Panel: Obama Gov't blocked scientists on spill estimate

For as much as the Obama loving media tried to protect its darling president, the true facts are emerging of how the Obama White House desperately tried to fool the American people by controlling “the message” of the Deep Horizon oil spill instead of competently managing the crisis.

I got a kick on how the community organizer-in-chief (Obama) played both sides of the fence by saying the White House was directing all efforts to stop the oil from spewing into the Gulf, but BP was accountable for all the work. That was a pretty shallow display of trying to act like they knew what they were doing.

But, that’s classic Obama, pretender of all knowledge but actually practitioner of none.

Mind you, if this was a Republican president doing this, it would be a big scandal at the NY Times.

The Associated Press reports that the Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House in the wake of the April 20 accident.

Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, and President Barack Obama's senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was "gone." The analysis actually said it could still be there.

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report says.

The administration disputed the commission findings, saying senior government officials "were clear with the public what the worst-case flow rate could be."

In a statement Wednesday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco and White House budget director Jeffrey Zients pointed out that in early May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told the public that the worst-case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons.

For the first time, the documents — which are preliminary findings by the panel's staff — show that the White House was directly involved in controlling the message as it struggled to convey that it, not BP, was in charge of responding to what eventually became the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
More details here

Memeorandum

Tell two friends about this blog