As Al Gore was testifying before Congress, there were other hearings happening on Capitol Hill that covered the subject of Global Warming and Climate Change. These hearings weren't as highly publicized, and the information that came to light seems to have been swept under the rug. But what else is new in Washington.

While testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former White House aide Phil Cooney admitted to editing federally funded official reports on climate change during his tenure as chief of staff at the White House's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) from 2001 to 2005. Cooney testified that he and another collegue, Brian Hannegan, made nearly 300 edits to the environmental reports that changed the fundamental message of the reports conclusions. Their goal was to muddy the waters of already accepted scientific certainty that global warming was real and that industry and human activities were part of the cause. Download the committee memo, Full Committee Hearing on Political Interference with Science: Global Warming, Part II for the nitty gritty details.

An excerpt from the Committee memo reads as follows:

The CEQ documents appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change. The documents show that Mr. Coney and other CEQ officials made at least 181 edits to the Administration's Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties. They also made at least 113 edits to the plan to de emphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming. Other Administration documents that were heavily edited by Mr. Coney and CEQ include EPA's Report on the Environment and the annual report to Congress entitled Our Changing Planet.

Other CEQ documents provide evidence that the White House played an active role in
deciding when federal climate change scientists could answer media questions about their work.

The memo goes on to cover examples of edits discovered through testimony to three above mentioned Administration documents, and outline an Orwellian control over Federal agencies and their employees. References are also made to the oil industry's hand in controlling the flow of information, and the White House policies of intimidation to achieve the desired results.