A House panel is seeking answers from the State Department on whether U.S. embassy officials in Albania were involved in helping an indicted weapons dealer conceal the Chinese origin of ammunition sent to Afghanistan.

In an interview with staff of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, an embassy official said the ambassador met with the Albanian defense minister to discuss the issue after The New York Times asked to visit a site at which the ammunitions were repackaged to conceal their origin.

At the time, the Albanian official decided to remove all incriminating evidence from the repackaging site, according to Maj. Larry Harrison, the embassy staffer who discussed the issue with the committee. The U.S. ambassador to Albania “agreed that this would alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing,” Harrison told the panel.

“Moreover, it appears that embassy officials sought to keep this information from the committee,” Waxman said in his letter to Rice.

The contractor who sold the ammunition was indicted last week and was suspended earlier this year from future contracting with the government in March. It is illegal to acquire ammunition from China.

“The information obtained by the Committee raises serious issues. If the information is accurate, it appears that senior U.S. embassy officials in Albania approved of the efforts of the Albanian Defense Minister to conceal evidence of illegal shipments of Chinese ammunition that are now the subject of a criminal indictment,” Waxman said. “It also appears that information about the incident was withheld from the Committee. It is hard to understand what rationale would justify these actions.”

Waxman demanded to interview U.S. Ambassador to Albania John Withers and other embassy officials regarding the matter and also called on the State Department to hand over documents related to the issue.