This is infuriating!
Reading the news this morning, I came across this article in the Guardian:
Gulf oil spill: White House blocked and put spin on scientists’ warnings
That is the kind of headline I’d normally associate with the prior occupants of the WH. Blocking and spinning…
The White House blocked government scientists from warning the American public of the potential environmental disaster caused by BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico, a report released by the national commission investigating the oil spill said yesterday.
The report, produced by a panel appointed by Barack Obama to investigate the spill, said that about two weeks after the BP rig exploded scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asked the White House for permission to release their models showing their worst case scenarios for the spill.
Many of us that followed the disaster knew that the public was receiving misleading information at the time. We recall how the very first reports stated that there was no oil leaking from the well, then shortly after that maybe 1,000 bbls/day escaped from the well.
The White House office of management and budget, which is a traditional clearing house for decisions, turned down the request, the report said, quoting interviews with administration officials.
The report, one of four released today by the commission, provides the most compelling evidence to date of direct attempts by the White House to spin the BP oil spill disaster.
At the time that the OMB refused the NOAA to publish its scenarios, the stated leakage was 5,000 bbls/day. In retrospect, however, we know that the actual figure was around 50,000 bbls/day.
Why did the administration suppress the information at the time? Why would it align with BP, the corporation responsible for the blow-out?
And it didn’t stop there:
It goes on to catalogue other lapses by the administration, including repeated underestimates of the size of the spill, and downplaying the environmental damage after the BP well was capped.
The report found particular fault with the White House energy adviser, Carol Browner, who appeared on television on 4 August and said: “The vast majority of oil was gone.”
It said Browner was overstating the findings of a NOAA analysis of the fate of the oil.
“By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem,” the report said.
Why would the administration help BP in creating the impression that in the end, it wasn’t really so bad?
The WH’s handling of this catastrophe was certainly inept, but worse, the impression is now that it was more important to shield a large corporation rather than mobilizing all available resources to fight environmental damage and to protect the thousands of small businesses that suffered as a consequence of BP’s greed.
