Cheney's office accused of editing climate change testimony

By Andrew C. Revkin
Published: July 9, 2008

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official's Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday.
The former official, Jason Burnett, made the assertion and described similar incidents in a three-page letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He then stood with her at a news conference at which she excoriated the Bush administration.
"History will judge this Bush administration harshly for recklessly covering up a real threat to the people they are supposed to protect," Boxer said.
Burnett, a lifelong Democrat, resigned in May from his post as an associate deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and chief adviser on climate to Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator. Burnett has previously criticized the administration's climate policies and endorsed and contributed to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
In the letter, while declining to name individuals, Burnett said the offices of Cheney and the White House Council on Environmental Quality "were seeking deletions" of sections of draft testimony describing health risks from warming. The testimony was prepared by Dr. Julie Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for a hearing last October before Boxer's committee.

Burnett's letter said the council "requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change."
The changes were made before the testimony was delivered. At the time, the EPA was finishing a document assessing whether carbon dioxide, the main emission linked to global warming, endangered public health.
At the news conference, Boxer strongly chided Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, for asserting last year that the changes in testimony were justified because the statements did not comport with the influential review of climate risks by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"This was a lie," Boxer said. "We proved it before."
She demanded that Johnson turn over all documents related to the assessment of carbon dioxide's risks, or else resign.
White House officials bluntly rejected the points in Burnett's letter and Boxer's statements, both those made on Tuesday and others last fall after the editing was described in news reports.
"We stand 100 percent behind what Dana said," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman.
"Senator Boxer should not throw around charges like lying in cases where there might be a difference of opinion," he said.
Marc Morano, a spokesman for James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and the ranking minority member on the Senate environment committee, also said the criticism was unjustified.
"We consider this to be a nonissue," he said.
"All administrations edit testimony before it is submitted to Congress," he added, describing incidents during the Clinton administration involving Roy Spencer, a NASA scientist at the time who questioned the dangers of human-caused warming. Spencer said his superiors told him not to express his views about the dangers of global warming in testimony.
Boxer insisted that the efforts last year by the White House constituted a "cover-up" and "censorship," and she announced plans for more hearings. She and Burnett said that their political affiliation had nothing to do with their assertions.
Austin Bogues contributed reporting from Washington