Why weren't they fired?
Silly Rabbit...
Willa, you've been on FR long enough to know that no Federal Employees are ever fired for any reason. Even murder.
They're only put on paid leave for a couple of months so we forget the incident, then they're put back on the job.
Of course, since we don't know their names, ("Federal officials would not name the offending employees, citing privacy concerns.") we'll never know if they've actually been banned from the project or not.
dan