Muzzling a Researcher

Sometimes by reporting the news, you become part of it. The Wall Street Journal reports today on the case of Louis Fisher, a 36-year veteran of the Congressional Research Service, who's in hot water over an interview with GovExec's Chris Strohm. In the interview, parts of which were included in a GovExec.com story Jan. 10, Fisher said he believes that things have become worse for whistleblowers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because Congress and the courts have overly deferred to the executive branch. "I get the picture that people can do really awful things inside agencies and they never pay any price at all, and that's really scary," he said.

Fisher's supervisor, Robert Dilger, responded to the story by sending him a memo saying that his statements would cause readers to assume Fisher was biased, which Dilger characterized as an "intolerable result." Fisher fired back with a stinging memo of his own to CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan, in which he charged that "the Dilger memo is so unbalanced, so punitive, and so lacking in any persuasive reasoning or information that he should not be my supervisor and should not be allowed to evaluate my work."

Now both sides are keeping mum about what happens next.