NATION IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : Prisoner Silenced at Election, Paper Says

Four days before the 1988 presidential election, Bureau of Prisons Director J. Michael Quinlan ordered a federal prisoner be placed in detention and barred from talking to reporters about allegations that the prisoner had once sold marijuana to now-Vice President Dan Quayle, according to a Bureau of Prisons lawyer’s letter disclosed in federal court this week. In a letter to a lawyer representing convicted drug smuggler Brett C. Kimberlin, Bureau of Prisons regional counsel Carolyn A. Sabol confirmed that in the week before the election, Federal Correctional Institute officials in El Reno, Okla., twice placed Kimberlin in a detention cell under direct orders from Quinlan, the Washington Post said.