The Obfuscation Report

Landowner Issues Trumped Animal Protections, IG Says

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 30, 2007; A05

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions, the department's inspector general concluded.

The investigator's report on Julie A. MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks -- which was triggered by an anonymous complaint from a Fish and Wildlife Service employee and expanded in October after a Washington Post article about MacDonald -- said she frequently sought to reshape the agency's scientific reports in an effort to ease the impact of agency decisions on private landowners.

Inspector General Earl E. Devaney referred the case to Interior's top officials for "potential administrative action," according to the document, which was reported yesterday in the New York Times.

The IG noted that MacDonald "admitted that her degree is in civil engineering and that she has no formal educational background in natural sciences" but repeatedly instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to change their recommendations on identifying "critical habitats," despite her lack of expertise.

At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a "nesting range" of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a "running battle" with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.

In another incident described in the report, MacDonald argued with Hall over the Kootenai River sturgeon, a fish in Montana and Idaho that needs a certain level of river flow in order to spawn. Field biologists determined that the sturgeon's needed flow level ranged between 2.3 and 5.9 cubic feet per second, but MacDonald instructed them to cite only the 5.9 figure, which would have aided dam operators. After Hall demanded she put the request in writing, the report noted, "she ultimately relented and they kept the 2.3 to 5.9 range."

Devaney reported that several Fish and Wildlife officials said MacDonald yelled and cursed at them, quoting the assistant manager for California and Nevada operations as saying that his employees "were definitely stressed, pushed and yelled at by MacDonald."

The report also said MacDonald "misused her position" by disclosing confidential documents to "private sector sources" such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and the California Farm Bureau Federation, both of which have challenged endangered-species listings.

On Feb. 4, 2004, MacDonald sent the Pacific Legal Foundation a 147-page document on Interior's critical habitat policies. In an e-mail exchange with one of the foundation's lawyers, MacDonald wrote: "I will send you a copy of the draft but please do not share it with anyone else. It's still undergoing revision, although the fundamental legal/policy approach will not change. Does that work for you?"

MacDonald acknowledged to Devaney that the policy document would not have been released under a Freedom of Information Act request but "said that did not mean she could not release it to a personal friend, the PLF attorney, as long as the attorney would not post the document on the PLF's Web site."

MacDonald was not available for comment yesterday, and Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery said he could not comment on the report because it was "a personnel matter."

Kieran Suckling, policy director for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, said the report documented MacDonald's close relationship with industry.

"She has demoralized the entire U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by deriding its scientists, overruling its decision-makers, and showing complete disregard for professional channels of decision making," Suckling said in an e-mail.

Labels: Bush Administration, Interior Department, Julie A. MacDonald is a hack, The facts are being fixed around the policy

By Nicole Gaouette
Times Staff Writer

March 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Government scientists, armed with copies of heavily edited reports, charged Monday that the Bush administration and its political appointees had soft-pedaled their findings on climate change.

The accusations led Democrats and Republicans at the congressional hearing to accuse each other of censorship, smear tactics and McCarthyism.

To underscore their charges of the administration's oil-friendly stance, Democrats grilled an oil lobbyist who was hired by the White House to review government climate change documents and who made hundreds of edits that the lawmakers said minimized the impact of global warming.

"You were a spin doctor," Rep. John A. Yarmuth (D-Ky) told the lobbyist.

Republicans targeted a NASA director who testified about administration pressure, accusing him of political bias, of politicizing his work and of ignoring uncertainties in climate change science.

And they disputed his contention that taxpayer-funded scientists are entitled to free speech. "Free speech is not a simple thing and is subject to and directed by policy," said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah).

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing was marked by an open confrontation between Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and the ranking Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) — a rare display of direct debate in otherwise carefully choreographed hearings.

The hearing was the latest effort to challenge what the Democratic congressional majority sees as the Bush administration's unchecked use of power. In the past few weeks, Democrats have held inquiries or announced plans to examine the unmonitored use of national security letters that allow the government to spy on Americans, the dismissal of U.S. attorneys and the identifying of former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, among other issues.

Waxman has been particularly aggressive, pursuing inquiries about intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war and the politics of global warming.

To support their charges Monday, the Democrats produced hundreds of pages of legal depositions, exhibits and e-mail exchanges between administration officials. The paper trail illustrated how officials with no scientific training shaped the administration's climate change message and edited global warming reports, inserting doubt in the place of definitive statements and diminishing the role people play in the planet's rising temperatures.

Waxman's committee received more than eight boxes of papers from the White House Council on Environmental Quality that he said provided disturbing indications of political interference.

"There may have been a concerted effort directed by the White House to mislead the public about the dangers of global climate change," said Waxman, who also cited the administration practice of "controlling what federal scientists could say to the public and the media about their work."

"It would be a serious abuse if senior White House officials deliberately tried to defuse calls for action by ensuring that the public heard a distorted message about the risks of climate change," Waxman said.

One example showed how a report originally said the U.S. National Research Council had concluded that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures to rise and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

*

Edits by ex-oil lobbyist



Philip Cooney, the oil lobbyist who became chief of staff at the Council on Environmental Quality, changed that to read: "Some activities emit greenhouse gases that directly or indirectly may affect the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation, thereby potentially affecting climate on regional and global scales."

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the edits confused public understanding of the issue. "If we push our climate system hard enough, it can pass tipping points," he said. "That is not a situation we want to leave for our children."

Hansen decried political interference in climate change science. "Scientists shouldn't be hired to parrot some line."

But he also said the real weapon against scientists was the budget. Last year, he said, the administration slashed climate change budgets retroactively by 20%.

Cooney, now with Exxon Mobil Corp., came to the White House in 2001 after more than 15 years with the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry lobby group. His last post there was leader of the climate team.

Waxman quoted an internal API document that identified climate change as the group's highest priority. He said a key API tactic was to spread doubt about climate change science, exaggerating scientific uncertainty and downplaying the role of humans in climate change.

"What bothers me is that you seem to take the exact same approach in the White House," Waxman told Cooney.

Cooney, soft-spoken but increasingly red-faced as the hours went by, repeatedly stressed that his job was to align reports with administration policy, as reflected by a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report that indicated some doubt about climate change models.

He denied his aim was to sow doubt or that he had any loyalty to the oil industry, even as lawmakers pointed to some 181 changes he made to one document, which Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said "had the effect of emphasizing or exaggerating the level of uncertainty surrounding global warming science."

"How is what you were doing … any different than the work of the so-called scientists during the whole tobacco debate when they were sowing doubt about whether there was any link between tobacco and lung cancer?" Welch asked.

*

Republican rebuttals



Republicans, in turn, came down hard on Democrats and Hansen, often sparking verbal fisticuffs.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) raised Hansen's work on "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary on Al Gore's global-warming efforts, as evidence of Democratic sympathies. Hansen is a registered independent.

Several Republicans criticized Hansen for comparing administration efforts to limit and monitor scientists' speech with similar efforts in Nazi Germany.

Issa said he hoped Hansen wasn't influenced by money tied to a prize named after John Heinz, a former Republican senator and deceased husband of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Waxman turned to Issa, who sat beside him. "I think the gentleman's smearing Dr. Hansen," Waxman said.

Issa stared, started to speak, but Waxman cut him off, repeating himself.

"Are you recognizing yourself?" Issa asked, using the formal phrase to see if Waxman was allotting himself time to speak.

"Well, I recognize you," Waxman shot back as the crowd laughed. "I think you're smearing him. Do you want to comment on that?"

Issa offered his rebuttal, noting that Hansen "clearly disliked" the Bush administration and the lawmakers moved on.

Labels: Bush Administration, Global Warming, science, The facts are being fixed around the policy

The Bush administration has repeatedly claimed that Iran is responsible for the surging violence in Iraq. But on multiple occasions, the Bush administration has “ordered a delay in publication of evidence” to support its claim. U.S. allies who have seen the evidence said that it “still falls short of an airtight case.”

In an inteview with CNN yesterday, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said that Iran is “stoking” and “igniting” sectarian violence in Iraq. But he was unable to actually offer any such evidence.

Today’s new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) explains why Iran is not a driving force behind Iraq’s violence:

Iraq’s neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics. Nonetheless, Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq.

The NIE acknowledges that Iran is trying to cause trouble. But it also notes that sectarian violence — not Iranian support — is the most immediate threat. Moreover, as the New York Times wrote yesterday, “more threats and posturing are unlikely to get Iran to back down. If Mr. Bush isn’t careful, he could end up talking himself into another disastrous war, and if Congress is not clear in opposing him this time, he could drag the country along.”

Transcript:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Joining us now, the undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns.

Mr. Secretary, thanks very much for coming in.

UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE NICHOLAS BURNS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: What evidence do you have, for example, that the Iranians are involved in killing American troops in Iraq?

BURNS: Well, Wolf, I think there’s incontrovertible evidence that the Iranians have been giving very sophisticated explosive technology to Shia insurgent groups for the better part of the last year and half. Those groups have used that technology, some of which is armor-piercing — to attack American soldiers and British soldiers and to kill them. It’s a very, very serious development.

Now, we have warned the Iranian government in past about this. We had not received an adequate response from them. And you have seen now President Bush, over the several weeks, having decided that we will detain those military and intelligence officials in Iraq who are responsible for this.

Obviously, we wish Iran to cease and desist. Iran is not playing the type of role that most other countries are in Iraq.

Most countries like the United States want to see Iraq stayed together as unitary state. They want to see the problems between the Shia and the Sunni be resolved. But Iran seems to be stoking those problems, igniting them.

And so that’s the basic — that’s the basic allegation that we’re making against the Iranians. And we hope they’re going to have a change of mind.

BLITZER: And the State Department, I take it, is putting together a dossier, a full report that will be declassified and made public going through your arguments, your evidence? Is that right?

BURNS: Well, obviously, we have been making the case for the last several weeks and will continue to make the case to the American people and to the international public that this is a problem. There really is no doubt about it.

Labels: Bush Administration, NIE, The facts are being fixed around the policy