Max Mayfield: 'No One Forced Me to Say Anything'

Dec. 11, 2007 — -- The former director of the National Hurricane Center says political pressure did not cause him to change his congressional testimony to downplay the link between global warming and hurricanes — contradicting the findings of a Democratic led investigation released Monday.

"I can truthfully say that no one told me at any time what to say in regard to possible impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones," said Max Mayfield in an e-mail to ABC News.

Mayfield was responding to questions about a section in a new report titled "Political Interference With Climate Change Science Under the Bush Administration" — the end result of a 16-month investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee is chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

The report notes that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mayfield was due to testify at a Sept. 2005 hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on disaster prevention. The connection between global warming and stronger hurricanes had been getting renewed attention after new scientific studies released over the previous summer.

The Waxman report details an e-mail from Tom Jones, a staffer for Alaska's Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, that he wrote to Noel Turner, an employee in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in the days leading up to the hearings. Jones apparently wanted Mayfield to say that global warming was not making hurricanes stronger.

"We're going to work on smacking the [expletive] out of this issue," Jones wrote. "I'd love to have an answer from him that doesn't contain any long words or flavor of equivocation. Something like, 'mr chairman, the individuals who are implying that Katrina has something to do with global warming are just plain wrong. They don't understand the science and they're shamelessly trying to make political hay out of a national tragedy.'"

Turner then e-mailed a colleague at NOAA about Jones' request.