The announcement came of the former NASA administrator Michael Griffin as the new eminent scholar and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to a $350,000-a-year eminent scholar position. This faculty position is funded through a foundation and UA Huntsville, which has been vacant since its creation 20 years ago. It is designed to increase aerospace-related research projects. Michael Griffin, eleventh Administrator of NASA. Photo credit: NASA/Renee Bouchard.

Fifty nine-year-old Griffin, of Oak Hill, Virginia, was NASA's administrator from 2005 until earlier this year when he resigned. Griffin took over the agency in 2005 following the Columbia tragedy and served until Obama’s inauguration. His hiring was announced Tuesday during a teleconference meeting of a UA Board of Trustees committee, and he starts at UA Huntsville in mid-May, teaching and conducting research.

Then comes the announcement from the the White House and the former NASA administrator that continued on Monday as the Obama administration was greatly criticized by the former space agency chief Michael Griffin.

The White House defended Barack Obama’s continuation of expensive manned space operations, while Griffin accused that budget-cutting bureaucrats were secretly creating a “fictional space program” by draining the agency budget. The White House will offer Congress a plan for NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget early next month.

The current administration responded quickly in an attempt to deflect the criticism from Griffin revealing the sensitivity of NASA-related issues and their struggle to determine a new agency administrator and move forward with the financials of choosing a new agency administrator as well as plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

As an aside: Obama narrowly carried Florida in 2008 where manned spaceflight is an important issue, as well as Texas, where he lost.

Reports further revealed that Griffin delivered a speech to the annual National Space Club dinner where the former agency chief warned that OMB bureaucrats were usurping the powers of elected officials by challenging NASA cost estimates and cutting space agency spending. Griffin warned the audience that Obama’s campaign promises to support NASA are “not being matched by our deeds.”

Griffin intimated that according to his information unnamed OMB staffers “out of view of the nation’s elected leadership” are cutting funding for manned exploration spacecraft by $3.5 billion over the next four years. “The judgment as to whether the stated goals are too costly, or not, is one to be made by the nation’s elected leadership, not career civil service staff,” he declared.

The audience of 2,500 past and present government officials and contractors were positive in their response of Griffin’s criticism in which he received an award from the group.

NASA headquarters had no immediate reaction.