Philip A. Cooney [3], a former American Petroleum Institute [4] lobbyist turned chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality [5], has resigned two days after Rick S. Piltz, a former senior associate in the Climate Change Science Program, blew the whistle on the editing of scientific reports on climate change [6]. White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, told Reuters that Cooney's resignation was unrelated to the the New York Times report on Piltz's damaging revelations. Cooney, she claimed, had "long been considering his options following four years of service in the administration ... He had accumulated four weeks of leave and decided to resign and take the summer off to spend time with his family." A Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial noted that while much of the coverage had focused on Cooeny's editing efforts "less attention has settled on his collaboration with Myron Ebell [7] of the Competitive Enterprise Institute [8] in making these revisions."