Oh, Look. The Department of Interior Is Lying Again

Great Debates
1

Some of you might recall my concern when Gale Norton was nominated as Secretary of Interior. Some of you may also remember my eyewitness accounts of Secretary Norton’s testimony before various Congressional Committees, which relied primarily on the “I’ll get back to you on that one” style of evasion whenever she was asked a penetrating question.

Well, Gale got back to Congress, all right. With falsified testimony.

Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that, according to the Washington Post.

Norton, who as usual had no concrete answers for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee when she testified before them, forwarded a number of questions regarding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Fish and Wildlife Service, a subsection of Interior. When Fish and Wildlife answered, some of Secretary Norton’s staff members altered the testimony to more favorably support–you guessed it–oil drilling in the ANWR.

What Fish & Wildlife said.

What the Secretary testified.

The differences between the two answers.

More info from Indianz.com.

“Oops,” says Norton’s spin doctor,“we inadvertantly changed the word ‘inside’ for ‘outside.’” As in “caribou calving has occurred inside the proposed drilling area in 11 of the past 18 years.” A minor slip-up, they say. Those other slip-ups detailed above might possibly be related to the fact that in addition to the FWS answers, the Secretary’s staff also consulted an unofficial report funded by–you guessed it–British Petroleum.

This of course comes on the heels of the Fourth Report of the Court Monitor in the ongoing landmark Indian Trust Fund scandal, which Norton Inherited from, well, the Garfield Administration if you want to go all the way back.

In that report, the Monitor states that Norton “verified an untruthful, inaccurate, and incomplete” status report on the Trust Fund cleanup for the summer of this year. The Department of Interior has been further accused of screwing up the management of the Trust Fund even worse than it had been when the Bush Administration inherited it nine months ago, in violation of a federal Court Order to reform the management system. More hijinks.

Thus, in a mere three days we have two examples of the Secretary of Interior approving false statements on issues which affect both the environment and American Indians. Perhaps in these troubled times, I should keep my mouth shut. Too late.

So what do you think? Is this now well-established pattern of evasion and falsification grounds for showing Gale the door? Or is it just a series of (ahem, several dozen) well-intentioned mistakes? How concerned are you that the Department of Interior is not only being run incompetently (as it has from time immemorial), but appears to be running dishonestly as well? How bad is the situation and how in hell do we fix it? I’m interested to see what people think.

2

well, crap! i tried to check a few of these links and eventually, my computer just siezed up and croked.

i think i dont have any more time to spend on this topic! (what a cop-out!)

3

Sorry, I should have pointed out that a lot of those links are to Adobe Acrobat files.

4

I was at a movie last week and amongst the previews was an anti-drilling-in-the-refuge ad with a voiceover by Martin Sheen. So that’s something.

When Bush was declared the winner, my main reason for feeling disappointment was the environment.

5

Sounds like a classic case of the Roarke-ism: “When buying and selling is legislated” etc, but now with a twist: instead of spending money on the politicians, they now spend money on the people meant to advise politicians.

Seems like the furor over campaign financing won’t eliminate the corruption of the government!

heh. How much does her “findings” depend on the “oops” interpretation?

6

Sofa King, you forgot to mention Norton’s choice for to Interior Department official in Alaska, Cam Toohey. His day-job for the past decade has been – drumroll please – a lobbyist for ANWR drilling.

7

And anyone who is remotely familiar with the Bush administration’s appointees and approach to the environment, and it’s numerous connections to the oil industry, is surprised by any of this?

I’m indeed shocked and disgusted by Secretary Norton’s duplicity. But not surprised. :mad:

Let’s face it folks: ANWR will be drilled, whatever the real situation or consequences. Somebody in the executive branch seems to owe someone in the Oil branch of government a favor.

8

Well, I don’t disagree with you squeegee, but I’m more interested in this sort of “well, who didn’t see this one coming from a mile away?” attitude.

Submitting false testimony to Congress is a pretty serious crime, if intent can be shown. Perjury over a blow job was good enough the last time on the carousel.

I predicted long ago that the problems the new Interior folks inherited would put them immediately in violation of the law, but the real problems wouldn’t begin until those people discovered that nobody cares. I think we’re seeing only the very beginnings of a wave of favoritism and corruption that will eventually be shown to be patently, blatantly, publicly illegal.

The question is, will anyone do anything about it in this our-country-right-or-wrong climate? So far, the answer is still, “no.”

9

This seems a bit too fatalistic to me squeegee. Last time I checked, the executive branch didn’t have the power to decide unilaterally to drill in ANWR. We can still stop them in the Senate…and stop them we should!

10

jshore, you’ll be sort-of-happy to know that a number of slyly placed riders which would have explicitly opened up the ANWR were unceremoniously tossed out in the Interior appropriations conference this week.

However, an increase of $3 million was given to the of Office of Arctic Energy in Alaska for exploration and drilling. I have yet to figure out if this green-lights ANWR or not.

11

Let’s keep in mind the wise observations of a former Secretary of the Interior, especially in light of recent events, as I paraphrase: “Why worry about protecting natural resources if the End may be near?” Let’s root for cataclysmic worldwide annihilation and it’ll all be a moot point.

12

erislover wrote:

Then, TheeGrumpy wrote:

:eek: Incoming Fountainhead! Hit the dirt!! :eek:

13

I’m sorry, with Dick “Big Oil” Cheney in a powerful position, Gail “James Watt, Jr.” Norton as Interior Secretary, plus past experience where the previous two Republican administrations seemed intent on allowing a clear-cutting, strip-mining free-for-all on public lands… and you didn’t see this coming?

Sigh…someone please tell me how “conservative” and “conservationist” became antonyms…

But this isn’t false testimony; presenting only facts that help your side isn’t lying. It is dishonest as well as dissapointing, but not illegal.

14

squeegee wrote:

Saying “outside” when the subcomittee’s report said “inside” isn’t exactly presenting a fact.

15

Sure, but the difference in meaning wasn’t particulary eggregious:

“Concentrated calving occurred primarily outside of the 1002 Area in 11 of the last 18 years”

So if you swap “inside” for “outside”, the difference is either calving occurred inside the 1002 area 60% of the time or 40% of the time. Either of which says to me that drilling operations would be intrusive to the native caribou.

What I thought was more dissapointing about Norton’s testimony was that nearly all issues that might point to drilling in ANWR being intrusive were simply not reported, only facts that supported drilling as not being harmful. This seems much more dishonest overall than the inside/outside swap.

16

I’ve read that at least one Senator tried to attach an amendment authorizing Artic drilling to the legislation authorizing the president to take action against terrorists. He was apparently trying to take advantage of the “our country” mood that Sofa King mentioned.

17

You’re probably remembering this:

“Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) announced that he will add language to the fiscal year 2002 defense authorization bill (S.1438) to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) unless the Senate agrees to debate an energy package before lawmakers adjourn in October.”

The amendment was defeated or withdrawn before the bill was passed, although I haven’t found a cite on how this transpired.

18

“Nobody move,” screamed Inhofe, waving his pen menacingly, “Or the Defense Authorization Bill gets it!”

19

I’m open to suggestions on how to fix it. Like other posters have stated, this should come as no surprise. How to head them off at the pass?

20

Uhh, don’t vote for Presidential candidates who are oil men and who also believe in the honor system for shaping up egregious corporate polluters? [sub]Oops, too late.[/sub]

Getting on the horn to your Senator and bitching loudly about this is about the only thing to do right now. Please be sure to mention that improved CAFE standards are at least as important as exploration for controlling domestic energy demand.

Personally, as noted above, I’m a little pessimistic that any of this will make a difference – the “rape ANWR” lobby seems to be pretty darned ascendant lately, and this administration seems to be so unrelentingly pro-business, pro-oil, that there’s little hope of restraining them short of the next election. [sub]And, yes, I’m all behind GWB on the War front; he’s doing a good job there. But domestically he’s been pissing me off since day one.[/sub]