The sad joke is, if you read Feynman's account of that committee, it's pretty clear that they were intended to come in, look around, and declare the whole thing an un-preventable accident. Feynman pulled his o-ring stunt because he felt that he HAD TO in order to get the story out.

In this case, it seems like the government labs are providing some honest-to-goodness assistance that hasn't been available from any other source so far.