Environmental journalist (and in my mind Hero) Mark Hertsgaard Has published the Corexit story in Newsweek.

What BP Doesn't Want You to Know About (The Gulf Oil Disaster)

The article is brilliant and detailed, and...

Such collective amnesia may seem surprising (... Obama, the same president who early in the BP crisis blasted the "scandalously close relationship" between oil companies and government regulators two years later ran for reelection boasting about how much new oil and gas development his administration had approved...ED.), but there may be a good explanation for it: BP mounted a cover-up that concealed the full extent of its crimes from public view. This cover-up prevented the media and therefore the public from knowing--and above all, seeing--just how much oil was gushing into the gulf. The disaster appeared much less extensive and destructive than it actually was. BP declined to comment for this article.

That BP lied about the amount of oil it discharged into the gulf is already established. Lying to Congress about that was one of 14 felonies to which BP pleaded guilty last year in a legal settlement with the Justice Department that included a $4.5 billion fine, the largest fine ever levied against a corporation in the U.S.

What has not been revealed until now is how BP hid that massive amount of oil from TV cameras and the price that this "disappearing act" imposed on cleanup workers, coastal residents, and the ecosystem of the gulf. That story can now be told because an anonymous whistleblower has provided evidence that BP was warned in advance about the safety risks of attempting to cover up its leaking oil. Nevertheless, BP proceeded. Furthermore, BP appears to have withheld these safety warnings, as well as protective measures, both from the thousands of workers hired for the cleanup and from the millions of Gulf Coast residents who stood to be affected.

The financial implications are enormous.

Don't fret, it gets worse.

But BP had a problem: it had lied about how safe Corexit is, and proof of its dishonesty would eventually fall into the hands of the Government Accountability Project, the premiere whistleblower-protection group in the U.S. The proof? A technical manual BP had received from NALCO, the firm that supplied the Corexit that BP used in the gulf.

An electronic copy of that manual is included in a new report GAP has issued, "Deadly Dispersants in the Gulf." On the basis of interviews with dozens of cleanup workers, scientists, and Gulf Coast residents, GAP concludes that the health impacts endured by Griffin were visited upon many other locals as well. What's more, the combination of Corexit and crude oil also caused terrible damage to gulf wildlife and ecosystems, including an unprecedented number of seafood mutations; declines of up to 80 percent in seafood catch; and massive die-offs of the microscopic life-forms at the base of the marine food chain. GAP warns that BP and the U.S. government nevertheless appear poised to repeat the exercise after the next major oil spill: "As a result of Corexit's perceived success, Corexit ... has become the dispersant of choice in the U.S. to `clean up' oil spills."

Disperse and repeat.

And finally, the positive news.

Nor has the BP oil disaster triggered the kind of changes in law and public priorities one might have expected. "Not much has actually changed," says Mark Davis of Tulane. "It reflects just how wedded our country is to keeping the Gulf of Mexico producing oil and bringing it to our shores as cheaply as possible. Going forward, no one should assume that just because something really bad happened we're going to manage oil and gas production with greater sensitivity and wisdom. That will only happen if people get involved and compel both the industry and the government to be more diligent."

And so the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has been whitewashed--its true dimensions obscured, its victims forgotten, its lessons ignored. Who says cover-ups never work?

Poison.