I've read most of Gould's books and most of the Nature articles from which they are taken. I've never seen anything like that. Do you have a source that isn't a cobbled together quote taken out of context?
Step right up, taking all bets now.
Without a belief by Gould in a static fossil record there would be no theory of punctuated equilibrium offered by Gould. How in the world could someone even offer the theory if there is no fossil record of stasis that needs to be explained? But, since you asked...
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. … to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.--Gould, S.J., Evolution's erratic pace.Natural History 86(5):14, 1977The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.--Gould, S.J., Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology 6:119–130 (p.127), 1980.
Do they say "I, Stephen Jay Gould, believe the fossil record shows stasis, not upward change"? No. Do they get the point across that he found the fossil record unsupportive of traditional Darwinism? You betcha. Let's also remember that Gould is famous for criticizing creationists and ID advocates for using his quotes against him, but his criticism is seldom, if ever based on him being misquoted. He simply seems to believe that criticizing Darwinism with Darwinist statements about Darwinism is just WAAAAAYYY out of line.
Now, shall we talk about truth? Or, more specifically, Gould's shaky relationship with it?
First off, Gould was a Marxist. That may seem like an ad hominem attack, but it's not. When someone favors a philosophy that has killed at least 100 million people in the last century, that is not a small thing, especially when it is one of the few political philosophies that specifically alleges that there is no God.
Let's also remember that Marxists believe fervently that it's alright to lie to the peasants for a good cause. Fellow Marxist Richard Lewontin of Harvard said this in his review of Gould's The Mismeasure of Man:
Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.
Surely, one has to wonder why Gould allowed The Simpsons to write him as a person who would lie about fossil test results:
Lisa: [spots Dr. Gould running up] Hah! Here's Dr. Gould now. What were the results professor?
Dr. Gould: Inconclusive.
(Later)
Lisa: I don't understand professor, why didn't your tests show that the skeleton was a fake.
Dr. Gould: I'm going to be honest with you Lisa, I never did the tests. [Dr. Gould walks away]
Now, I'm not saying that a scientist's work and life should be judged by a couple of minutes spent as a cartoon, but it seems to me that Gould was so eager to bash dissenters from Darwinism that he allowed himself to be potrayed as a liar. Trying to put myself in his shoes, I tried to imagine willingly going along with a momentary portrayal of myself as, say, a wife-beater, as long as the writers of the show agreed to show Kate Michelman, Kim Gandy and Gloria Feldt getting a "spa" treatment with fetal parts. Nope, not worth the price. Gould's integrity was for sale. Why? Maybe a "deliberate, small lie" to put across a bigger "truth," i.e., Non-Darwinists got brian cooties?
Backing philosophies that worship lying and have brought about genocide...choosing to be portrayed as a propagandist so you can make your opponents look stupid...objecting to simple accountability for what he really believes...does that sound like a scientist, or a hack? I thought science was about finding out the truth. Guess not.