Massey Energy’s Ex-Chief Rejects Finding in Blast

WASHINGTON — Two weeks after an independent government commission concluded that Massey Energy was to blame for the explosion that killed 29 coal miners last year, the company’s former chairman released a report on Thursday disputing the panel’s finding.

The circumstances of the release were peculiar. It was made public this week by Bobby R. Inman, Massey’s former chairman. Mr. Inman no longer has a role in the company, after its purchase last week by Alpha Natural Resources, a Virginia-based company, but he is named in multiple lawsuits by shareholders. In a cover letter on his own letterhead dated Thursday, Mr. Inman said that the report was completed before the merger with Alpha, but that it was held at the request of Alpha executives who wanted to “minimize publicity” pre-sale.

In a terse statement, Alpha stated that it “did not commission or authorize the release of this report or the letter, and was not given the opportunity to review either this report or the letter before their public release.”

Alpha added that it had warned Massey before the merger that it would be “inappropriate” to release any findings before Alpha had a chance to conduct its own review of what happened, a warning that Mr. Inman, a retired Navy admiral, apparently chose not to heed.

“It would have been easy just to let it slide, and I certainly don’t need any additional publicity,” Mr. Inman wrote. He chose to “release the report now on my own,” out of “a strong sense of responsibility for all those who mine coal.”

The 102-page report reiterated Massey’s earlier assertion that the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia on April 5, 2010, was caused by a sudden and massive inundation of natural gas, essentially an “act of God” that would have been impossible to predict or control.

That conclusion directly contradicts the May finding by a commission, led by a former federal mine safety chief, J. Davitt McAteer, that placed the blame for the explosion on Massey’s negligence and culture of putting production over safety.

The Massey report also disputed the panel’s conclusion that coal dust, which had been allowed to accumulate, had carried the explosion through the mine, making it far more lethal than it might otherwise have been.

It defended the mine’s ventilation system, which the commission said had helped create conditions for the blast.

The report spent considerable space detailing what it said were the failures of the federal Mining, Safety and Health Administration, including, it said, secrecy, witness intimidation and obstruction of Massey investigators.

Mr. McAteer disputed that assessment in a telephone interview, and said that some of the report’s conclusions “simply don’t make any sense,” like the assertion that the high levels of natural gas in the mine after the explosion were evidence that a big gas infusion was the cause.

“Quite frankly, that conclusion is uninformed,” Mr. McAteer said, explaining that spikes in methane occur after virtually every mine disaster.

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Hacking of White House E-mail Affected Diverse Departments

WASHINGTON — The computer phishing attack that Google says originated in China was directed, somewhat indiscriminately, at an unknown number of White House staff officials, setting off the Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry that began this week, according to several administration officials.

It is unclear how many White House staff members — or those of other departments in the executive branch — might have been affected, according to two officials with knowledge of the investigation. But the intended victims ranged across various functions in the White House, and were not limited to those working on national security, economic policy or trade areas that would be of particular interest to the Chinese government.

Administration officials said they had no evidence any confidential information was breached, or even that many people fell for the attack by providing information that would allow a breach of their Gmail accounts.

White House classified systems run on dedicated lines and information on those systems, the officials said, cannot be forwarded to Gmail accounts. But investigators were trying to determine if the attackers believed that some staff members or other officials used their personal e-mail accounts for confidential government communications.

“Right now,” said one senior official, “that’s a theory, not a fact.”

Google disclosed the attack this week and said that it was directed at not only American government officials, but also human right activists, journalists and South Korea’s government. Google tracked the attack to Jinan, China, which is the home to a Chinese military regional command center.

But that does not necessarily mean the attackers were Chinese or related to the government. The Chinese government denied any involvement.

The attack used e-mails that appeared to be tailored to their victims, the better to fool them, a technique known as spear phishing. Recipients were asked to click on a link to a phony Gmail login page that gave the hackers access to their personal accounts.

The attacks come as the United States government considers expanding its use of Web-based software for e-mail, along with word processing, spreadsheets and other kinds of documents. Google is one of the many companies vying for the business with its Apps product, as is Microsoft.

Web based e-mail would be vulnerable to hackers who steal login information through phishing attacks. But Web-based systems are not necessarily any easier to hack than traditional e-mail, which a government agency would usually manage using its own servers, said Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, a computer security firm in Traverse City, Mich.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday that all White House-related electronic mail was supposed to be conducted on work e-mail accounts to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which governs how those communications are protected and archived. Mr. Carney said there was no evidence that any White House accounts were compromised.

White House employees are permitted to have private e-mail accounts, he said, but cannot use them for work purposes.

Officials at the White House and other agencies often keep two computers in their offices, one for unclassified work and another for classified. Senior officials sometimes have a “secure facility” in their homes, in which computers and telephones are on dedicated lines and communications are encrypted.

Given its size, Google and its Gmail system will always make an attractive target.

Other personal e-mail services, including Yahoo and Microsoft’s Hotmail, have faced similar attacks, according to Trend Micro, a computer security company in Cupertino, Calif. “The types of attacks that are happening against Web mail users aren’t confined to Gmail alone and extend to other e-mail platforms,” said Nart Villeneuve, a senior threat researcher for Trend Micro.

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