As many of you likely know, just after 9/11, the White House forced the EPA to suppress warnings about the possible toxicity of the air and dust in lower Manhattan. The culprit was an outfit called the Council on Environmental Quality headed up by a guy named James Connaughton, a former polluter lawyer and lobbyist.

Connaughton, back in 2003, claimed the press releases were rewritten in the name of 'national security'.

Well, yesterday, Connaughton got called up to Capitol Hill for a hearing into what happened and why. And the result was such a tour de force of testimonial BS that we wanted to show you some of it. We see a lot of congressional testimony and thus a lot of non-denial-denying, obfuscation and generally bamboozling crap. But this performance stood out. Watch these excerpts of Connaughton's explanation in today's episode of TPMtv and see if you can figure out even what he's saying and why the guy is still in office ...

Late Update: For a transcript of today's episode, click here.