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“Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.”

1984, Ministry of Informationspeak? No, a line from an internal memo from Environmental Protection Agency sent to all employees who are considering speaking to the press or congressional investigators.

While this is a pretty commonplace practice at many large organizations, both corporate and otherwise, to keep everyone “on message,” in this case, it seems like a gag order.

According a survey cited in a Washington Post article, in the past five years over half of all EPA officials have been the casualty of “political interference” in their work.

But what do they have to hide?

Just last week, the director of EPA, Stephen Johnson, refused to appear before Congress amidst calls to clarify the censorship. In 2007, Johnson claimed that global warming was indeed a “significant threat” to the human body and the environment. Yet, despite this admission, he alone decided agency wouldn’t regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Hmmm?

Now three members of Congress are asking him to resign. It seems that “Johnson is not as independent as he claims,” according to  Globalwarmingisreal.com.

They report: “After pouring over more the 27,000 pages of documents and listening to the sworn testimony of eight EPA officials, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by California Democrat Henry Waxman, has come to the general conclusion that EPA administrator Stephen Johnson is not as independent as he claims regarding the decision to deny a waiver allowing California to regulate tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions.

Johnson has insisted the the decision was his alone, yet several participants at an EPA staff meeting have testified that Johnson had been on board with at least a partial waiver. One participant at the meeting, Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, said to Senate investigators that Johnson was “very interested in a full grant of the waiver,” then thought that a partial grant of the waiver “was the best course of action”.

Documents show that EPA staff had recommended the waiver be granted.”

Oh, EPA, it turns out you do have something to hide. Of course it is inevitable for an agency to cater to the machine that controls it, due to political and job-related pressure. Yet in matters of cold, hard science, with the EPA’s own scientist’s work being veiled, no governmental agency can over regain legitimacy after this debacle.

Here is the text of the email, courtesy of PEER, or Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.”

To: Betsy Smidinger

Subject PLEASE REMIND STAFF re:

RESPONDING TO GAO, IG AND PRESS

Please remind your staff at your next staff meeting of the following policies and procedures.

1. If you are contacted by a reporter, please forward the call or e-mail to Laura Gentile and Roxanne Smith, cc Robbi. Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.

2. If you are contacted directly by the IG’s office or GAO requesting information of any kind, please forward their call or e-mail to Gwen Spriggs, cc Robbi. Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.

Thanks very much for your continued attention to these important procedures.

Robbi

As PEER director,

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch described the gag order,

“Inside the current EPA, candor has become the cardinal sin…this directive is of questionable legality, an agency specialist risks discipline or even termination for disregarding a direct order. The clear intention behind this move is to chill the cubicles by suppressing any uncontrolled release of information. Ironically, EPA has brought a lot of these congressional hearings on itself by not being open.”

Yeah government truthiness!