Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson is reporting damning new details about the Obama administration’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The story includes evidence that top administration officials hid their agencies’ estimates about the true nature of the spill from the public. It also shows in painstaking detail how aloof Obama and the White House were during the weeks immediately following the spill.
Dickinson, the story’s author, is a liberal who in past stories was effusive in his praise of the administration’s environment policies. The story is likely to increase criticism that Obama’s response to the spill is akin to the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Several key environmentalists in the story pin blame for the oil spill on Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar, who they say has presided over a third term of the Bush administration at the agency. At one point, Dickinson notes that oil giant Exxon’s response to its own spill, the Exxon Valdez spill, was in some ways superior to Obama’s handling of the ongoing BP oil spill.