WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn said Wednesday that he did not believe he or anyone should apologize to an activist who went through almost an hour of police questioning about child pornography after she brought a professional photo of a child taking a bath in polluted water to a congressional hearing.

“I’m not going to issue an apology, and I don’t think the staff members involved are going to issue an apology,” said Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican. “I think this woman should consider what type of materials she brings to hearings. Maybe that’s something she wants to consider. That’s for her to think about.”

Maria Gunnoe, a West Virginia mountaintop-removal activist who has garnered awards for speaking out on behalf of southern Appalachia, wanted members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources to see a photo last week of a 5-year-old taking a bath in dirty orange water.



Lamborn is chairman of that subcommittee, which is under the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.

Gunnoe, who has testified at Lam born’s request one other time last fall, said she submitted the photo via e-mail about two hours before the hearing started Friday morning. She believes the photo helps illustrate environmental damage caused by mountaintop-removal coal mining.

U.S. Capitol Police who questioned Gunnoe found no criminal wrongdoing.

Lamborn is in charge of the witnesses and all the proceedings of his committee and said he heard from staffers right before the hearing started that they believed the photo was inappropriate.

He said he decided to pull the photo, though he never saw it and still hasn’t seen it. He says he has no desire to view the photograph, shot by a California-based photojournalist.

“I was going by what staff recommended to me,” he said Wednesday. “They had a serious question about whether this is appropriate or not, and based on that, the police based in any state … will be very cautious and they will want to do due diligence to make sure there isn’t some problem.”

But Lamborn said he was not involved in the Capitol Police’s questioning Gunnoe on whether she was a child pornographer.

“That was an attempted assassination on my character,” Gunnoe said Wednesday. “I work with families of children often, and many of these children love me. I will not let this define my work in any way.”

An apology would certainly help settle that, Gunnoe said.

It isn’t the first time a congressional witness has been censored at a hearing, but it is exceedingly rare, Capitol Hill staffers with decades of experience said Wednesday.

In the mid-1980s, Congress, in attempting to define what was “obscene” music, played songs laced with four-letter words and watched racy music videos during a hearing debating the virtues of requiring record labels to print lyrics for parents.

Last Friday’s Energy and Mineral Resources hearing was about an Environmental Protection Agency decision to revoke a years-old permit to reopen the Spruce Mines in West Virginia.

Lamborn, with other House Republicans, said the decision cripples the creation of jobs. Gunnoe was testifying that coal jobs are up in West Virginia and that the kind of mining involved pollutes the water supply.

Gunnoe said she would welcome the opportunity to go back to members of Congress to talk again. Lamborn, too, said he would invite Gunnoe again to hear her voice on mountaintop-removal mining.

Staff researcher Barbara Hudson contributed to this report.

Allison Sherry: 202-662-8907, asherry@denverpost.com or twitter.com/allisonsherry