After three years of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, denials, public accusations and lawsuits, the Rumple Report, long sought after by amphibole asbestos activists in Libby, Montana, at least one reporter, and a public watchdog group, but withheld by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General, has finally been released.

The report confirms that there have been major mistakes made by the EPA in its cleanup of the nation’s most deadly Superfund site in Libby.

The OIG’s April 29 release of the report marks a major shift in the future of investigative reporting. President Barack Obama, who promised on Jan. 21, 2009 to reverse a Bush administration policy that directed government agencies to err on the side of withholding documents requested under FOIA, has so far made good on his word.

This means the Rumple Report may only be the beginning, a small leak indicating a major burst of information that will shed light on EPA policies. Already, Washington, D.C. based nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is already submitting requests for more documents pertaining to the Libby cleanup.

The Missoula Independent initially attempted to get the report through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May of 2006. When this was rejected, the paper ran a cover story entitled “A Dangerous Lie,” in which four men closely involved with the Superfund cleanup talked about what they believed was in the report.

Gordon Sullivan, Gerry Henningsen, Abe Troyer and Clinton Maynard, had suspected the EPA was not using scientific standards to clean Libby, in part because it had never done a risk assessment of amphibole asbestos.

Amphibole asbestos is particular to Libby, Montana, and a few other places around the world. An official study on the health risks of amphibole asbestos had never been completed, and because of this, Sullivan, Henningsen, Troyer and Clinton believed the EPA had no way of knowing whether the clean up, on which $110 million had been spent, was successful, because there was no known safe exposure limit.

As evidenced in the Rumple Report, many observers of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Libby cleanup believe the agency’s policies could still be exposing people to amphibole asbestos, which has killed hundreds and sickened thousands.

It is documented that public health statements made by Bush administration officials, which downplayed the risks posed by Libby amphibole asbestos released in Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, were used by W.R. Grace to lower the standards of the Libby cleanup.

It is also documented that, despite spending more than $110 million on the Libby Superfund cleanup, EPA still has no idea exactly how dangerous amphibole asbestos is, and yet portrayed to the community that Libby asbestos was safe in small quantities.

Eventually, pressure from the public, media reports, and congressmen pushed the EPA to retract information it released to the community that minimized risks of asbestos, and caused the agency to begin the process of investigating the risk posed by amphibole asbestos.

Gordon Sullivan says one of the most important revelations of the report is that the EPA’s own scientists were intensely critical of how standards had changed in Libby post-9/11.

“The most extreme issue in that entire report comes from inside the EPA,” he says. “When your head toxicologist says it’s unconscionable, you’ve got a problem.”

Sullivan refers to Chris Weis, Senior Toxicologist of the EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center. According to the report, OIG Special Agent Cory Rumple asked Weis about a brochure entitled “Living with Vermiculite” which was mailed to all Libby addresses, and states that low-level, short-term exposure to asbestos is not dangerous, and that it is perfectly safe to vacuum up “small releases” with HEPA vacuums, or wipe them up with damp cloths, as New Yorkers were told to do.

Weis, according to the report, “stated the language within that document contained ‘double speak,’ adding in his opinion it was ‘unconscionable’ to write a document with such language.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) may have just admitted that the EPA’s expenditure of seven years and $110 million dollars cleaning asbestos from Libby, with no way of knowing if the town is clean, was criminal.

But it’s hard to tell for sure.

Since June 2006, the Independent and others have tried to acquire a report filed by former OIG agent Cory Rumple that first called into question EPA’s cleanup of Libby, without success.

On Aug. 8, 2007 the OIG offered its reasons for not complying with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the report by Washington, D.C. non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

According to the response letter OIG sent to PEER, documents pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations are exempt from FOIA, and, “The Rumple document was compiled in the course of, and relates to, an open criminal investigation…”

When the Independent first began asking OIG about Rumple’s investigation in April 2006, an OIG spokesman said the agency did two types of investigations, one for efficiency and one for criminal activity, and that the OIG policy was to neither confirm nor deny the existence of criminal investigations.

The spokesman then refused to confirm or deny the existence of the Rumple investigation. Rumple himself admitted to working as a criminal investigator.

Over time, the OIG has changed its rationale for not releasing information on the investigation or the report it produced. In August 2006 OIG told the Independent that the report did not exist. In October 2006, OIG acknowledged the report’s existence, in response to a FOIA request by the Independent, but said it was an exempt communication between a subordinate and a superior (a reason OIG also used when denying PEER’s request).

On August 6, 2007, in an interview with the Independent, EPA chief Stephen Johnson characterized the OIG’s role in the Libby cleanup as “program evaluation,” which would seem to suggest the agency’s work was an “efficiency” investigation.

Two days later, the target moved again.

PEER director Jeff Ruch says his group will decide this week whether to pursue the Rumple report in court.