Politico has posted the Inspector General report on the Department of the Interior’s report that suggested Obama’s drilling moratorium had been peer reviewed, which is was not. The IG’s conclusion:
“After reviewing different drafts of the Executive Summary that were exchanged between DOI and the White House prior to its final issuance, the OIG determined that the White House edit of the original DOI draft Executive Summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed by the experts.”
You can read the entire report here. Via Politico, the White House thinks the report exonerates them:
A White House official said the report “only reinforces that there was no wrongdoing,” noting that three experts the IG interviewed and included in the report “agreed that it was a misunderstanding.”
Well, not really. The report says these experts have accepted Ken Salazar’s apology and they think it was a “misunderstanding.” Whether politics was involved in the “misunderstanding” is left up to the reader to decide. Either way, the report does say that the White House implied that the report had a scientific basis when it did not, and used that scientific basis to sell the moratorium to the public.