Kerry accused of exaggerating role as senator in early global warming hearings

Secretary of State John Kerry is taking heat for exaggerating his role as a senator in organizing the chamber’s first climate-change hearings.

 

Questions about Kerry’s repeated assertions that he helped organize and participated in the Senate hearings roughly 27 years ago resurfaced after a March 12 speech before the Atlantic Council, in Washington, D.C.

 

“Climate change is an issue that is personal to me, and it has been since the 1980s, when we were organizing the very first climate hearings in the Senate,” Kerry told the audience. “Al Gore, Tim Wirth and a group of us organized the first hearings in the Senate on this, 1988. We heard Jim Hansen sit in front of us and tell us it’s happening now, 1988.”

 

The Washington Post fact-checker concluded that Kerry at least exaggerated about his involvement and — comparing his statements to recent tall tales by anchor Brian Williams — gave him four “Pinocchios.”

 

The paper concluded he likely didn’t attend the June 23, 1988, hearing and perpetuated often-told details about the event that proved to be false. According to the Post, the March 12 speech was hardly the first time the tale was told.

 

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