It seems esteemed NASA astronomer turned climatologist turned paid activist Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has not been reporting some income that he is required by law to do. How long will NASA continue to look the other way? Chris Horner explains. – Anthony
A Summary of James E. Hansen’s NASA Ethics File
By Christopher Horner
NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.
This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.
Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.
Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee. This is despite NASA ordering him to return at least some of the money, with the rest apparently unnoticed by NASA. This raises troubling issues about Hansen’s, and NASA’s, compliance with ethics rules, the general prohibition on not privately benefitting from public service, and even the criminal code prohibition on not having one’s public employment income supplemented. All of this lucrative activity followed Hansen ratcheting up his global warming alarmism and activism to be more political which, now to his possible detriment, he has insisted is part of his job. As he cannot receive outside income for doing his job, he has placed himself in peril, assuming the Department of Justice can find a way to be interested in these revelations.
The following summarizes records produced by the Department of Justice to resolve litigation against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the required financial disclosures Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
These records are his applications for outside employment or other activity (form 17-60), approvals and accompanying documents, and public financial disclosure (form SF 278).
As detailed in the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit which yielded these records, Hansen suddenly became the recipient of many, often lucrative offers of outside employment and awards after he escalated his political activism — using his NASA position as a platform, and springboard. This began with a strident “60 Minutes” interview in early 2006, alleging political interference by the Bush administration in climate science.
Hansen acknowledged this timing on his website, noting that first he was offered an award of “a moderate amount of cash– $10,000″ by an outside activist group. He claims to have turned this down because of the nominating process (without elaborating what that meant), and because of the impropriety of appearing to be financially rewarded for his outspokenness (“I was concerned that it may create the appearance that I had spoken out about government censorship [sic] for the sake of the $”).
Given that Hansen makes no bones about his (often outrageous) outspokenness and activism being, in his view, part of his job, this surely is also another way of saying it would look as if he were having his NASA salary supplemented by appreciative activists and others. That would violate the criminal code, 18 U.S.C. 209.
Yet, as the offers soon became larger, Hansen changed his mind.
The records reveal that NASA initially was very direct in warning Hansen of his responsibilities and prohibitions relating to these activities, which covered the subject of his public employment. Later, after Hansen gained much media attention and condemnation of his NASA superiors for (falsely) claiming he had been “muzzled” (the second president named Bush he claimed had muzzled him), certain clear restatements of the law were dropped from the approval letters responding to his applications for outside employment.
NASA oversight of Hansen’s compliance with ethics-related reporting requirements similarly waned. At no point did they seek reconciliation of his serially conflicting attestations detailed here.
Improper Receipt of Outside Income Without Obtaining Advance Permission
Hansen’s 2009 speech at Dartmouth University for a $5,000 honorarium and up to $1,000 in expenses came in violation of the clear rule against promoting his appearances as, or emphasizing his job with, NASA. It also had not been approved. NASA’s Deputy Chief Counsel Laura Giza, after admonishing these violations, demanded he return the improperly obtained money:
“[Y]ou may not accept the offered honorarium and travel expenses. If you’ve already received this money, you need to return it to Dartmouth.
“Also, in the future, if you have not received word that one of your outside activity requests has been approved, or at least that the legal office has concurred in the request, you should contact the Goddard legal office about the request before engaging in that activity. NASA regulations require that you obtain approval for certain outside activities…prior to engaging in that activity. 5 CFR 6901.103(d).”
If there were further correspondence about this demand it would be in NASA’s document production, but there are no such records. The only lawful scenario, therefore, is that Hansen quietly agreed to the demand, but did not inform NASA whether he complied. Otherwise, NASA, Hansen, or both have violated the ethics and/or transparency statutes and regulation.
Yet subsequent financial disclosure forms show Hansen attesting to accepting even more money, between $5,001 and $15,000, for a 2008 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University for which his file, according to NASA, contains no request for permission to engage in this outside employment, or approval to do so (each a condition precedent to lawfully engage in the activity, and to accepting the money).
There is no correspondence about these two glaring discrepancies in his filings reflecting more apparently improperly accepted outside income than most federal employees will ever see in their careers.
In order to continue his employment Hansen would therefore be required to bring himself back in compliance with the ethics rules by returning the money, between somewhere more than $10,000, and $26,000.
Although Hansen reported the income from both honoraria, he did not report receipt of travel expenses for him to get there. This omission is a pattern in his filings, to the tune of surely tens of thousands of dollars for airfare, meals and lodging to locations all around the country and Europe, all required by ethics laws to be reported.
For example, consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):
- Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
- Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
- Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
- WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
- Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
- Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
- FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
- ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
- Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
- Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
- UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
- Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
- Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
- EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
- California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
- CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007
The following is an incomplete list of other travel apparently accepted to make paid speeches and/or receive cash awards but not reported on SF278 financial disclosures:
Boston, Washington, DC (twice); Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Wilmington, DE; Ithaca, NY (business class); Chapel Hill, NC; Deerfield, IL (Sierra Club “No Coal” campaign); Dartmouth, NH; Alberta, Canada (as consultant to a law firm helping run an anti-oil sands campaign), Stanford; Minneapolis; Missoula, MT
Other travel apparently accepted but not reported, to provide expert testimony including on cases involving federal policy:
California (Central Valley Chrysler-Jeep v. Witherspoon), Vermont (Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth etc v. Torti)
Failing to Report Gifts
World Wildlife Fund gave Hansen an engraved Montres Rolex watch, which typically run $8,000 and up (2006), but which was not reported by Hansen on his SF 278 under “gifts”, which must be reported if valued at more than $260.
Failure to Report Receipt of Free Legal Services
On his website Hansen said he began accepting free legal services in 2006. These are not reported on his financial disclosures, as they should be.
Also, NASA’s document production shows him attesting to receiving more, separate free legal services in the form of an amicus brief drafted for he and a few others to intervene before the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA. This was not reported on his SF278, as required.
These lapses on both Hansen’s part and NASA demand scrutiny to determine how laws designed to protect the taxpayer are, or are not, being respected.
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This story has been updated to correct some small errors and formatting issues@ 8:15AM and 9:50AM PST 11/19/11
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Some of this seems trivial. I get flown lots of places to give papers and spend a day with faculty. It has almost always been economy class, though for some international flights they pay for premium economy, a slightly less exhausting option. When I’m there, wherever it is, my host picks up hotels and meals. I really don’t think any academic or scientific home institution should get excited about that kind of thing. They WANT their employees to have national and international influence.
However, the bigger honoraria and prizes and gifts are quite another matter for any organization, and do smell funny. At best Hanson and his staff have been very careless. At worst, well, the peanut gallery has weighed in on that already.
Where are the links Anthony? You are asking us to take the word of someone who has repeatedly exaggerated and misled in his statements about GISS and Hansen in particular:
http://climscifoi.blogspot.com/2011/06/ati-nasa-lawsuit.html
You have frequently stated that you abhor baseless accusations, but in this case without seeing the actual documents released, how can anyone judge? Put them online and let the world see if the complaints are justified.
Don’t you think that the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters did some harm to the reputation of NASA?
It was just pure luck that no astronauts were killed in space during the moon shot. Let some other nation go back to the moon and win the prize of having the first dead astronaut on the moon.
Conflicts of interest are obvious here, but that is always the way with ‘climate scientists’: I manufacture unfounded scare stories, therefore I have a comfortable job and lots of grants.
Naked greed is another issue, but being a global purveyor of distorted data and perverted information – and being grossly rewarded for it – is what gets my goat.
For the Brits here, there is a smell of Cherie Blair about this – greedy, unprincipled and a darling of the champagne socialist cliques.
Didn’t Hansen say to Congress that oil executives should “tried for high crimes against humanity and nature,” and yet he takes their money?
“They took us to the MOON and then this HACK (I repeat that term HACK) “scientist” trashed their reputation.”
I am not certain Hansen is the worse nor of the idea that Hansen single handed screw up NASA reputation.
I think it’s obvious that a cleaner agency would not suffer Hansen unless there was a lot of this kind of stuff going on. Maybe more of thousand cuts sort of thing though likely even bigger graft.
During Gore’s time as vice president, one of Gore pet project was advertised to clean up government.
Coincident? The fact the Gore and Hansen are pals?
I don’t don’t so- it’s typical move of politician to say one doing one thing to mask doing quite the opposite.
A larger issue regarding Gore was the VentureStar boondoggle costing a billion dollar of tax dollars that achieved nothing.
Hansen is clear example of graft but not all crooks are going be as crass as Hansen.
Gary Mount says:
November 19, 2011 at 12:08 am
“Let some other nation go back to the moon and win the prize of having the first dead astronaut on the moon.”
Gods, I’m exasperated with craven, spineless cowards….. If I could get on a shuttle flight tomorrow, knowing it had a demonstrated 1 in 52 flights failure rate, I do it! Every action we take in this life is a risk. Some, like climbing on a shuttle flight, or the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria are calculated risks. Others, like taking a chance on a couch with the girl next door, are genetic imperatives. Exploration, of the valley over the next arete or the hard vacuum of interplanetary space, are both calculated risk and genetic imperatives! We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they ARE HARD! Those of us with a spine and sufficient reproductive orbs will always be sailing towards that new horizon, taking risks to see what is beyond the edges of the known maps and carrying mankind into the unknown spaces labeled ‘Here Be Dragons’. That;s how we learn. That’s how we grow. That’s how we progress. Stagnation, as a culture or nation, is slow death.
Stick with your Master Piece Theater and your evening chai latte in your faux leather recliner, Gary. You’re clearly not up to try or support anything riskier than carrying the weekly can of rubbish out to the curb.
For those who missed the October 3, 2011 post on Dr. James Hanson, here is a link to the 2010 report which was received under the FOI by American Tradition Institute. http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ATI-NASA-Hansen-SF-278-2010.pdf
My experience with some scientists is they don’t think they should have to follow these rules because they are very important. Just a WAG (based on experience) but the NOAA employee who pressed for compliance was probably replaced and that’s why the warnings ceased.
To play safe, perhaps I ought to mention that my earlier comment
(a) is merely a lighthearted expression of my own humble opinion;
(b) does not, other than by chance, represent the views or expressed position of Mr. Anthony Watts, nor of any other person affiliated with this website;
(c) does not, other than by chance, purport to describe any person whether living, dead or fictional, nor any activities of any such;
(d) is strictly without prejudice; and
(e) claims fair use of the wording of the first line.
You can’t be too careful.
I trust that this clarifies the matter :o)
If you had that much of a “carbon footprint” would you want to delare it?
This reminds me of Al Capone. It’s not the obvious abuse of his position at NASA for millions, it’s the travel. If this guy were at a company, he would have been fired. But thank goodness someone has some ethics at NASA, and will get him the old fashioned way: for not filling out the paperwork.
Similarly, the Blairs were a normal middle class couple with a mortgaged three bedroom London house when taking office. They are now billionaires with offshore companies to manage their income and properties (and still call themselves Socialists).
Hansen’s lack of ethics stinks – but most of us here knew that already. There’s something very rotten in the state of America, and it’s time someone took a grip – but who will do this?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Chris Horner, please ignore the Hansen groupies, it is just a distraction as you probably full well know by now. Instead, round up your documentation and sources and hand deliver them to Darrell Issa or his staff. This Hansen issue, the Gavin Schmidt issue (RealClimate on NASA company time), and of course the Mann email issue all belong now in Congressional oversight where we have a ton of taxpayer funded staffers just waiting to do some real work. Don’t waste one nanosecond of your time on these anonymous trolls, you owe them nothing.
Ah, there isn’t enough potential fraud here to pique your interest huh? Got it. In the meantime, read some of the comments upthread from former civil servants and outside contractors and try to rationalize the strict set of rules that mere mortals have to follow compared to what a few celebrity alarmists seem to get away with.
There are a whole lotta ways that federal fraud of the taxpayer can be reported (Google), but contemplating a lawsuit will require a DC lawyer and there are immunity issues for the potential perps. But there is one thing we (USA Taxpayers) all have in common – two US Senators and one Representative. They each have a local office and a DC office so that is up to (3×2) six offices you can contact (or visit), and ask for an investigation into any subject that you have reason to believe is a fraud on your tax dollars. This serves as re-inforcement for the official oversight since your request will get forwarded to the applicable oversight committee.
Also, there is no reason you cannot contact the committees themselves as well. In the Senate things are FUBAR because of control still being held by the ‘Rats. However, the real action is in the House, specifically in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of which Darrell Issa is Chairman. For all practical purposes this committee is the one real watchdog with the fangs to take a bite out of crime. Some people suggest also contacting the office of the Speaker of the House as well. Well, why not? He could use something to do other than golfing with the White House Occupier.
You misunderstand me. Going to the moon when that race has already been won seems like a foolish endeavor for the costs and risks involved compared to the rewards received.
And the risks are extremely high, more than you know or let on.
Would you like one day for the world to look up into the night sky and see the moon and say there is a dead American astronaut or group of astronauts waiting for their bodies to be retrieved with the next hastily put together mission to the moon?
I have worked in the high tech world of remotely operated vehicles that service oil rigs and conduct science and military operations deep in the oceans. http://www.ise.bc.ca/ Using humans for no other reason than to put on a show at extreme expense is probably why no one has gone back to the moon for 4 decades now.
On the other hand I would like to see a manned mission to mars. It would be the first time humans had ever left the orbit of earth.
$500,000 for a trip to Tokyo?
$500,000 for a trip to Paris?
Hansen urgently needs a little horse sense!
5 years ago I went from Europe to South America by plane for a 4-week vacation, inclusive board and lodging at a 4-star hotel plus 2 short trips to Argentina and Brazil.
Total costs: 1,800 Euros
I wouldn’t have had even the time to expend $500,000 …
*baffled*
This type of activity is what the stocks were designed for. Plus a good supply of rotten eggs, tomatoes and other rubbish for the little people to throw.
This man is a hypocrite of the first order like Gore.
Like with so many pseudo-religious cults; the humble lifestyle is for the rank and file, meanwhile the bishops use the money from the congregation to support a lush lifestyle beyond the reach of plebs.
Might one suggest that James Hansen has been working hard to protect the future of his grandchildren, if not perhaps in the way his public statements would suggest!
An earlier commenter: “Like most on the left, rules are for the little people” . . . . As someone whose politics have been both left and right I can confirm that dishonesty is not a function of position on the political spectrum. It exists all along it – wherever humans are found you’ll find dishonesty.
Richard Feynman, on honesty in The Meaning of it All: “People are not honest,” he pointed out. “Scientists are not honest at all, either. It’s useless. Nobody’s honest. Scientists are not honest. And people usually believe that they are. That makes it worse. By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.”
I think that’s a good guide for scientists (and people) – regardless of political stamp.
As for global warming, too often there are jibes on here about AGW alarmism being the preserve of the left. That’s rubbish. It may be that US politics are divided that way on the subject but elsewhere there is no such clear cut dividing line – and this site is viewed by people from all over the world.
One thing I have noticed is that those who seek status, power, privilege, and often wealth (and they can be found on the left and right) are frequently inclined to be dishonest in their pursuit of these things. . . . .
@garymount
OT I know, but everything is risky. Astronauts know the risks and take part willingly. If we ever want to get out into the solar system in a serious way, then people are going to die. Whatever moral objections you may or may not have about the colonization of the US, it was only managed because people were prepared to run huge risks to get to America. How many drowned making the crossing? How many from starvation or disease if they made it?
If NASA had got on the phone and offered me a seat on a shuttle flight leaving the week after Challenger I’d have taken it. For *me* it would have been worth the risk…
defiance and mockery seem to pay…
How long will NASA look the other way? No point in even asking the question.
High priest Hansen has been advocating crime and total genocide for 20 years, and NASA has kept him around and promoted him.
That tells you everything you need to know about NASA. It is a syndicate devoted to crime and mass murder.
So lying pays. Shocking? Go talk to your elected official(s).
Hansen and his cheerleaders would just LOVE to see him being made into a martyr – I can’t see any other reason why he is so brazenly arrogant – and NASA so quiet – about his dealings and rewards. I hated the guy the moment I heard him tell the world that he’s been muzzled by two Bushes. I mean, there’s no need to brag.
This sounds like a Republican War on Science.