WASHINGTON, Sept 11 (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into charges that military contracting giant TRW Inc. committed fraud and sought to cover it up in the U.S. national missile defence programme, an FBI letter made public Monday showed.

As many as 53 House Democrats had urged the FBI to investigate the allegations, which have been used by critics to assail as unworkable the so-called ``hit-to-kill创 technology central to the anti-missile shield.

The FBI's action was disclosed in a July 31 letter from Thomas Kubic, deputy assistant director of the criminal investigative division, to Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, whose office released it Monday.

``I have asked the FBI磗 Washington field office, in coordination with the Office of Inspector General, Department of Defence, to review the allegations contained in your letter and the material prepared by Professor Postol to determine if there is a violation of federal law under the FBI磗 jurisdiction,创 Kubic wrote.

Kucinich, in a June 15 letter co-signed by 52 of his colleagues, had urged FBI Director Louis Freeh to check whether the Pentagon acted properly in classifying as secret allegations of missile defence-related fraud and coverup made by Theodore Postol, an arms expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As part of a detailed critique he sent to the White House, Postol had included a declassified document shared with him by Nira Schwartz, a senior physicist at TRW in 1995 and 1996.

Schwartz has charged that Cleveland-based TRW falsified work in an effort to portray a ``kill vehicle创 on which it had been working as more capable than it actually would have been.

In the end, Boeing Co., the prime integrator for the proposed system of radar stations, satellites and ground-based interceptors, turned to a rival ``kill vehicle创 made by Raytheon Co.

``The American people need an independent investigation of this matter to determine if the well-documented and serious allegations of fraud in the National Missile Defence system are true, and if a coverup of that fraud has taken place,创 the congressional letter had said.

TRW spokesman Jay McCaffrey said the company was ``still not aware of any investigation by the FBI related to the charges alleged by Nira Schwartz.创

Schwartz claims TRW fired her when she protested about alleged efforts to fudge test-flight data to hide flaws in the system's ability to discern warheads from decoys. She is suing TRW in Los Angeles.

``We have been found by many government agencies to have acted appropriately and we磖e confident that any new investigation will once again validate TRW磗 work on this project,创 McCaffrey said. Defence Week, the first to report the FBI action, quoted unnamed government officials as saying the FBI was looking not so much into whether Postol's letter had been improperly classified as whether Schwartz's claims against the company had merit.

The Defence Criminal Investigative Service concluded that Schwartz's allegations warranted further review but a Pentagon advisory board in late 1998 defended TRW's work.

Schwartz said she was thrilled by news that the FBI was investigating. ``There is no other word for it,创 she said in a telephone interview from Torrance, California. ``It is beyond my ability to carry this load without the help of the government,创 referring to her case against TRW, the Pentagon磗 ninth biggest supplier last year.

The FBI declined comment, saying it stood by the text of its letter to Kucinich, who also declined further comment.

President Clinton said on Sept. 1 that he would leave it to his successor to decide whether to start building a missile shield. He noted that the interceptor missile had knocked dummy warheads out of the sky just once in three attempts.

Postol, who alleges that the Pentagon colluded with TRW to put together fraudulent test documents, said he was very pleased that the FBI was investigating.

``What I don磘 know is whether any of this is criminal because I磎 not a laywer,创 he said in a telephone interview. ``What I do know is it should be.创

The Pentagon's top test official, Philip Coyle, said in an Aug. 11 reply to a query that he had seen ``no evidence of impropriety in the conduct创 of national missile defence testing.

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