Rep. Adams' Odd Line of Questioning

Adams Looks for Answers on NASA Human Spaceflight (with YouTube clip)
“- Questions directed to Dr. Griffin: When you were Administrator at NASA did you or your deputies ever ignore one of the authorization bills?
– Did you ever get subpoenaed by a House or Senate committee for outright ignoring their requests for information?
– Were you or your deputies ever accused by a Senator in your own party of sabotaging a NASA project just because you didn’t agree with Congress?
– Did you ever decide to ignore the role or will of Congress when they asked for your plans to implement the next step in President Bush’s vision for NASA?
– Can you think of any reason to slow roll a project that has been authorized and demanded by Congress in Federal law?
– Can you think of any reason why it would be acceptable for a NASA Administrator or his or her deputy to ignore Congress?”
Keith’s note: It would seem that Rep. Adams and her staff see her as some sort of crusader on this issue. They have gleefully posted her 5 minutes of questions on YouTube. Alas, she doesn’t seem to be willing or able to directly accuse the current NASA Administrator, his staff – or the White House – of sabotage, ignoring Congress, etc. Instead, she used this odd line of questioning – one that can only elicit an answer of “No” from Griffin (or anyone else). The implication (apparently) being that if he didn’t do these things then perhaps someone else (not in the room) may have. Mike Griffin seemed to be caught off guard by this line of questioning and answered curtly “no” each time – as if he was being interrogated by some snarky TV lawyer.
I guess Rep. Adams was hoping that Griffin would use the opportunity to dump on Bolden and the White House – but he did not. Indeed, Griffin went on to note that the NASA Administrator serves the Executive branch and that the Executive branch directs the agency’s direction and for a NASA Administrator not to do what he was directed to do would be “mutinous”. In other words, Bolden is doing what his boss wants him to do.
In the future, it might be more efficient for Rep. Adams to just fire her accusations directly at the Obama Administration and not try to do the indirect insinuation by proxy TV lawyer thing and try to get a former NASA Administrator to say the things she is reluctant to say herself.