Ret. Navy Admiral to

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Harold W. Gehman Jr., the retired Navy admiral who helped lead the Pentagon (news – web sites)’s inquiry into the USS Cole (news – web sites) bombing, will head a special government commission investigating the space shuttle Columbia accident, NASA (news – web sites)’s chief said Sunday.

Gehman’s mission will be to sift through all the facts to determine what went wrong on the shuttle, space agency administrator Sean O’Keefe said.

The commission will not emphasize “any pet theory or other approach” but will look into every aspect of the doomed flight that broke up over Texas on Saturday, O’Keefe said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Officials said that the debris being collected from far flung areas of Texas and Louisiana are being trucked to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for inspection and analysis.

A team of 20 engineering experts from the United Space Alliance, a key contractor for NASA’s shuttle program, is being sent to the base to examine the debris. Another 50-man team is on standby, officials said.

Though FBI (news – web sites) agents are assisting in the recovery of human remains and fuselage, senior law enforcement officials reiterated Sunday there was no evidence of foul play and that the investigative focus was on a mechanical or structural problems.

O’Keefe said Gehman is “well versed in understanding exactly how to look about the forensics in these cases and coming up with the causal effects of what could occur,” O’Keefe told ABC’s “This Week.”

O’Keefe described the commission as “an independent objective board” and said Gehman would be arriving in Shreveport, La., with a team on Sunday afternoon.

“We’re going to find out what led to this, retrace all the events … and leave absolutely no stone unturned in that process,” O’Keefe said.

On Saturday, O’Keefe said the independent panel would include experts from the Air Force and Navy —which had five of the seven Columbia crew members — while officials from the Transportation Department and other federal agencies would study the accident.

In addition to the Gehman commission, NASA will conduct its own investigation, as will the House Science Committee, whose chairman is Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. His committee oversees NASA.

“The NASA investigation will focus more on the technical aspects,” Boehlert told ABC. “We have to be concerned about the policy aspects and what is the future of human space fligh