Cheney Just Like Julie Cooper: Truly Evil and Conniving.

In a remarkable feat of investigative reporting that will probably turn the entire next issue of the New Yorker green with envy, the Washington Post has wrapped up a four-part series outing Cheney as the dark force in the White House. The neutrally titled ”ANGLER: THE CHENEY VICE PRESIDENCY” by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker topped 16 broadsheet pages of 20,000 words.

Lucky for those of us who are behind the curve, it’s all available online, with a handy ”cast of characters” index reminiscent of those in the equally criminally bent Perry Mason novels.

All four sections make for fascinating reading that leave one feeling wide-eyed and naive in the face of such manipulative prowess (this man makes the O.C.’s Julie Cooper look like Mrs. Claus).

So what does this have to do with science? Well the fourth section on environmental policy, Leaving No Tracks uncovers some new nuggets in ”The Republican War on Science” - as coined by Chris Mooney in his aptly titled bestseller. 

But from what I’ve read its less of a war and more of a guerrilla ambush. Witness the controversy over the Klamath river basin in Oregon. Precious and scarce river water could not be diverted to water farmer’s fields in order to protect two endangered species of fish, as per the Endangered Species Act.

The thing to do, Cheney told Smith [former Republican congressman from Oregon who represented said drought-suffering farmers] was to get science on the side of the farmers. And the way to do that was to ask the National Academy of Sciences to scrutinize the work of the federal biologists who wanted to protect the fish.

...Cheney got what he wanted when the science academy delivered a preliminary report finding “no substantial scientific foundation” to justify withholding water from the farmers…

When the lead biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service team critiqued the science academy’s report in a draft opinion objecting to the plan, the critique was edited out by superiors and his objections were overruled, he said. The biologist, Michael Kelly, who has since quit the federal agency, said in a whistle-blower claim that it was clear to him that “someone at a higher level” had ordered his agency to endorse the proposal regardless of the consequences to the fish.

So the farmers got their way. But not long after some 77,000 Coho and Chinook salmon washed up dead on the banks of the trickling river. The commercial fishery on the West Coast crashed in the following years and Congress doled out $60 million to help fishermen recover their losses. Add to that the $15 million which Congress paid the farmers to stop farming and you’ve got a pricey bill.

Remember Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA’s ex-chief who resigned in 2003 for personal reasons? Turns out “it was Cheney’s insistence on easing air pollution controls” that drove her away. She simply couldn’t sign his energy task force’s rule change, which excused the nation’s dirtiest plants from installing costly new pollution controls

A federal appeals court later deemed that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act.  The administration’s legal rationalizations would only hold up in a “Humpty-Dumpty world,” the judges said. This begs the question, if Cheney operates in a Humpty-Dumpty world, where’s his great fall?