, among 12 other charges. The device was not initially found in the truck, parked two blocks from the Russell Senate Office Building, after five members of the bomb squad searched the vehicle.

This is the first time Congress has addressed the delayed discovery of the device.

At the meeting, Capuano said he agreed with Lungren’s concern, but that the matter should be discussed behind closed doors because of the highly sensitive security issues surrounding the situation.

“The incident certainly raises concern and should be dealt with in a manner that is sensitive to security considerations,” said Alison Mills, Capuano’s spokeswoman.

Lungren, who previously served as California’s attorney general and oversaw the state’s law enforcement agencies, said he has been pleased with Capitol Police’s management in the past, but the length of time it took to discover the device raised questions for him.

“I’m not going to micromanage [the Capitol Police department] — that’s not my place,” he said in an interview. “But I need to find out what are the articulated reasons for the bomb squad’s operations, what are their standard operating procedures, how to answer what happened there. Now, maybe one guy screwed up, but I don’t know.

“The fact of the matter is, you’ve got a situation where you have a suspect that’s got weapons on him and he has a vehicle on the campus complex; you have exigent circumstances to search that vehicle,” he said. “You should go all through that vehicle. And yet from what I understand they did what I would consider a cursory search of the vehicle and then moved it to another lot.”

FBI agents who helped transfer the device from Washington, D.C., to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., after it was rendered safe, testified Wednesday at Gorbey’s trial in D.C. Superior Court.

As of press time, FBI bomb unit examiner Daniel Hickey, the prosecution’s expert witness, had not been called to testify on the level of damage the device could have caused. He is expected to do so Monday.

Capitol Police sources said that while most of the components of an explosive device were present in the device, it lacked a detonating mechanism and was thus inoperable.