Free-market economist and commentator Dom Armentano never considered his occasional reflections on America's UFO conundrum to be particularly gutsy. After all, this stuff's on "Larry King" now. But his Jan. 8 op-ed piece in the Vero Beach Press-Journal advocating government declassification was evidently too much for his bosses at the libertarian Cato Institute.

A few days after his column appeared, the Vero Beach resident got a letter informing him Cato was in the "process of overhauling" its adjunct scholars program. More to the point, it was canning Armentano as an adjunct scholar.

Incredulous, the man whose recent ruminations on UFOs neither appeared on Cato's Web site nor implied its sanction zipped off an e-mail requesting clarification from Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz. In reply, Boaz wrote, "I won't deny that this latest op-ed played a role in our decision. Some day we may look back and wish we'd listened to you. But for now this strikes us as not an issue that we want to have as part of Cato's research agenda."

Long espousing a political philosophy whose pillars include government transparency and free speech, Cato's decision to sever Armentano's tongue would seem a violation of its own principles. But Boaz's squeamishness exposes the Washington think tank for what it is - just another garden-variety Beltway box turtle beholden to cash infusions of institutional thinking.

"You asked if I had been warned away from certain topics. Never," Armentano wrote in his e-mail to De Void. "Indeed, when I did the PBS radio show 'Byline' many, many years ago, I recall doing a commentary on UFOs. No one said anything."

Boaz did not respond to a request for an interview. The best that Boaz surrogate Jamie Dettmer could muster was this: "We never publicly comment on personnel matters." The Cato rep also declined to comment on Cato's objections to UFOs as a policy issue. "That would be sliding back into personnel matters," Dettmer said.

So much for Cato's aversion to status-quo politics.