As shown by the following videos, BP and government representatives are still keeping scientists and reporters away from areas impacted by oil.
WEAR ABC news documented yesterday that federal agents are preventing reporters from digging in the sand to look for oil:
Award-winning investigative reporter Dahr Jamail says in a new interview that a federal agent confiscated Gulf oil samples:
Representatives of the oil spill commission are harassing independent scientists who are finding contamination in the Gulf, and questioning whether they have permits to even take samples:
Scientists' samples have been confiscated by the police and - according to someone calling in to NPR's Science Friday show and claiming to be an adjunct professor at Texas A & M - by homeland security:
And as Newsweek notes:
Since the gulf oil spill first began gushing on April 20, Linda Hooper-Bui's research group has repeatedly run up against the authorities. In May, a Fish and Wildlife Service officer confiscated insect samples that one of Hooper-Bui’s students had been collecting on a publicly accessible beach in southern Alabama. On research trips in Louisiana, her students have been stopped by sheriff’s deputies—one time after driving 150 miles—simply for attempting to study the ecological impact of oil and dispersants. Time and again, they were told that they couldn’t access their normal research sites unless they were working for BP or the government.
