Column: Transparency in Government
EPA to Staff: Shut Up
A crucial report on global warming is the political football in this story of an attempted cover-up.By Jill Kuraitis, 7-30-08
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| EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson | |
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The Environmental Protection Agency has an inspector general, whose office is an internal watchdog monitoring the EPA.
The Government Accountability Office has investigators who work for Congress.
The EPA’s website says, “The EPA inspector general’s office conducts audits, evaluations and investigations of the EPA and its contractors “to promote economy and efficiency and to prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse.”
Both agencies have had unhindered access to employees of the EPA, and employees have been able to speak anonymously to investigators.
But according to a Monday report from the Associated Press, on June 16 EPA staff received a memo directing them not to speak to reporters or IG/GAO inspectors:
Subject PLEASE REMIND STAFF re: RESPONDING TO GAO, IG AND PRESS
Please remind your staff at your next staff meeting of the following policies and procedures.
1. If you are contacted by a reporter, please forward the call or email to Laura Gentile and Roxanne Smith, cc Robbi. Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.
2. If you are contacted directly by the IG’s office or GAO requesting information of any kind, please forward their call or email to Gwen Spriggs, cc Robbi. Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.
Thanks very much for your continued attention to these important procedures.
Robbi (Farrell)
Apparently EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has forgotten that Americans are smart enough to smell a rat when it skids across the floor, leaving a messy trail.
That trail may lead to Johnson’s deliberate withholding of a document prepared by the EPA which found that global warming is a danger to the public. Johnson has refused to testify or release the documents publicly.
According to McClatchy Newspapers,
...the head of the Environmental Protection Agency told the White House in December that high levels of manmade heat-trapping gases are causing global warming and endanger the American people, Sen. Barbara Boxer said Thursday after she reviewed the EPA finding, which has not been made public.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that if the EPA administrator finds greenhouse gases endanger the public, then the government must regulate them — a move the Bush administration opposes.
“This is the strongest language I have ever seen or that you have ever seen, and they are trying to lock it away,” said Boxer, D-Calif., who took notes on the document and shared them with reporters. “The document belongs in the hands of the American people.”
Boxer said the key excerpt was: “In sum, the administrator is proposing to find that elevated levels of greenhouse gas concentrations may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare.”“Bingo” — that statement should trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act according to the Supreme Court ruling, she said. “This is huge.”
Boxer sits on The Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, which subpoened Johnson to produce the documents and testify before the committee. Here is Think Progress’ take on Johnson’s refusal to cooperate, written in April.
In June, Johnson received a letter from Rep. Henry Waxman informing him he was in contempt of Congress.
Also in June, the Associated Press reported that President Bush then invoked executive privilege to protect Johnson and the EPA from having to answer to the committee.
Now, the EPA is gagging its own staff to prevent their own internal watchdog function from investigating “irregularities.”
This story is more complex than the overview presented here, but it is deeply troubling. How stunning is it that a congressional committee has to beg, plead, issue subpoenas and ultimatums to see any documentation they want?
An agency which disdains and ignores Congressional mandates to cooperate – this is what the Bush Administration thinks is business as usual.
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Comments
And then look hard at our EPA appointees, who have worked diligently to destroy our own visionary laws and methods of controlling pollution while maintaining a burgeoning and healthy economy. Who are these people, who would have the US citizens, subjected to the same poisons and fouled rivers as the citizens of China or Mexico?
Who are they? What do they believe? Who pays them to betray us?
And they dare to speak of the economy as they dismantle the systems that brought us clean air drinking water and wetlands and wildlife, and as our economy tanks ever lower, as the money flows into the pockets of their global masters, and the citizens, struggling to pay their bills, are stuck with the poisonous effluents that the masters do not have to pay to get rid of.
Somewhere, there has to be accountability. What we have witnessed is not 'business as usual." It has been a concerted attempt to bring the US into line with India, Mexico, China, to open it for exploitation as a resource colony, just as we once did with Guatemala and bananas.
Human rights and environmental protection are obstacles to the kind of profits that global businesses expect or demand now. America's laws ro protect assets and resources like clean air and water and wildlife are relatively unique, even if they have proved extremely practical. What we are seeing is a carefully orchestrated scheme to get rid of them. It's not so complicated, really.
Where is the anger, though?
How many criminals will come out of the EPA in handcuffs over the next year? How many will flee to non-extraditing countries?