Cheney Censored Environmental Testimony

Josef Hebert, HuffPost

WASHINGTON — Seeking to play down the effects of
global warming, Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from
congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on
public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday.

The official, Jason K. Burnett, said the White House
was concerned that the proposed testimony last October by the head of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might make it tougher to avoid
regulating greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Burnett's assertion, which he made in a July 6 letter
to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, conflicts with the White House explanation at the time
that the deletions reflected concerns by the White House Office of Science and
Technology over the accuracy of the science.

Boxer, in a news conference on Tuesday, went so far as
to say White House press secretary Dana Perino had lied about why the White
House had pushed for the deletions. That, in turn, prompted Perino to demand an
apology from Boxer.

"I have never said such a thing about a fellow
public servant, and I wouldn't if I didn't have all the facts," Perino
said from Japan,
where President Bush is attending a meeting of world economic leaders. "I
think I deserve an apology."

Burnett, until last month a senior adviser on climate
change at the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote that Cheney's office was
deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony
removed.