Good legal advice

A BP
drilling engineer "who was a key decision maker at the rig in the Gulf of Mexico that blew up in April has refused to testify before a federal panel investigating the incident."

It seems pretty obvious that this "investigation" is going to have a lynch mob mentality. He has nothing to gain and lots to lose by cooperating.

As I've written before, it seems to me that this should be a matter of strict liability, but not as far as criminal liability goes. From what I've read, it appears that deep sea drilling has a certain irreducible amount of hazard and the oil industry needs to accept responsibility for it, but that doesn't mean it should be a whipping boy for politicians.