White House officials barred a State Department intelligence staffer from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be possibly catastrophic after State officials refused to excise the documents references to the scientific consensus on climate change.
The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the written testimony of a senior analyst at the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the idea that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine Americas national security, a position President Trump rejects.
Officials from the White Houses Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the office of geography and global affairs, prepared for a hearing Wednesday.
According to several senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk about internal deliberations, Trump officials sought to cut several pages of the document on the grounds that its description of climate science did not mesh with the administrations official stance. Critics of the testimony included William Happer, a National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide and sought to establish a federal task force to challenge the scientific consensus that human activity is driving recent climate change.
Administration officials said the White House Office of Legislative Affairs ultimately decided that Schoonover could appear before the House panel, but could not submit his statement for the record because it did not, in the words of one official, jibe with what the administration is seeking to do on climate change. This aide added that legislative affairs and OMB staffers routinely review agency officials prepared congressional testimony before they submit it.
A House Intelligence Committee aide confirmed that the panel received the written testimony of the two other intelligence officials who testified at Wednesdays public hearing, but not Schoonovers.
Francesco Femia, CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, questioned why the White House would not have allowed an intelligence official to offer a written statement that would be entered into the permanent record.
This is an intentional failure of the White House to perform a core duty: inform the American public of the threats we face. Its dangerous and unacceptable, Femia said in an email Friday. Any attempt to suppress information on the security risks of climate change threatens to leave the American public vulnerable and unsafe.
Schoonover could not be reached for comment Friday, and the State Department referred questions to the White House. A White House spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private deliberations, said in an email, The administration does not comment on its internal policy review.
Schoonovers 12-page prepared testimony, reviewed by The Washington Post, includes a detailed description of how rising greenhouse gas emissions are raising global temperatures and acidifying the worlds oceans. It warns that these changes are contributing to the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.