Bartlit wants subpoena power

Further to my suspicions about the preliminary conclusions reached by the panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it seems we might know even less than we thought. Said panel, you see, doesn't have subpoena power and has not been able to question people under oath.

Lead investigator Fred Bartlit is asking for such power:

“I have no reason to believe anybody’s intentionally said anything to me they don’t believe,” he said. “But people are advocates. Good ones. High power ones.”

That's a delicate way of saying that people can emit self-serving nonsense with ease. In turn, that's a delicate way of saying that people can lie.

No question, really accomplished "advocates" can lie under oath, too. However, the threat of penalty under perjury whittles down the problem to the hardest-core liars.

Bartlit feels he needs subpoena power to sort out the contradictions between different witness's statements to his team.

“We get a lot of arguments,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to resolve those unless I can sit people down in a room in a very professional, gentlemanly way, and cross-examine them and find out what’s believable and what’s not believable.”