DOE Won't Let Congress Depose Lawyer in Solyndra Scandal

The Department of Energy is refusing to let staff members including Susan Richardson, chief counsel of the DOE Loan Programs Office to testify before Congress. Having just finished writing a post on operation Fast and Furious, I wonder if this administration is ever candid about anything. Susan Richardson is a lawyer who wrote the legal opinion essentially giving DOE the prerogative to subordinate it's loan to that of George Kaiser and the Kaiser Foundation. Treasury had raised concerns that subordination was proscribed and urged DOE to have DOJ offer a legal opinion which DOE declined to do. Ms Richardson is a lawyer who offered a legal opinion which not many people outside her coterie at DOE share but she is not accused of any improper conduct. So why not let her testify? Is this mere spite or does the administration hope to run out the clock on Solyndra, Light Squared, and Fast and Furious, and hope to keep the scandals under wraps until it can pull off a miraculous reelection?