Eurocrats vs. freedom of the press.(Insider Report)

Last March, investigative journalist Hans-Martin Tillack was awakened by the proverbial "midnight knock" on the door of his Brussels borne. Belgian police, acting on the orders of the European Commission's anti-fraud unit (known by its French acronym Olaf), confiscated 17 boxes of records, as well as his computer, cell phones, diary, bank statements and address book. Olaf had accused Tillack of bribing agency officials to obtain information used in a 2002 fraud expose he published in the German magazine Stern.

Even after Olaf admitted in a press release that it had no evidence of wrongdoing on Tillack's part, Belgian police kept more than a thousand pages of his documents, without so much as providing him with a list of what they'd seized. Noted the June 11 Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Tillack's life has been turned upside down and he fears that some of the seized documents might lead Olaf to his sources." Understandably, the reporter is concerned that would-be whistleblowers would be silenced "if they have to be afraid that their documents ...