On Monday, a House committee released documents that showed hundreds of instances in which a former oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role. The official, Philip Cooney, served as President Bush’s chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Prior to working in the White House, Cooney served as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil lobby based in Washington, D.C. Cooney acknowledged that some of the changes he made were to align the studies with the administration’s stated policy on climate change.

Philip Cooney: “It had really nothing to do with my prior employment at the American Petroleum Institute. When I came to the White House, my loyalties were to the president and his administration.”

Coney now works for ExxonMobil.