The biggest nonstory of the week comes from that unbearably hip online magazine, Salon, which blames Secretary of Defense William Cohen for the decline of Atlantic salmon. The article wouldn’t be worth mentioning at all if Maine newspapers hadn’t picked up on the story.

In brief, the mystery begins in February 1995, when Secretary Cohen, then a Maine senator, wrote to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt that Interior’s decision whether to list the salmon as an endangered species would affect his vote on proposed changes to the act. That is, if Interior thought that the salmon merited listing, the senator might conclude that the act needed to be rewritten, perhaps to include economic impact.

Eventually, Secretary Babbitt favored Maine’s state plan over a listing, just as he had done earlier in Oregon and, recently, in California. Secretary Babbitt has since, of course, decided that Maine’s effort to carry out the state plan is insufficient; he now favors a listing. Following all this, Salon concludes, “it appears that Maine’s wild salmon are in even more trouble, as new diseases threaten to reach epidemic proportions without sufficient controls on aquaculture.”

How Maine could have an epidemic among wild salmon when it has almost no wild salmon is not explained. But that’s how things are in the ultra-chic world of Salon. A decision that follows a long public-comment process becomes a “secret deal.” A letter from a senator to a cabinet secretary becomes a “smoking gun.” The senator’s commonly held view that “changes to the Endangered Species Act might be warranted” becomes a threat to “gut” it. A famously moderate Republican who had already been in Congress more than 22 years, suddenly catches a severe case of “Contract With America fever.” A telling example of the exhaustive research Salon put into this piece: it identifies Secretary Cohen, whose cabinet appointment, as every schoolchild knows, was remarkable because he never served in the military, as a Vietnam veteran.

Before defenders of wild salmon blame the defense secretary for the lack of returns, they might ask whether there has even been a member of Congress who has not written to cabinet secretaries to urge them to do what is most advantageous to constituents. Has a member of Congress ever failed to use his or her position to try to persuade a secretary to see things a certain way? Or, from another perspective, can anyone identify voters who would prefer that their senator not fight for them?

Sen. Cohen did constituent service. Gracious!

The only evidence that Sen. Cohen’s letter had an effect on Secretary Babbitt comes in the form of an e-mail from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which wanted a listing from the start. It concludes that a single senator writing a single letter decided whether the salmon would be listed. It might be pointed out that Maine’s two current senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have been anything but shy in telling Secretary Babbitt what they think of his plan to list Atlantic salmon; perhaps a conspiracy theory could be concocted about their letters, too.