Colin Powell has done the unthinkable: He's fired a State Department careerist, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan. Given her rank as a career ambassador and the most senior woman in the foreign service, this is a big one. As an official told us, "The news is all over the corridors."

For the record, State says Ms. Ryan "retired." But it's notable that her departure took place Tuesday, the day before two House committees were to vote on a bill that would strip State of its visa authority and transfer it to the new Department of Homeland Defense. State prevailed, but Ms. Ryan's ouster is best seen as Secretary Powell's admission to Congress that his department isn't all it ought to be. That goes especially for its relations with Saudi Arabia, our putative ally but a country that State lets get away with murder.

Only this Monday State Department spokesman Richard Boucher used his regular press briefing to denounce National Review magazine for "myths" it was spreading about a visa program for Saudis begun during Ms. Ryan's tenure. Called "Visa Express," it let three of the 15 Saudi September 11 hijackers into America in the first three months of its existence.

Under that program, Saudis wishing a visa to America could apply through a travel agent. That meant far less likelihood of an interview with a consular officer if the paper application looked good. National Review's Joel Mowbray also reported that Ms. Ryan's deputy, knowingly or otherwise, had misled Congress when she testified that the program had been "shut down."

This is all of a piece with the dysfunctional State-Saudi relationship. Since September 11, Americans have learned all manner of ways that Saudis treat Americans with contempt; most recently, a Saudi princess was allowed to leave the U.S. even after being charged with pushing a woman down a flight of stairs in Orlando, Florida. Many Americans assail the Saudis, but at least they are sticking up for what they believe to be their national interests.

We blame the State Department, which Americans hire to represent them but which too often behaves as if it really works for the House of Saud. All diplomats are congenitally prone to this sort of "clientitis." But with Saudi Arabia and State, not even a terror attack masterminded, funded and executed mostly by Saudi nationals has dented that culture.

State's undue deference extends to almost all corners of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. William McGurn reports today on Amjad Radwan, an American woman who cannot leave Saudi Arabia without her Saudi father's permission and was turned away by Marines when her mother sought refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh. As other Americans who have found themselves in a similar fix can attest, the standard State reply is, "We are bound by Saudi law."

There's also State's apparent acquiescence to the Saudi restrictions on our use of our bases there for offensive military operations, such as the "no-fly zone" in Iraq. U.S. military men and women can protect the Saudis from invasion, but State doesn't object that the Saudis won't let those same U.S. soldiers practice their own religion. When the first President George Bush visited the troops in Saudi Arabia for Thanksgiving during the Gulf War, he was forced to retreat offshore to a ship--because he was not allowed to say grace on Saudi soil.

These slights may have been tolerable before September 11, but now they could cost American lives. Our U.S. sources tell us the Saudis have still refused to clamp down on funding for the madrassas, or religious schools, that helped to fuel al Qaeda. But why should they, since they saw that the U.S. did nothing even after they stiffed our investigation into the 1996 terror attack at the barracks at Khobar Towers? The point is that if the U.S. diplomats working for President Bush don't press American interests on the Saudis, why should the Saudis care?

We'd like to think Ms. Ryan's departure is the first step toward remaking State into a department that will fight for U.S. interests first. On the other hand, her ouster came only after embarrassing press coverage and a clear threat by Congress to take away one of State's important powers. If State doesn't change, the Saudis never will.