[PAA-Discuss] A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA

[Sarah Gonzales]

Go Bush's appointees! First Bush appoints a guy to head up FEMA whose  
qualifications were that he chaired the National Horse Association,   
heckuva job brownie! Now Bush appoints a TWENTY FOUR (24) year old  
who just coincidentally worked on his election campaign to head up  
Nasa! This guy falsified his resume to include:

* graduating from Texas A&M with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism  
(since WHEN would a 24 year old with a degree in journalism be  
appointed to head up Nasa????), but... he even lied about completing  
his degree

* then this 24 year old-I-can't-even-graduate-with-a-degree-in- 
journalism censors access to a top climate specialist from Nasa

boy - the truth simply astounds the mind.

<snip>
February 8, 2006
A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/politics/08nasa.html?pagewanted=print

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told  
public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate  
scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every  
mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at  
Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there,  
as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the  
resignation.

"Under NASA policy, it is inappropriate to discuss personnel  
matters," said Dean Acosta, the deputy assistant administrator for  
public affairs and Mr. Deutsch's boss.

The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space  
Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating  
science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D.  
Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency  
scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New  
York Times instances in which they said political pressure was  
applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the  
Bush administration, particularly global warming.

"As we have stated in the past, NASA is in the process of revising  
our public affairs policies across the agency to ensure our  
commitment to open and full communications," the statement from Mr.  
Acosta said.

The statement said the resignation of Mr. Deutsch was "a separate  
matter."

Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's  
public affairs office in Washington last year after working on  
President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee,  
according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the  
document.

According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in  
journalism, Class of 2003."

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case.

"George Carlton Deutsch III did attend Texas A&M University but has  
not completed the requirements for a degree," said an e-mail message  
from Rita Presley, assistant to the registrar at the university,  
responding to a query from The Times.

Repeated calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Deutsch on Tuesday were not  
answered.

Mr. Deutsch's educational record was first challenged on Monday by  
Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a  
biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy,  
scientificactivist.blogspot.com.

After Mr. Anthis read about the problems at NASA, he said in an  
interview: "It seemed like political figures had really overstepped  
the line. I was just going to write some commentary on this when  
somebody tipped me off that George Deutsch might not have graduated."

He posted a blog entry asserting this after he checked with the  
university's association of former students. He reported that the  
association said Mr. Deutsch received no degree.

A copy of Mr. Deutsch's résumé was provided to The Times by someone  
working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA  
employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an  
intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the  
flow of information to the public.

Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James  
E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs  
officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr.  
Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews  
on the threats posed by global warming.

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's  
credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader  
issue of political control of scientific information.

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The  
problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies.  
That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he  
said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which  
obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."