Once again the Houston Chronicle is looking to whip up controversy

Once again the Houston Chronicle is looking to whip up controversy:

“When reporters responded by asking O’Keefe to make more NASA personnel available for interviews, the administrator fumed, “No! That would be throwing another log on the fire!” A few days later, though, his agency did produce two more engineers for an hourlong conference call.”

Editor’s Note: With all due respect to the authors I was in the same room when this happened. O’Keefe did not “fume”. To be certain, he was clearly angered and did say these words, but he did not “fume”. That is an exageration. But, I supose, this is a matter of adjective choice, and where you were sitting in the room. More importantly however, given that this article appeared after Bob Daugherty’s telecon with reporters, the authors seem to have utterly ignored what Mr. Daugherty actually said about his unavailability to reporters i.e. he felt that he needed to talk with the CAIB first. The CAIB subsequently absolved him of that and he was free to speak – and he did – for two hours.

“… at [a] subsequent hearing, when Rep. Arnold Weiner, D-N.Y., a member of the House Science Committee, criticized O’Keefe for not being aware of safety concerns expressed in e-mail while Columbia was still in orbit, the exasperated NASA head said it would be impossible to keep abreast of the daily e-mail messages of everyone in his 18,000-member agency. Even if he could, he said later, he would be “the least competent individual in the agency” to make decisions on shuttle safety.”

Editor’s note: Did this article include the fact that Rep. Weiner was sooooooooo concerned about this issue at the hearing that he immediately turned to checking his own email on his Blackberry and reading staff memos (while sitting on the dais) as soon as the cameras were off of him? Again, more importantly, the authors lift O’Keefe’s quote “the least competent individual in the agency” out of a long, and well-explained context. Again, I was in the room.

Oh yes: (as another space reporter just pointed out to me), Rep. Weiner’s first name is not “Arnold” it is “Anthony”.

Simplistic analysis, pre-set conclusions, selective quoting out of context, and the ignoring of key facts is not how the public should be presented with this unfolding story. Indeed, it is a disservice to present things as this article does.