One of the standard practices of public relations is that the best time to release a statement, study, report, press release, etc. that you don't want to get much attention is late on a Friday afternoon or the day before a major holiday, like New Year's. So the fact that NASA decided that December 31 was the right time to release its long-withheld study of commercial airline pilots complaints about the air traffic control system by itself makes you wonder why NASA was trying to bury the information.

But the best indication that NASA is trying to minimize the impact of the report is what it said when the report was released. When it first refused several months ago to reveal the data from the report, NASA said it didn't want to do so because the information might reduce the public's confidence in flying. But according to a story in The Washington Post today, in releasing the report NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said just the opposite. The money quote from Griffin:

It's hard for me to see any data (in the report) the traveling public would care about or ought to care about.

I'm assuming that Griffin knew what was in the report several months ago, sohe incredibly obvious complete contradiction from NASA's first position about why it would not release the report and what it stated yesterday when it was forced to make the report public is infuriating.  Either the first statement was true and the report should not have been released, or the second statement was true and the report should have been made public.  Griffin can't have it both ways.  He was either lying the first time or lying the second time.

But the better question is why did Griffin and the NASA communications team think no one would notice this attempt at a ridiculous verbal sleight-of-hand.

Actually, an equally good question is why The Post didn't point out this contradiction in its story.