NASA’s top climate scientist said the Bush administration has tried to
stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture in December calling
for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, The New York
Times said on Saturday.

In an interview with the newspaper, James
Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said
that officials at the space agency’s headquarters had ordered the
public affairs staff to review his lectures, papers, postings on the
Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

"They
feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the
public," the Times quoted Hansen as saying, adding that the scientist
planned to ignore the new restrictions.

A NASA spokesman denied
any effort to silence Hansen, the Times said. "That’s not the way we
operate here at NASA," said Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator
for public affairs. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

Rather,
the spokesman said the restrictions applied to any and all NASA
personnel who could be seen by the public as speaking for the agency.
Acosta added, however, that while government scientists were free to
discuss scientific findings, policy statements should be left to policy
makers and appointed spokesmen, the Times said.

The story was posted on its Web site and will be published in Sunday’s editions.

Hansen,
a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is an authority on
climate who directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers
at Manhattan’s Goddard Institute.

More here.