Just months before Solyndra went belly up, the director of the loan programs office at the Department of Energy priased the solar panel manufacturer and said it was “misunderstood.”
“The company in question, Solyndra, built an enormous robotics factory to produce solar panels, on time and under budget,” the DOE’s Jonathan Silver said in a May 12 radio interview touted by the company. “There are actually more people working there today than when we first funded them. The story has been a little bit misunderstood.”
The quote was cited in a June 23 report prepared by Solyndra that portrayed the company as a burgeoning success, even though in reality it was on the path to bankruptcy.
The document was made public by the House Energy and Commerce committee today. The committee also released an email showing executives of Solyndra, which received $535 million in government loan guarantees, broke their pledge to voluntarily testify before Congress.
