This is probably the most quoted passage of the day in Blogistan:

The F.B.I. has opened an espionage investigation seeking to determine exactly what information Mr. Chalabi turned over to the Iranians as well as who told Mr. Chalabi that the Iranian code had been broken, government officials said. The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code.

Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters and served as his main point of contact with the government, the officials said.

Oh boy! A Bush insider's head may roll!

But isn't this Abu Ghraib all over again? Already we're on the hunt for a "bad apple." (This one, the Times tells us, was drunk when the information slipped out.) The screw-up is defined from the git-go as an aberration -- not as administration policy.

The Times informs us that it held off on publishing this story last month, after the administration's cited "national security concerns." Last night the administration lifted its hold. I'm wondering if the administration took advantage of the hold to concoct a nice, distracting little story about an unreliable insider who can't keep his mouth shut when he's had a few. An entertaining tale like that could certainly help distract the press and public from the main question, which is why the administration trusted that crooked sonofabitch Chalabi in the first place.