The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin reports that a former top Environmental Protection Agency official said Vice-President Cheney’s office manipulated Congressional testimony. The White House did so to play down the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming. The Vice-President’s office, and the Council of Environmental Quality, allegedly took out portions of testimony that Centers for Disease Control director Julie L. Gerberding gave to a Senate environmental committee. The whistleblower also charges that the White House did this with the intent of casting doubt about whether greenhouse gas emissions should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The whistleblower in question is Jason Burnett, who left the EPA last year. Since then Burnett has also told Congress that the White House improperly interfered in denying California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gases. And that the White House simply ignored an email he helped write for the EPA about the dangers posed by greenhouse gases.

The Post article mentions that Burnett’s grandfather was one of the founders of Hewlett-Packard.  Understanding Government says better journalism will produce a better government. But it looks like a quicker path to government transparency is to get more whistleblowing bureacrats who aren’t financially dependent on their jobs.-MB

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