report is damning and should once again force Congress to look at how a crucial government agency is being politicized and to the detriment of nation

March 31, 2007 | Redacting the Science of Climate Change

The Government Accountability Project conducted a long investigation into the Bush administration's muzzle of climate scientists. One of my pieces appears in the report and I am happy to finally see Congressional attention regarding this very serious matter.

In October of 2005, an employee of NOAA contacted me with some concerns about the way scientists were being muzzled regarding the weather. In the post-Katrina world, it seems the Bush administration was more concerned about how open meteorologists had been with reporters. That is to say, in the build up to Katrina and even during Katrina, reporters were being provided with far too much real time information and that reflected badly on the administration. The source leaked emails to me showing how the new policy of communicating with reporters would be handled. After I wrote the article, I provided the documents to GAP for their investigation. Their final report is damning and should once again force Congress to look at how a crucial government agency is being politicized and to the detriment of nation.

You can read the full report HERE. Here are the snips regarding my article:

"It was not until late 2005, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the subsequent media frenzy on hurricanes and global warming, that the official media policy was widely publicized to agency scientists.

An October 4, 2005, email from Dr. Richard Spinrad, assistant administrator of OAR, to senior-level staff, states: “several incidents in the last few days have served as indications that we need to provide our folks with an important reminder regarding our dealings with the press. Please make sure your folks have reviewed the subject policy…. It’s short and it’s clear. A quick review can save lots of problems downstream.” Attached to the email string, and presumably one of the “incidents” referred to by Spinrad, is an earlier email linking to an article that was posted on RawStory.com that day. ...