NASA Refuses To Tell Its Employees What Griffin Said
Date: Mon, 03 Apr 2006 16:47:03 -0400
Subject: The Administrator’s Remarks on March 24
Point of Contact: Dean Acosta, Office of Public Affairs, (202) 358-1400
The Administrator’s Remarks on March 24
On March 30, 2006, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and Deputy Administrator Shana Dale held a NASA Update. In response to a question, the administrator offered to provide to NASA employees an excerpt from the speech he gave at the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation Banquet on March 24.
The NASA General Counsel has determined that it would not be appropriate to distribute this excerpt through NASA INC. However, the speech has been the subject of several media reports, and public interest in the administrator’s remarks has made it appropriate to release this excerpt to the press. Employees who are interested in this matter may refer to those accounts for details.
Editor’s note: What could possibly be wrong with distributing the comments made by the Administrator of NASA – coments made in an official capacity as an invited quest at this event? Did Griffin do something that was not “appropriate”? Moreover, this memo tells employees that they have to go to some external media source to find out what their boss said while on the job. Yet NASA routinely publishes transcripts of Griffin’s appearances at many other speaking events.
In other words, NASA can tell its employees in an official memo that it can’t distribute the text – yet simultaneously, in the very same memo, NASA is allowed to mention the event and the existence of a transcript (which it can’t release to them); that NASA is going to give that transcript (in an official capacity) to reporters so that news outlets can publish it; and then tell employees that they can find that transcript in locations external to the agency.
Please tell me how such a convoluted chain of informing employees is, in any way, keeping with the spirit of a new, efficient, and more open communications policy? What is Griffin afraid of? This is just goofy.
