Powerful stuff from IBD, which writes of “The CRU’s Criminal Conspiracy”:

The CRU scientists, and we use that word reluctantly, had no fondness for transparency and full disclosure. In a December 2008 e-mail to Ben Santer, himself responsible for a controversial rewriting of the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CRU director Phil Jones wrote: “When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half-hour sessions — one at a screen, to convince them otherwise.”

In regard to one particularly pesky FOI request, Jones said: “About 2 months ago I deleted loads of e-mails, so have very little — if anything at all.” Yet in an interview published last Tuesday in the Guardian, Jones told another story: “We’ve not deleted any e-mails or data here at CRU. I would never manipulate the data one bit — I would categorically deny that.”

In one exchange, Jones tells Penn State’s Michael Mann: “If they ever hear there’s a Freedom of Information Act in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” He even asks Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about an IPCC assessment report: “Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re: (the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report)?”

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