UPDATE: (9:20 PST 10-17) the FOI request has been released, a copy of which is now linked below. This story will remain at the top of WUWT for a day or two. New stories will appear below this one.
CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
By Christopher Horner, CEI.org for WUWT
Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the ‘bad timing’ file. Or it’s good timing, depending on one’s perspective.
Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)(which scam I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a ‘science czar’ John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to to develop his ‘environmental’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, run domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.
With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to user name and password — for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA.
The IPCC, you will recall, is Al Gore’s co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And the host over the years of numerous scandals involving fudged and twisted data, cut-and-pastes from student theses, popular magazine articles and green-group press releases and of course the infamous “hide the decline” in temperatures. This is not just one more scandal, however.
Until the FOI request is posted at CEI.org (later today), here is a snapshot:
CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
As our FOIA request details, the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (“ClimateGate” key among them), and to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws were posing the group.
CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business”, “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.
This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren’s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.
This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU and U.S. bureaucrats and political appointees avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.
CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.
As talks resume next month to forge a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity, and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.
So this morning we requested all relevant records under FOIA, including all records sitting on that server, as they all were provided to U.S. government employees for official purposes. This was filed with OSTP run by controversial ‘science czar” and, we now know, former Mitt Romney ‘climate’ advisor John Holdren. The taxpayer deserves to know about this coordinated effort between OSTP and the IPCC to subvert U.S. law.
Possibly one Republican candidate will call in the next debate for ending US funding of the IPCC, now shown to be actively working (with the Obama White House) to subvert US law. Enough is enough is enough. Possibly Gov. Romney could defend Holdren and the IPCC.
In the meantime, we look for Rep. Henry Waxman’s outrage over Abramoff to prove it was also not political, and come down hard on the practice he so aggressively condemned and pursued, demanding preservation of records, threatening subpoenas, the whole works. With our request, that’s essentially what we’ve done, and we’d appreciate the company. You too, NPR.
Of course, it may not be of interest to the media because it only uncovers unlawful dealings to hide an effort impacting our entire economy, the premise for that “fundamental transformation” of America, with the sleazy lobbying operation being the UN. We’ll wait on OSTP’s response and hope for the best from the Hill and Republican candidates.
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UPDATE: The FOI request document: OSTP_IPCC_Elec_Comm_FOIA1 (PDF 112k)
There were two possible IPCC responses to Climategate –
1. Reform practices to eliminate unprofessional, unscientific, and/or illegal behavior, or
2. Do a better job of hiding the chicanery.
Legitimate scientific organizations choose (1). Political mobsters go the other way.
“CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.”
LOL.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
October 17, 2011 at 9:30 am
Holdren’s email address on his business card is:
jholdren@ostp.eop.gov
Let him know of your displeasure.
Is that his cloud account or his real one 🙂
Correction to my comment @ur momisugly October 17, 2011 at 9:14 am
I meant CEI, not ATI.
So my lead off paragraph should have been:
John
I thought big socialist governments had the right to pull this kind hide anything they want?
After all we the people are nothing but an inconvenience to their goals and aspirations.
I’m glad that the U.S. House voted to defund the IPCC last February
Of course, for this budget year…
The U.S. Global Change Research Program for Fiscal Year 2011
…
Through Department of State (DOS) annual funding,
the United States is the world’s leading financial
contributor to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC)—the principal international organization for
the assessment of scientific, technical, and socioeconomic
information relevant to the understanding of
climate change, its potential impacts, and options for
adaptation and mitigation. Recent DOS contributions
to these organizations provide substantial support for
global climate observation and assessment activities
in developing countries. DOS also works with other
agencies in promoting international cooperation in
a range of bilateral and multilateral climate change
initiatives and partnerships.44
Program Highlights for FY 2011
During FY 2011, DOS will continue to support the
activities of the UNFCCC and the IPCC, and will advance
and develop international climate and related
energy partnerships.
…
The FY 2011 budget requests $2.7 billion for USGCRP
programs—an increase of about 24% over the FY
2010 level.4 This increase reflects the expanded needs
discussed above and represents a commitment by
the Obama Administration to the USGCRP
This is what happens when the Democrats allowed Obama to institute a number of czars without question. They have no accountability to the American public and subvert the Cabinet positions. Nothing will happen to Holdren, except he will be free to leave and congratulated by Obama for his “selfless commitment”.
John Whitman says:
October 17, 2011 at 9:35 am
“Au contraire, mon ami. I think the setting of the IPCC discussion within the context of the behavior and credibility of an un-enlightened and disturbed pre-adult is very clever of Donna L.”
Yes, and one must also consider that among academics the last year of adolescence is 39. Apparently for railroad engineers, the last year is 69.
Demonstration that the UN considers itself to national governments and the ruled peoples. EUSSR on a global scale, anyone?
Headline:
WH / UN climate communions CLOUDed in secrecy
Sorry,
The actions are not “circumventing” anything, nor are they illegal. The FOIA is perfectly suited for disclosure of communications over official govt channels, and also by extension, channels that “have a hint of official funding.”
Stop and think of what you all are essentially asking for:
If Joe Blow is a weather researcher, then *anything* he ever communicates in *any* capacity over *any* channel is subject to disclosure. Accordingly, why not simply strip any govt employee, or any employee of any institution that has any hint of govt funding of any and all privacy in anything that they say…… *That* is essentially what you all are calling for.
I have no problem with communications that are done over a govt network, or a govt computer being subject to FOIA.
But, dear lord, do you think that the real intent was to strip any and all privacy from any and all communciations (as this post seems to want to do and a number of people seem to apparently wish….)
Talk about a witch hunt….
It is against federal law to deliberately hide information that is subject to FOIA. A need-to-know communications network for IPCC authors is unjustifiable on its face. Stop and think for a moment what you are talking about. The IPCC seeks to use the power of open investigation from the brightest minds in the world to discover an answer on one of the more complex questions facing humanity today. You are now saying that it is perfectly acceptable for taxpayer-funded open climate research and their associated political conclusions to be locked onto an unknown and untouchable communications cloud. This is the very antithesis of science, and you are trying to say “oh well it’s not illegal.”
Not only is it illegal to establish a secret channel of communications to avoid FOIA, it is an unpardonable sin when it comes to publicly funded scientific work.
No, you are confused. That is what already exists now. If you are a public employee, your work e-mails and official correspondence are a matter of public record, period. Don’t like it? Dont accept money from the citizens of the U.S. to do your job. While you work for me, on my tax dollars, you answer to me (ultimately). That is the very spirit of the freedom of information act, to say nothing about how badly the letter of it is currently being violated.
Then how can you possibly argue for the exclusion of scientific research paid for by citizens to be exempt from it? That is what you are doing above.
If Michael Mann wishes private conversation with Phil Jones, I’m sure he can find the time for some private time on one of their many climate-conference-jetset trips. If, however, he sends messages pertaining to research that impacts conclusions that affect the who world, and which citizens of the world helped pay for, then yes, his privacy concerns don’t apply.
marfalights says @ur momisugly 12:08 pm:
I was, for a time, a Federal employee. Communications between Federal employees and those doing business with the government ARE subject to the FOI Act, whether backchannel, on the clock, or not. My agency required me to report ALL such contacts. Don’t know about others.
Private communications with dis-interested individuals, businesses, etc., while not on government time or not over government owned communications systems are not subject to FOI. As best as I recall what I signed.
marfalights – this was government work, and according to the CEI’s FOIA request it was done through government computers and networks.
Good grief, this sounds just like my local Board of Education!
The czars had better clean up after themselves. There is no rationale for their existence other than as an end run around the cabinet departments — thus avoiding oversight. That is the same reason Obama has never passed a budget. It would have to be scored etc… I suspect this latest scandal just the tip of the iceberg. There is no way a guy like Holdren isn’t engaging in some illegal scheme 24 hours a day.
Obama has always depended on no one wanting to hold the black guy accountable. He has been held to either a lower standard or no standard his entire life. The next administration will probably want to move on so we will never know the extent of the graft and scheming that went on in his administration.
Excellent work as usual Mr. Horner. The absolute willingness to run rough-shod over the scientific method, democratic processes, and people is so breath-taking in it’s audacity that the only way they can get away with it is a compliant, complicit media.
Hide the decline?
Heck no! Hide everything.
Good to hear of such news, thankyou.
Please stop using the hackneyed “Breaking” tag.
RayG says: October 17, 2011 at 9:19 am
“Nick, Source your data”
Not sure exactly what you mean, but I’m guessing it’s WH use of the RNC accounts. OK, from the Congressional Oversight Committee:
“White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts. The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official “.gov” e-mail accounts. Other heavy users of RNC e-mail accounts include former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.”
I don’t get it, if I were a yank, I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one being remembered as the communist hippie who painted the white house red, I mean OMG it just perverts the whole idea that is the USA.
Assuming that the damning documents are not shredded and FOIA requests are not stoenwalled, start thinking RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).
Sorry: stonewalled is the correct spelling.
Is real climate finished can’t access any more
Somebody better send off a note to all of those southern species that keep migrating north and tell them this climate change thing is a sham. Send one to the melting permafrost and retreating sea ice while you’re at it.
————–
stephan,
I just tried to access RC through WUWT’s link and also through a Google Search link. I could not connect.
Oops . . . . they aren’t one of the internet fora that had a ‘backchannel’ hidden login service for the IPCC, are they? So the RC site that us normal internet users would see is just the public face, but maybe there was a hidden portal that only registered users could see?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . . but mischievous and curious minds do wonder. : )
John