When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he struck up a friendship with then-Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana. During the Florida vote mess, Bush invited Racicot to his ranch in Texas and recruited him to be his public voice of reason.

Maybe it's time Racicot invited Bush to Montana, specifically the town of Libby, where Racicot grew up. Perhaps then Bush could become the voice of reason on Zonolite, a vermiculite-based insulation laced with deadly tremolite asbestos.

To recap: The Environmental Protection Agency was preparing last spring to announce the dangers of Zonolite for approximately 1 million households nationwide.

But another federal agency had different plans for the proposed national health warning: Suffocate it.

And sure enough, like tremolite fibers in the lungs, the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget strangled the public health alert. The news of this interagency hit would be outrageous by itself, but it is compounded by the fact that EPA was criminally negligent in getting the word out on asbestos-laden vermiculite in the 1980s.

The results can be found in Libby, where more than 200 people have died and many others carry the tell-tale lung scarring caused by tremolite asbestos in the mine's vermiculite ore.

Now that the EPA is trying to do the right thing, the public has a right to know why the agency is being squelched.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray has said she will pursue answers, but in the meantime some enterprising reporting by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Andrew Schneider has shined a light on how the EPA was silenced. It was Schneider who first brought the Libby tragedy to light when he was with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

It seems the feds faced a conundrum as they prepared to announce the potential dangers of handling Zonolite insulation. How would they explain the fact that they were removing such insulation from homes in Libby but not anywhere else?

OMB's solution was to have the EPA declare Libby's situation "unique," because the town was situated in a cold climate and contained a number of older homes that may be remodeled or torn down. But, of course, thousands of homes nationwide currently fit that description and every home will be old some day.

There are some who suspect the Bush administration was angered by the number of companies forced into bankruptcy because of asbestos litigation, and so it thwarted the warning.

But the politics of litigation should never interfere with government agencies carrying out their duties to inform the public of widespread dangers. Homeowners should be told the consequences of tampering with Zonolite, just as smokers should be told the dangers of tobacco.

When Bush's EPA Administrator Christie Whitman visited Libby in September 2001, she said: "We want everyone who comes into contact with vermiculite -- from homeowners to handymen -- to have the information to protect themselves and their families."

Her boss should enforce that promise.