A senior executive at Yahoo has apologized for failing to give U.S. lawmakers additional information about the company's alleged role in the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident.
The Internet company has been accused of helping Chinese authorities identify Shi Tao, a reporter who was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets abroad.
In February 2006, Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan testified at a congressional hearing that Yahoo China, then a subsidiary of Yahoo, had passed information about one of its users to the Chinese government in 2004 without knowledge of why China wanted the data.
It was only in October 2006 that Callahan realized that the order from the Chinese government mentioned an investigation into state secrets, Yahoo spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.
The problem was caused by a bad translation of the 2004 Chinese order given to a company lawyer based in the region, she said. The lawyer did not get a correct translation until after the 2006 hearing, Schmaler said.
"Months after I testified before two House subcommittees on Yahoo's approach to business in China, I realized Yahoo had additional information about a 2004 order issued by the Chinese government seeking information about a Yahoo China user," Mr. Callahan said in a statement dated November 1.
"I neglected to directly alert the Committee of this new information and that oversight led to a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the Committee for creating," he said.
Mr. Callahan's statement comes ahead of a congressional committee hearing next week to discuss Yahoo's disclosure of information on the case.
Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last month that a Yahoo executive had given "false information" about what the company knew of the Chinese government's investigation of Shi.
Mr. Lantos, a California Democrat, asked Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Mr. Callahan to testify at the November 6 hearing.
The Yahoo spokeswoman said Mr. Callahan would repeat his apology at the hearing.
Mr. Callahan, a Yahoo executive vice president, said in his statement that he had consulted with Committee staff several times about the issue and they agreed with him that his 2006 testimony was truthful.
The reporter worked at Contemporary Business News in China and wrote articles advocating political reform. He was arrested in 2004 for publishing on an overseas web site a document Chinese officials considered a state secret.