Andrew Revkin has an item up today at the New York Times’s Dot Earth blog on our expanded inquiry into NASA’s problems with temperature-data management and manipulation. He addresses a FOIA request of mine first sent to NASA late in the afternoon of January 26. Remember that timing for a moment.

Andy is fair, though he did forget to also include NASA’s correspondence to him whining for coverage of our search for documents which are ours — and yours — not theirs. I will console myself with the fact that he failed to provide the hit job that, I presume by their actions, they sought. So, their contacting Dot Earth only served NASA GISS to activate a conduit, reaching out to the broader world of Big Green advocacy — because they can’t send out a call-to-arms on their own (for fear of that same, nagging FOIA law).

Documents I recently obtained, under other FOIA requests alluded to in my e-mail to Andy, reveal that other Obama administration agencies weren’t quite so cautious in their work with outside advocacy groups to advance the global-warming agenda and those of some friendly business interests. More on that later.

In response to Andy’s piece this morning, someone commented to me how fascinating it was for NASA to run to the New York Times over the weekend, after waiting two years to respond to my opening request for documents that, as I will soon detail, are disturbing and in a few cases even damning in their content (incidentally, on Friday I filed our appeal of NASA’s substantial refusals to provide other documents responsive to the initial August 2007 and January 2008 requests, and expect to litigate later this month immediately upon their affirmation of the refusal, if that is indeed the route they choose).

Yes, that was prompt for an agency that couldn’t quite seem to find time to attend to my earlier requests. The thing about that is, Andy contacted me the morning of the next day after I sent the FOIA, in the later afternoon. Which means NASA actually contacted him about it, oh, immediately.

Panic.