Greenpeace obtains smoking-gun memo: White House/Exxon link

[Judi Lynn]

Greenpeace obtains smoking-gun memo: White House/Exxon link
Conservative front group may have thanked White House for help in suing EPA

Tue 09 September 2003
UNITED STATES/Washington, DC


Did conservative elements in the White House provoke an Exxon front group to sue EPA to suppress a report on climate change? That's the question that two State Attorney Generals have asked US Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate, after Greenpeace uncovered a routine email in a Freedom of Information Act request.


In the email, Myron Ebell of the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute writes to Phil Cooney, a senior official at the White House Council for Environmental Quality. He describes his plans to discredit an EPA study on climate change through a lawsuit. He states the need to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish." He notes his group is considering a call for the then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, to resign, and openly suggests that she'd make an appropriate "fall gal" if the administration is serious about getting back into bed with conservatives opposing action on climate change.

His memo to the US government official begins "Thanks for calling and asking for our help." (You can view the entire memo here.)

That statement, and the cosy, conspiratorial tone of the document was enough to make Richard Blumenthal, State Attorney General of Connecticut, and G. Steven Rowe, State Attorney General of Maine, demand an investigation by US Attorney General John Ashcroft into whether Cooney or other officials in the Bush administration solicited the Competitive Enterprise Institute's filing of the new lawsuit, as the memo certainly makes it appear. (snip/...)

http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en//news/details?item%5fid=308563

[ClintonTyree]

1. Oh, I'm sure.................

Asscrack will get right on this. You can bet he'll get to the bottom of this. :eyes:

[E_Zapata]

2. Damning - but:

you can't read the memo worth a damn - too small print

I printed it and just get gobbley-gook.

They don't give the date of the memo in the article and you can't see it on the memo.

?????????????

[Judi Lynn]

3. What Sinistrous said!

Hope it works for you.

[Sinistrous]

4. I just learned something about "flash"

Open the memo. Place cursor over text. Right click. One of the menu options is "Zoom In". Memo can then be read.

BTW, the date of the memo is June 3, 2002.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Sinistsrous, you've wrought a miracle!

I had no idea this was possible. Thanks so much for sharing this trick. :bounce: :bounce:

[puddinhead]

6. heh heh

When you zoom in you can even read Mr. Ebell's e-mail address quite clearly.
heh heh

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Re-Read If You Will

It's not gobbledygook, it's written in the dialect called "Business Wank".

It's actually quite readable, but it's not the first smoking gun we've seen with King George's fingerprints on it. I'm sure that this one, too, will be buried under Sudden Revelations that we have Bin Laden confined to a tiny 1600-square-mile chunk of Pakistan, or that a radioactive spider has bitten Rumsfeld and turned him into a superhero.

--bkl
(Edited for typos)

[Kolesar]

8. Exactly how is this an ethical violation?

"According to the two State Attorney Generals, the email obtained by Greenpeace

"reveals great intimacy between CEI and in their strategizing about ways to minimize the problem of global warming. It also suggests that CEQ may have been directly involved in efforts to undermine the United States' official reports, as well as the authority of the EPA Administrator.

We are concerned that the new litigation is an improper product of that close relationship, and we therefore ask that you investigate this.""

The shameless access to the White House is obvious here, but I do not know enough about ethics laws to say what the violation is.

[lfairban]

9. Much like how they got the 16 words into the SOTUS.

Telling the EPA what should be in their scientific findings is like telling the CIA what should be in their intelligence.

[MaineDem]

10. Maine AG's statement

August 11, 2003

Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe stated, “It appears that certain White House officials conspired with an anti-environmental special interest group to cause the lawsuit to be filed against the federal government.”

“The idea that the Bush Administration may have invited a lawsuit from a special interest group in order to undermine the federal government’s own work under an international treaty is very troubling.”

“We believe an investigation is necessary to determine whether the idea of this lawsuit came from the White House itself, and if so, whether it represents improper conduct by public officials.”

Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts filed a lawsuit in June, 2003 against the EPA alleging that the federal agency is required under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide.

http://www.state.me.us/ag/press_release_pop_up.php?press_id=167