Shut up, they explained.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (Subscriber link):

The inspector general of the National Endowment for the Humanities is investigating a former NEH employee for allegedly leaking confidential information to The Chronicle for an article it published on the agency in January.

The inspector general, Sheldon Bernstein, sent a letter to Julia C. Bondanella, a former assistant chairman for programs at the endowment, in March, accusing her of disclosing information about grant applicants and employee matters. Ms. Bondanella, now a professor of French and Italian at Indiana University at Bloomington, was quoted in a January 16 article about flagging -- the practice of marking controversial applications, often for projects dealing with sexuality, race, or gender, for further review.

The letter threatened Ms. Bondanella with civil and criminal penalties, said her lawyer, David Colman....

The purportedly confidential information? Well, here are the paragraphs containing information attributed to Ms. Bondanella that were published in the Jan. 16 Chronicle:

Still, at least one NEH insider insists it is politics, not merit, that is now driving many decisions in the review process. Julia C. Bondanella, an old friend of Mr. Cole's at the Indiana University at Bloomington, who joined her former colleague as the endowment's assistant chairman for programs in 2001, left after just one year, in part because she felt that ideology influenced the grant-making process.

"Obviously, any chairman is going to have a political agenda to some degree," says Ms. Bondanella, who has since returned to academic life in Bloomington. "I wasn't comfortable with the way in which applications were being reviewed."

So. According to the Bush appointees at the head of the NEH, not being comfortable with an agency's procedures, and acknowledging that administrators have political agendas, constitutes "confidential information", the revelation of which warrants "civil and criminal penalties"?

Sounds like standard operating procedure for the most secretive, bullying, and corrupt presidential administration in recent history.