Drillgate: Cover Up at Interior, Internal Emails Show

American Solutions has been working the last several months with the help of the Freedom of Information Act (more background about those efforts here) to get to the bottom of "Drillgate," the continuing saga of trying to find out from the Department of the Interior (DOI) what were the results of the six month long public comment period on the five year plan for new offshore oil and gas development. 

Finally, as reported today in the Wall Street Journal, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the DOI delivered some indirect confirmation in its response to our FOIA request that pro-drilling comments surpassed anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

Notwithstanding this new information, it's now over four months after the close of the comment period (in which 530,000 comments were received) and still no official public announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the final results, who had said in April 2009 that President Obama directed him in respect of the comment period to "to make sure that we have an open and transparent government" and make sure that DOI was "maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do" because "these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors."

Lacking confidence that the DOI would be prompt and efficient in announcing a tabulation - especially since we were informed by sources that the result of the tabulation showed a 2-1 advantage of pro-drilling to anti-drilling comments - American Solutions filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on October 26, 2009 for documents related to the comment period tabulation.  Following weeks of delay, and a second FOIA request, American Solutions received yesterday over 500 pages of emails from the MMS responsive to our FOIA request.

And while MMS has still failed to produce an organized summary of the tabulated results - its latest letter to us says that MMS will send us additional information by February 17, 2010 so perhaps there's still hope -- one internal email they did provide confirms indirectly the overwhelming support for offshore drilling recorded during the comment period.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Minerals Management Service Director Liz Birnbaum wrote to other senior MMS and DOI officials (including Salazar's chief of staff, and DOI's Deputy Director) and brought to their attention an October 26, 2009 press release from American Solutions about our first FOIA request.  In her email, Ms. Birnbaum noted that Secretary Salazar may get questions about this FOIA request during his trip to Houston.  She explained that the preliminary tabulation of the comment period results has not been given to the Secretary so he could still truthfully say in response to any questions that "he's not yet seen the analysis of the comments - staff is still working on it."  Birnbaum then adds "I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing."

There you have it.  Open and transparent this Obama government is not.  Is there any doubt that Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period's overwhelming results in support of new offshore drilling?  

The lesson we should learn in this little episode is that if the Obama Interior Department doesn't like the guidance they get from the American people, they'll cover it up.

UPDATE: Read more coverage of Drillgate in Big Government, Investor's Business Daily, NRO Online, Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, and the Weekly Standard.