Yesterday Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen created the impression that the latest attempt to plug the gushing oil leak in the gulf was working, telling reporters that BP had temporarily stopped the flow of oil. Later that day BP's COO Doug Suttles said the oil was still flowing, but throughout the day officials insisted that the maneuver, called the "top kill" was going according to plan. But by the end of Thurday BP admitted that they had actually suspended the operation on Wednesday night, when engineers saw that too much drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil. It's almost as if you can't trust these guys!

Cut to this morning. Appearing on Good Morning America, Admiral Allen told George Stephanopoulos that the operation is "going pretty well. They’ve been able to push the hydrocarbons and the oil down with the mud [the heavy drilling fluid]. The real challenge is to put enough mud into the well to keep the pressure where they can put a cement plug over the top." Stephanopoulos asked, "Okay, so right now the mud is holding down the oil but the question is, can you get enough mud there to keep it in place and then to seal it?"

Allen replied, "Right. They've demonstrated that they can do something that's never actually been done before, and that's to apply the mud at 5,000 feet below the surface. The challenge will be to get enough down there to overwhelm the pressure that's pushing the oil up." BP now confirms it has had "some success" and that the next 12 to 18 hours are "very critical" in stopping the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Overnight, BP proceeded with the "junk shot," pumping rubber and other material into the well to act as "bridge" for the mud injections, to strengthen their ability to counteract the leaking oil, the Times reports.

Meanwhile, the chief of the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned yesterday, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he would name Bob Abbey, the director of the department’s Bureau of Land Management, as interim director. And there were interesting developments in the hearings into the cause of the oil rig explosion. Three witnesses have changed their plans to testify. Robert Kaluza, a BP official who may be the infamous "company man" whose orders led to the explosion, declined to testify yesterday by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

BP official Donald Vidrine, another oil rig company man, and James Mansfield, Transocean’s assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon, said they couldn't testify because of they had medical conditions. According to this excellent article by McClatchy Newspapers, the refusal to testify comes along with increased speculation that BP could be held criminally liable in oil rig explosion. And the AP reports that marine scientists have spotted "a huge new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf, stretching 22 miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Ala. They fear it could have resulted from using chemicals a mile below the surface to break up the oil."