You could easily have figured all this out for yourself, but on last night's NBC News, the EPA's inspector general, Nikki Tinsley, discussed the government's deceptively reassuring report on air quality at ground zero in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 -- a report she knew wasn't telling the full story -- and laid the blame for the deception where it belongs.

Here's the story, by Lisa Myers. And here's the transcript of the full interview. An excerpt:

Tinsley: The press releases were part of a collaborative process. The agency and all aspects of the federal government wanted to speak with one voice. I think that’s a good thing. I think that the federal government should speak with one voice. Our concern with the few press releases that we talk about in our report is that that one voice did not fully inform the public.

Myers: And the one voice was dictated, to some extent, by the White House?
       
Tinsley: That’s what our work shows.

Myers reports that

more than 25 percent of dust samples collected before Sept. 18 showed unsafe levels of asbestos. And the EPA had no test results at all on PCBs, dioxins or particulates in the air that can cause respiratory problems.

But the EPA reported that the air was safe. Here's more from the interview:

Tinsley: Our work shows on two earlier press releases, September 13th and September 16th, that there was Council of [sic] Environmental Quality involvement. And deleting cautionary statements from the press releases and adding some assurances.

The Council on Environmental Quality is part of the Executive Office of the President.

The decision to make the report reassuring was apparently not up for discussion:

Myers: You must have had lengthy discussions with the White House about your report?

Tinsley: We did not discuss our report with the White House. We wanted to interview the CEQ employee that was involved in the collaborative process. We were never able to get access to that person to interview that person. So the only information we have on CEQ’s involvement comes from EPA employees.

Myers: So the White House refused even to talk to you?

Tinsley: Council of Environmental Quality did not talk to us. And we were contacted by White House counsel that said that we weren’t going to have that interview.

So, once again, the deception trail leads to the White House. Once again, the fish stinks from the head.