The so-called scandal that you're hanging your hat on never happened.

Pardon me for truncating the link in my original post. Here is the full link with the second 'a' at the end:
http://cf.factcheck.org/2017/02/no-data-manipulation-at-noaa/

You'll note that the date on the press release in your link is February 5, one day *earlier* than February 6 when Bates corrected the record by stating that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the adjusted data. His issue with NOAA was record keeping — the handling and management of data records, not the data itself.