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Ex-EPA aide: Cheney staff censored warning on climate

The Washington Post

July 9, 2008

WASHINGTON - Members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said yesterday.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason Burnett said an official from Cheney's office ordered that six pages be edited out of the testimony of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in October.

Several media outlets reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say, "CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern," among other passages. White House officials said then they questioned the scientific basis of aspects of her draft testimony.

Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration feared that Gerberding's testimony would force it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The White House has opposed mandatory limits and insisted on voluntary measures and increased research.

"The Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of the Vice President were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony," Burnett, 31, a Stanford-trained economist, wrote to Boxer's committee. "CEQ requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change."

Burnett, a grandson of high-tech entrepreneur David Packard and a member of the Packard Foundation board of trustees, has given more than $129,000 to Democratic campaigns in recent years, including $3,600 to Barack Obama. He did not say who in Cheney's office called him.

"I'm not interested in pointing fingers at any individual," he said at a news conference with Boxer. He said he was focused on how the government will address climate change in response to a Supreme Court decision last year requiring the EPA to deal with the issue of carbon dioxide emissions.

Boxer demanded that, in light of Burnett's allegations, EPA administrator Stephen Johnson turn over "every document related to the agency's finding that global warming poses a danger to the public." An EPA document to that effect late last year has never been made public.