WASHINGTON -- An Army Corps of Engineers whistle-blower honored Wednesday for his role in stalling a $1 billion river construction project was warned by the corps not to talk about any past, present or future projects.

Corps economist Don Sweeney charged two years ago that top agency officials doctored a $54 million study of the upper Mississippi River navigation system to justify a $1 billion project to lengthen barge locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

The Army's inspector general later confirmed the allegations and accused three top officials of fixing the study in part to please powerful agribusiness interests who wanted faster, cheaper trips for grain-laden barges. The officials, two of them retired, were reprimanded for their actions.

Sweeney was in Washington Wednesday to receive a 2002 Service to America medal from the Partnership for Public Service. Other recipients included FBI agents who secured convictions of two men who bombed an Alabama church almost 40 years ago and a Coast Guard official who directed the seaborne evacuation of lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saved taxpayer money

The partnership credited Sweeney with saving taxpayers more than $1 billion by making his charges, which ultimately resulted in the corps delaying its recommendations to Congress.

Sweeney planned to appear at an environmental group's news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday to criticize the corps for moving ahead with the river study without using Sweeney's original economic model.

"I just think they're doing the taxpayers a disservice by going back to this old model that will overstate the benefits of these projects," Sweeney said Wednesday.

However, he said an agency lawyer warned him that he must refer questions about any corps project, including the upper Mississippi navigation study, to an agency spokesman.

Any published statements by Sweeney about corps projects would violate an agreement between the corps and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where Sweeney is on loan as a visiting scholar, according to the e-mail he received from a corps lawyer.

A group called the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which nominated Sweeney for the service award, released the e-mail to the media.

"This gag order illustrates how corrupt and out-of-control the corps has become," said the group's director, Jeff Ruch.

The corps' chief counsel, Robert M. Anderson, said the missive was not a gag order, but merely advised Sweeney of a legal agreement he and his attorney had accepted when he went to the university. Anderson would not say whether the corps would act on Sweeney's comments.

Anderson said the corps never falsified anything and disputed the idea that Sweeney's allegations saved money for taxpayers.

"He didn't save anybody anything, because the study is ongoing; all of the options are still under study," Anderson said. "We will have to do something on the system, the question is what. And that was not something we had decided to do even when the allegations were raised in the first place."

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On the Net

Army Corps of Engineers: http://www.usace.army.mil/

Service to America Medals: http://www.govexec.com/pps/