Did White House Censor Science? Democrats and Republicans Spar Over Allegations on Global Warming

[EV_Ares]

House democrats and republicans traded rhetoric Monday over a new report claiming White House officials sought to suppress scientific views of global warming that clashed with Bush Administration policies.

The report -- originally undertaken as a bipartisan effort -- leads to what the House Oversight and Government Reform committee calls an "inescapable" conclusion that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."

One of the issues addressed in the report released by the Democratic majority is whether the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, required approval of all media requests to interview government climate scientists.

The report states that "by controlling which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, the White House and agency political appointees suppressed dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with Administration policies."

The report repeatedly cites the testimony of Kent Laborde, a career public affairs officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Laborde told the committee that the White House CEQ insisted on approving all news media requests to interview NOAA climate scientists -- a practice Laborde says has only recently ended.

Link to entire article:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3979695&page=1