The Cox Report: Of Scapegoats and Heroes

It's rare that Janet Reno tries to talk her way out of anything, and we just found out why. Backed into yet another corner by Republicans for her role in denying the FBI permission to search Wen Ho Lee's Los Alamos computer, on Thursday the Attorney General dispensed with the closed-door testimony and came out with her version of spin. "I was not briefed on the details of the application," she told reporters. Should she have been? "I think so . . . I assumed that because I did not hear from the FBI, that the matter had been resolved to their satisfaction." Evidently not -- and certainly not to the satisfaction of Republicans, who not only want Reno out but National Security Adviser Sandy Berger as well, demanding his resignation in a letter to Clinton on Thursday. "I was out of the loop" is not going to throw many of them off Reno's trail.

A hero would help -- and lo and behold, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has found one. The Energy Department has awarded its acting deputy chief of intelligence, Notra Trulock (John Le Carre, eat your heart out), the Special Act Award and $10,000 for hacking through the DOE bureaucracy to report the Chinese espionage. Richardson can only hope that Trulock doesn't spoil the presentation by repeating his claims that it wasn't just bureaucracy but also political pressure from the White House that made sounding the alarm so difficult. Meanwhile, a Senate-approved $289 billion military spending bill that contains money to tighten security at the nation's nuclear labs failed Thursday to come up with a majority. Republicans blamed Democrats, Democrats blamed the GOP -- and everybody went home for the long weekend without figuring out what went wrong. Before demanding resignations, lawmakers, account for thyselves.