Yucca Mountain

(Hat tip: Brown and Caldwell e-mail.)

I know everyone's been preoccupied with Karl Rove engaging in definition of character, and with Bush's trampling all over the Sacred Ground of the World Trade Center, but yesterday, a scientist involved with Yucca Mountain testified before Congress about some interesting e-mails.

Well, someone might think it's important.

"I have never falsified any documents related to Yucca Mountain or any other project," Joseph Hevesi, a United States Geological Survey hydrologist in Sacramento, told a House Government Reform subcommittee on Wednesday. The panel is investigating e-mails written by Hevesi and other scientists that, according to Yucca Mountain critics, suggest they changed work to reach a predetermined conclusion.

So what did he do?

...continued in full post...

Among [the e-mails]: "In the end I keep track of two sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." QA refers to quality assurance. Explaining that message, Hevesi said that the only difference between the two sets was that the set for quality assurance had a header field. "All the numbers in those files are identical, so in essence they are identical files," Hevesi said. In another e-mail he wrote: "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names. ... This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." Hevesi said that that e-mail reflected his surprise that a few nonessential programs were being required to go through quality assurance protocols. "I'm making an off-the-cuff remark to identify I may not know the exact date. My wording here is poor, and I should have used 'educated guess,'" Hevesi said.