Cheney's office denies meddling on climate

WASHINGTON - A spokesperson for Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday dismissed a claim by a former EPA official that Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the  health impacts of climate change, while a top Senate Democrat called Cheney's actions a "cover-up" and vowed a hearing on the matter.

Megan Mitchell, the vice president's press secretary, dismissed the allegations by Jason Burnett, whom she referred to simply as "the Democrat."

"We don't comment on internal deliberations," said Mitchell.

Burnett, a lifelong Democrat who has contributed nearly $125,000 to Democratic candidates, resigned his post last month as associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the agency's response to climate change.

Burnett last week replied to a letter from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who asked if he had witnessed any meddling by the White House on the science of climate change, and specifically in congressional testimony last October by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

When six pages were cut from that testimony by CDC Director Julie Gerberding, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, said he felt that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC’s original draft testimony removed.

“The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ... any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,” Burnett said in the letter to Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Hearing set for July 22
Boxer, for her part, on Tuesday said she would hold a committee hearing on July 22, with  Burnett as a witness. "This cover-up is being directed from the White House and the Office of the Vice President," she alleged.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that manmade pollution is warming the earth and that if the process is not reversed it will cause significant climate changes that pose broad public health problems from increases in disease to more injuries from severe weather.

Democrats on Senate and House committees have been trying for months to get e-mail exchanges and other documents to determine the extent of any political influence on government scientists, but have been rebuffed.

The letter by Burnett for the first time suggests that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in downplaying the impacts of climate change as related to public health and welfare, Senate investigators believe.

Cheney’s office also objected last January over congressional testimony by Administrator Johnson that “greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment.”

An official in Cheney’s office “called to tell me that his office wanted the language changed” with references to climate change harming the environment deleted, Burnett said. Nevertheless, the phrase was left in Johnson’s testimony.

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