We are pleased to see that Wen Ho Lee has won a cash amount — and therefore, a court declaration of having been wronged — in his lawsuit against the government and five major news organizations that accused him informally (meaning, the government never charged him) of espionage. I'm all for reporters protecting their sources but in this case, the reporters allowed themselves to be planted with phony information and they printed it. It was largely a plot to pressure Lee into confessing guilt to a crime for which he should never have been arrested in the first place. The New York Times, which was one of the organizations that got suckered into bolstering the phony charges, printed a major mea culpa but everyone who spread the story owes the man an apology.