ClimateGate criminal?

Robert Tracinski at RealClearPolitics discusses another aspect to the Climategate scandal: ("ClimateGate: The Fix is In"):

This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It's the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being 'confused' by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.

I am skeptical that this is a criminal act, but I guess that depends on assertions that were made in grant proposals and the intent of these "scientists." In all candor (and Tracinski implies as much), I'm inclined to say that these fools sincerely believed the crap they were espousing . . . it was moral relativism mixed with arrogance that motivated them to quash dissent and do whatever was necessary to "be right."