Bad Salmon

EATTLE — The Bush administration — having made it hard for federal scientists to talk publicly about global warming — appears to have decided that loose lips are also bad when they talk about salmon.

The Washington office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the agency responsible for protecting endangered salmon — has instructed its representatives and scientists in the West to route media questions about salmon back to headquarters. Only three people in the entire agency, all of them political appointees, are now authorized to speak of salmon, according to a NOAA employee who has been silenced on the fish.