CENSORING SCIENCE

In January 2004, President Bush announces his vision for exploration of the Moon and Mars. Soon after, directives (almost always transmitted verbally, according to Andrew Revkin of The New York Times) went out that all news releases about Earth science developments had to allude to these goals.

In one case, a release about wind patterns and Indian Ocean warming by Dr. Tong Lee was altered to say that his findings would "advance space exploration" and that the instrumentation used "may someday prove useful in studying climate systems on other planets." Dr. Lee's approval was obtained while he was in a hallway at a conference in Hawaii. He later withdrew his approval, but the release had already gone out.

What's wrong with these changes? First, it's a stretch to say that studying Earth helps space exploration. Second, for a host of reasons, the instruments for such studies are not useful at other planets. (Unless, of course, those other planets have atmospheres, climate systems and radiation environments like Earth's — which they don't.) Third, apparently, Dr. Lee was not given time to properly evaluate the request. Fourth, putting words in someone else's mouth is a professional discourtesy. And fifth, these particular words are a practical affront as well because, at NASA, big programs like the Vision for Space Exploration tend to suck the funding out of science projects.

Mahone and Acosta summon Mrs. Cook-Anderson to tell her that a new review process has gone into effect. When she receives a climate-related press release from any NASA Center, she must now print a copy and carry it upstairs to one of them — usually to Acosta. They will then "notify" the White House of its arrival. After some interval (often a week or longer) she is summoned upstairs again. There she is given the release, marked up by hand with changes to be incorporated into the electronic version. These markups invariably "soften" the release — that is, they downplay the danger of fossil-fuel emissions or amplify the uncertainty of the scientific conclusions.

Any communication to her about the releases comes by phone, and she is always told not to reply by e-mail. After she incorporates the changes, she is supposed to destroy the paper copy. She is also forbidden to talk to her colleagues about the matter. And no written version of the new rules is ever distributed.

In addition to slowing down the review process, these new procedures minimize the e-mail and paper trail. The censors, who in Beltway parlance are "politicals", thereby reduce the risk of getting caught out as, for example, certain "politicals" in the Justice Department were over the firings of U.S. attorneys.

Shindell and Schmidt were climate modelers at Jim Hansen's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Using a GISS computer model, they had recently completed a study of surface temperatures in Antarctica. The model reproduced the cooling found on most of Antarctica, but suggested that the continent was due to warm faster than the rest of the southern hemisphere. Their paper on the study had been accepted by Geophysical Research Letters for publication in late September. They began working with Gretchen and two GSFC science writers, Rob Gutro and Krishna Ramanujan, on a press release.

Sometime that month, apparently, the "politicals" got involved. Their first action was to change the title of the press release. The original title was "Cool Antarctica May Warm Rapidly This Century, Study Finds." Headquarters staff, reports Shindell, asked that it be "softened." The authors came up with "NASA Scientists Expect Temperature Flip-Flop at the Antarctic." This was not deemed "soft" enough, and the final title, over the authors' objections, was "Scientists Predict Antarctic Climate Changes." This review process took four weeks, and the press release came out after the actual paper. That delay, plus the blandness of the eventual press release's title, assured little interest in the results.

A week after the paper's publication, with no press release, Shindell and Schmidt protested to their managers, Larry Travis and Jim Hansen. This did result in an e-mail trail, which Bowen reproduces in his book. The ironic thing about all these attempts at suppression is that NASA and the White House are shooting themselves in the foot, for the data and conclusions will come out. This case is doubly ironic for, a month after the paper's publication, Shindell and Schmidt were named to Scientific American's list of the top fifty scientists of 2004 — the first NASA scientists to be so honored.

James Hansen, by temperament, much preferred to stick to research and leave the politicking to others. For this reason, he had declined when, earlier in 2004, he was invited to speak at a Democratic Party fund-raiser. But the events of the past three years had radicalized him. He got in touch with James Van Allen, his mentor at the University of Iowa, and Van Allen arranged for him to speak in the Distinguished Public Lecture series offered by the University's Department of Physics and Astronomy.

That speech took place a week before the November elections. In it, Hansen disclosed a private conversation he had had with Sean O'Keefe when the NASA administrator visited GISS to view Hansen's talk on global warming. One slide referred to Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference, and O'Keefe told Hansen he should not talk about "dangerous anthropogenic interference because we do not know enough or have enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic interference." Hansen compared this to the "success-oriented" attitude in force before the Challenger Disaster, when NASA managers ignored engineers' warnings because the engineers could not definitively prove there was danger.

Hansen also disclosed the convoluted review procedure for NASA press releases. Then he discussed his political leanings, saying he would have preferred to vote for John McCain, had he been on the ballot, but would choose John Kerry over Bush because he thought Kerry had a far better grasp of "the important issues that we face."

The day before the speech, Hansen's assistant Darnell Cain reported, he received several calls from the office of NASA's general counsel, demanding a copy of the speech. The caller warned that Hansen risked punishment under the Hatch Act if he gave the talk. Hansen went ahead, making it clear that he spoke as a private citizen on his own time and his own dime. Later, he was advised that the NASA caller had mischaracterized the Hatch Act.

Soon after the speech, Gretchen Cook-Anderson was called into Glenn Mahone's office. There she found Dean Acosta and David Steitz also present. The door was closed and Mahone ordered her to call James Hansen right then and there and tell him to be quiet. This was when Gretchen showed her mettle: She refused, in terms that are worth reading. (No expletives, however.) David Steitz corroborates her account. Dean Acosta denies being in the room. From that day forward, Mahone refused to speak to Mrs. Cook-Anderson, and she lost the privilege of working from home, even when one of her two boys was ill.