WASHINGTON - A senior officer with the nation's spy satellite agency is being investigated over criminal allegations related to contracting even as the agency's No. 2 official is accused of trying to illegally shield the subordinate from scrutiny, McClatchy Newspapers has learned.

The inspector general of the National Reconnaissance Office opened the criminal inquiry after meeting secretly in May with four top officers of the agency, who told her about "a series of allegations of malfeasant actions" by a colleague, according to agency documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers.

The agency's deputy director, Air Force Maj. Gen. Susan Mashiko, then heard about the investigation and made what the inspector general described as an illegal threat of retaliation against the whistleblowers.

"Four directors went to the IG," the inspector general quoted Mashiko as saying to a senior officer. "I would like to find them and fire them."

When the officer reacted with surprise, Mashiko backed off, saying she would have preferred if the directors had come to her first, the inspector general said in a memo. However, the inspector general, Lanie D'Alessandro, wrote that she had learned of a "history of intimidation" by Mashiko and the senior official who's being investigated.

"Now, rather than pledging to address the underlying issues, General Mashiko has responded with threats of reprisal against those who revealed the information to the IG," the inspector general wrote in a memo. "It is this threat of reprisal, by one of the most senior leaders in the NRO, that constitutes the violation of law."

The whistleblowers told the inspector general they had tried previously to raise the concerns with Mashiko and the then-principal deputy director of the agency, but that none of the accusations had been "addressed to the best of their knowledge," the inspector general wrote. D'Alessandro, who didn't return calls requesting comment, didn't reveal the names of the target of the investigation nor of the whistleblowers. National Reconnaissance Office officials, including Mashiko, refused to comment on the allegations, but federal officials with knowledge of the investigation said it involved improprieties in the agency's handling of contracts.

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