Readers may remember that several months ago, Chris Horner of the CEI reported that people working for the IPCC had set up private portals, apparently to allow them to communicate without being subject to FOI legislation. The original story at WUWT is here and Horner does not mince his words, noting the parallels with the Abramoff case.
Horner responded to this news by issuing a FOIA request for any related correspondence held by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a partial response has now been received. Roughly two thirds of the responsive documents are being withheld.
The most interesting record released is the one extracted below:
From: (bl(6)
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 10:56 AM
To: Duffy, Philip
Cc: (b)(6) (b)(6)
Subject: OSTP follow up
Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: RedDear Phil -
Here' s the access credentials to both the ARS Author Portal and the SREX Author Portal. Yes, intentionally similar. They do the same thing!https : //www . ipcc-wg2 . gov/ARS/author/index .php
username (b)(6)
password ~ (b)(6)https://www . ipcc- wg2 .gov/e xtremes-sr/author/index . html
username (b)(6)
password ~ (b)(6)Yes , <ipcc-wg2 .gov> -- both public and password-protected pages -- reside on virtual machines on Carnegie VMWare physical hosts .
Sorry for the delay getting this info to you. Particularly busy time . And will remain this way through February of next year (SREX book launch) when we will get a very slight breather. It's worth reminding everyone that the TSU is a VERY SMALL operation ....
I 'cc' Chris only to make him aware of the request for info. Chris, no action required.
dave
P.S. You should read the status report for the AR5 prepared for IPCC-XXXIV for an overview of what is going on.
P.S.2. You should read the distributed cost proposals (FY10/FY11) and annual reports to see our work plan and deliverables (milestones).
> Hi Dave , Thanks for your time earlier this evening . In addition for
> asking for guest access to the portal , I want to confirm that you
> indicated that the portal resides at Stanford on hardware owned by
> Carnegie. Is that correct? Thanks again for your help. I'll see you in Kampala.
>
> Phil
>
> Philip B. Duffy
> Senior Policy Analyst
> Office of Science and Technology
> President Washington DC . 20502
> (b)(6)
>
The discussion of the ownership of the hardware makes it It hard to avoid the impression that this does indeed represent an attempt to bypass FOI legislation, although the OSTP has denied that it is a communication channel, suggesting that it is only a repository for documents. These claims appear among the other papers disclosed.
The other point of note is that David Appell appears to be dogging Horner's every footstep, asking for copies of anything released to the CEI man. Nothing wrong with that of course, but interesting nevertheless.
The full document release is below.