Report Blocked By Bush Aide For Not Being Political
Add this to growing evidence (almost a story a day) that this administration is one of the most politicized in American history:
A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.
The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.
And what the Post found does not cast this administration in a good light:
Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Note the “three people.” The Post was using a highly credible journalistic standard (taught at many journalism schools) to seek confirmation from several people. Can they all be dismissed as people who hate Republicans?
Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the “Call to Action on Global Health” while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration’s frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report’s contents and its implications for American public health.
Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was “called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, ‘You don’t get it.’ ” He said a senior official told him that “this will be a political document, or it will not be released.”
And so the battle ensued:
After a long struggle that pitted top scientific and medical experts inside and outside the government against Steiger and his political bosses, Carmona refused to make the requested changes, according to the officials. Carmona engaged in similar fights over other public health reports, including an unpublished report on prison health. A few days before the end of his term as the nation’s senior medical officer, he was abruptly told he would not be reappointed.
Steiger did not return a phone call seeking his comment. But he said in a written statement released by an HHS spokesman Friday that the report contained information that was “often inaccurate or out-of-date and it lacked analysis and focus.”
There are several things about this report:
(1) Historians will have a field day with this administration. There are many news reports now about issues where the administration nixed scientific information or tried to suppress information or attempted to politicize in a way that past administrations have not done. Historians will take these strands and weave them together. There is a PATTERN.
(2) The press is clearly hot on the heels of the administration. And there clearly are sources and whistle-blowers (official or otherwise) who are now coming forward to give media types information.
(3) None of this will help George Bush’s polling numbers or his clout in Congress. News helps weave an image tapestry and the emerging one on SEVERAL fronts (the refusal to let administration members testify to Congress, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ widely-panned sworn testimony and the refusal to fire him, misinformation leading up to the Iraq war, the constantly moving the goalposts on reports on the Iraq war etc…). is of an administration that cannot be trusted in its assertions. Anything said by the administration now is suspect because it could either be incomplete or…”at variance” with the truth.
13 Responses to “Report Blocked By Bush Aide For Not Being Political”
Nice to see that the press has finally woken up from its long hibernation, and is performing its fourth estate function once more.
This story was, unfortunately, quite predictable. Bush accuses Congress of political stunts, but he is hardly a babe-in-the-woods on that score.
I feel I’m reading the same story over and over again – about the politization of yet another government department. The affected subjects change, but the story is the same.
Yet, I’ve heard Congressmen and Senators say that they get relatively little mail on these subjects. THey hear about Iraq, Iraq, Irra.
Certtainly, TV news channels are not jumping on these stories. They, seem to be totally focused on how a story will affect Wall St. rather than on the
newsworthiness of any subject. In this case, pverty and health are not uplifting for business, so why disturb a sleeping dog?
Sometimes I think the public is just a big sleeping nutt.
Dubya must be running out of his own brain-damaged friends like Brownie of FEMA fame. This one is a godson of Bush 41, who appointed his mother to the Federal Trade Commission:
http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2007/07/bushs-twit-of-year.html
RS To be technical Brownie isn’t a friend, he’s a friend of a friend. From Wiki:
Now Joe Allbaugh is a piece of —-, he makes Brownie look like Truman. But he does fit into the rampant nepotism of this administration. Makes one pine for “Travelgate”, atleast the Clenis family hid theirs better.
domajot,
Do you really think that most Americans want to spend more tax funds on healthcare for people in other countries?
I wonder if in the next 19 months if everyone with a policy ax to grind will run to the media and claim that the Bush Adminsitraiton is playing politics with their pet cause. See http://volokh.com/posts/1185724235.shtml for a slightly different inerpretation.
RS Your “Twit of the year” has a long history of “family politics” and “business interests” over science. Seems that lobbyist and hacks didn’t like WHO going after Pepsi and McDonalds. The young lad tried to cut WHO funding….
This title is a classic:
SD – What are the qualifications of Steiger other than being the god son of Bush 41?
Probably nothing. However, it is common in DC that the political appointees to have no true qualifications. If a government research is proposing policy changes, making commitmets, and spending funds, then that employee will always be working through political appointees.
Remember the old saying about DC, you know who your friends are because they stab you in the chest.
Usually with Dubya the only qualification you need is being a ‘pioneer’or ‘ranger’ for the ’00 or ‘ 04 campaigns. While it is somewhat common for people to be appointed in Washington because of connections instead of qualifications, 43 has hit a new low in this regard. I’ve yet to see one of his appointees besides Gates or Mueller put the country ahead of the administration or the Republican party. Really pitiful.
SD asked:
“Do you really think that most Americans want to spend more tax funds on healthcare for people in other countries?”
What does that have to do with a report that was suppressed? Should most Americans be shielded from what they don’t want to hear?
In fact, you are only strengthening my argument.
Most Americans are asleep, dreaming about what they can buy at the mall on therif next trip.
Perhaps we should worry less about personal wealth and worry more about the state of the nation and the world as a whole. Though some may want to deny it, we are all interconnected, and diseases confined to Chad one day may come to your neighborhood the next.
Bring on the reports, and wake up a sleeping American public.
SD – All our bluster and threats to the Islamic world with W’s GWOT will only pad the coffers of GDLS and Boening. What do you think our efforts during the earthquake and tsunami relief did to dispel the neo-con fueled war mess. I bet the pennies spent in Pakistan, Indonesia and Thailand after the 2004 tsunami win more friends than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
What’s funny is that SD’s link to Volokh proves nothing. Just like SD neither the poster or commenters ever seemed to grasp the simple point that Steiger had no qualifications other than blind partisan judgment on which to suppress anything. So their arguments are pretty much null and void.
JS I ttok your bait and looked at the Volokh link. The poster talks about policy trumping science, but fails to note that Bush 41′s god-son has a PHD in Latin American history. How does this field of study qualify someone to supervise REAL scientist and doctores? His qualifications(Steiger)isn’t even academic, it’s that W’s father and Steiger Sr served together in the Congress. Steiger Jr isn’t even qualified to supervise at the Discovery Institute.