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This leads to an interesting question, which I'll get to in a minute.

Where I would take issue with you is that I do not believe that there are warring factions within the government trying to get control over public perceptions,

I agree with you on this.

and competing with each other to get their spin out. IMO, everything is coming from the top. I cannot imagine Bush tolerating infighting on a matter of this gravity.

I'm not suggesting infighting. It's just hard to keep information under wraps when a lot of people know it. Things come out in conversation; even a hint is all that's needed to give a good reporter a lead.

Also, the Johns Hopkins group is not part of the Bush administration and may feel no particular compunctions about revealing information; that would be quite different from a White House leak.

I also believe that, if you watch very carefully, all official actions and statements fit into a coordinated plan.

As I said early on in this conversation, this may have been leaked officially, as part of the ramp-up of public opinion against Saddam Hussein, and also to keep the Rosenberg theory from becoming established as "something everybody knows is probably true."

Since that plan involves a certain degree of misdirection and secrecy, and probably some outright lying, it has sometimes been undercut by indpendent journalistic inquiry.

But, in this case, how would a reporter have gotten started without a new lead? I can't think of any existing public information that would have served as a lead.

Here's the interesting question I mentioned: How did the FBI dig this up in October? Dr. Tsonas says that he didn't remember the incident until it was pointed out to him. I really wonder what lead let the FBI (or any investigator) discover this incident at all.

However, most "connected," elite media journalists got to be that way by keeping their heads down, so the problem is limited. The misdirection has also carefully exploited built-in media biases, e.g. towards seeing camo-clad, Bible-thumping militiamen and venal defense contractors and rogue CIA men under every bed, to contain this problem, so far with considerable success.

This is true. The danger is that the "careful exploitation" may get turned around, becoming far too widely believed and outliving its usefulness. (This may have happened with the Oklahoma City bombing, and, if so, the government would now find it very difficult to extract itself from the lie.)