A damning 42-page report carried out by the NASA Office of Inspector General has concluded that NASA’s press office “marginalized, or mischaracterized” studies on global warming, in order to protect the Bush administration from controversy close to the 2004 presidential election. However it “found no credible evidence suggesting that senior NASA or Administration officials directed the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to minimize information relating to climate change.”

The IG stated - in the report published on June 2nd - that personnel in the agency’s public affairs office were guilty of “inappropriate political interference” in their attempts to play down climate change findings.

“Climate change scientists and the majority of career Public Affairs Officers strongly believe that the alleged actions taken by senior Nasa headquarters public affairs officials intended to systematically portray Nasa in a light most favourable to administration policies at the expense of reporting unfiltered research results,” and officials “managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalised, or mischaracterised climate change science made available to the general public.”

“Our government’s response to global warming must be based on science, and the Bush administration’s manipulation of that information violates the public trust,” said Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg.

James Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies had warned a year ago that climatological findings were being muzzled by a higher power. This report confirms that to be the case.

“Further, it is our conclusion that the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs’ actions were inconsistent with the mandate and intent of NASA’s controlling legislation–the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (Space Act) and NASA’s implementing regulations–insomuch as they prevented ‘the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination’ of information concerning NASA’s activities and results,’ the report continued. ”

While we could not substantiate that Administration officials employed outside NASA approved or disapproved or edited specific news releases, we do, however, find by a preponderance of the evidence that the claims of inappropriate political interference made by the climate change scientists and career Public Affairs Officers were more persuasive than the arguments of the senior Public Affairs officials that their actions were due to the volume and poor quality of the draft news releases. Although the scientific information alleged to be ’suppressed’ appeared to be otherwise available through a variety of Agency forums, we cannot reconcile that the Space Act would permit any purposeful obfuscation of scientific research by the Agency in any news dissemination forum as ‘appropriate’ under the Act.”

In further news regarding the Bush administration and climate change, Senate Republicans have derailed the Climate Security Act of 2008 that would have required the United States to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The vote felltwelve short of the sixty-vote threshold it needed to succeed, though President Bush had vowed to veto the bill even if Congress had approved it.