In a front-page news article last week, the New York Times reported, “Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret telecommunications code of Iran’s intelligence service, betraying one of Washington’s most valuable sources about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.” The betrayal was said by the Times according to “American officials” to have happened “about six weeks ago.”

If that timing is correct, there may have been another source for the betrayal. The March 8, 2004, issue of the New Yorker magazine — posted on the World Wide Web March 1 — carried an article by Seymour Hersh. That article reported, “On a trip to the Middle East last month, I was told that a number of years ago the Israeli signals-intelligence agency, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code and began monitoring communications that included talk between Iran and Pakistan about Iran’s burgeoning nuclear-weapons program.… The Israeli intercepts have been shared, in some form, with the United States intelligence community, according to the former senior intelligence official.”

The disclosure by Mr. Hersh in the New Yorker was picked up in the March 3,2004,Jerusalem Post, which carried an article headlined “Report says Israeli Unit Cracked Iranian Code.” Iraq expert Laurie Mylroie sent us a copy of the story Friday. In other words, there seem to be at least two ways other than Mr. Chalabi for the Iranians to have found out that their codes had been broken. And once they did know, it is possible to speculate, the Iranians then may well have used the compromised channels to set up Mr. Chalabi with those they knew were listening.