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Questioning The White House's Motives

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By BOB DEVINE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 14, 2008

When it comes to the Bush administration's ethical lapses in the name of fighting terrorism, how will history view their motives? Have Bush and his crew been doing the wrong things for the right reasons? Have they resorted to unethical behavior only because they were inflamed by their passion to protect America?

Many observers, including some harsh critics, seem to think so. For example, I recently heard a radio interview with Jane Mayer, the investigative reporter who wrote "The Dark Side," a book about the Bush administration's torture of suspected terrorists. Mayer decried the actions of the administration officials who enabled the torture, but she speculated that their unethical behavior arises from their genuine and overwhelming post-9/11 fear of another terrorist attack.

I have my doubts. I think the White House has other motives, too, such as the pursuit of power and profit. Not that I can see into their hearts. Nor do I have a Deep Throat feeding me inside information. But I do have insight into the administration's treatment of the environment - I wrote a book on the subject - and in that very different arena I've seen the same pattern of iniquitous behavior without a crisis to explain the transgressions.

Take the manipulation of information to serve political ends, a staple in the administration's anti-terrorism conduct. Pushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil companies, Bush appointees at the Interior Department suppressed authoritative data indicating that drilling likely would harm the area's huge caribou herd. In an attempt to downplay global warming, the White House tampered with a major Environmental Protection Agency report. As White House meddling metastasized, a group of eminent scientists issued a statement replete with comments such as "The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease if the public is to be properly informed..." As of this writing more than 15,000 American scientists have signed on to that statement.

Remember the appointments of Bush loyalists and right-wing ideologues to key positions during the reconstruction of Iraq? They often seemed more interested in instituting a flat tax or privatizing the economy than in preventing terrorism by restoring order to the war-torn country. White House appointments to top environmental positions have likewise been political and ideological. For example, the president tapped J. Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for coal and oil companies, to be deputy secretary of the Interior. (Griles ended up in prison for obstruction of justice.) To head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an obscure but powerful entity that oversees all federal regulation, Bush selected Susan Dudley, a stalwart at a corporate-funded anti-regulatory think tank. Mark Rey, a long-time lobbyist for the timber industry, was installed as the undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture that oversees the Forest Service.

Sometimes the administration's putative anti-terrorism policies inappropriately serve business interests, even in a war zone like Iraq - think Halliburton and Blackwater. Such a corruption of priorities occurs nonstop when it comes to the environment. When Vice President Cheney developed the administration's energy policy, he convened a task force of energy industry representatives - no conservationists allowed. The administration has repeatedly failed to enforce a part of the Clean Air Act that was intended to force dirty coal-fired power plants and their ilk to clean up their emissions. The White House has stacked advisory committees with business representatives who try to water down regulations.

The list of underhanded methods goes on and on, but not one of these tactics has been driven by a 9/11-like emergency. And I suspect the White House also has been misbehaving without the excuse of a crisis in areas besides the environment - the financial sector comes to mind. We'll probably never know for sure what has caused the administration to act unethically in the war on terror, but the evidence from other arenas strongly suggests that rather than doing the wrong things for the right reasons they've been doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

Bob Devine is the author of numerous books about the environment and natural history, including "Bush Versus the Environment." He also has written many articles on environmental issues for publications such as the Atlantic Monthly and Audubon.

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