WHO LEAKED THE BERGER STORY? Tom Maguire observes:

Commenting on Josh Marshall’s attempt to spin the Sandy Berger pants-dance, Jonah Goldberg points out that “Republican dirty tricks” is not the “only possible” explanation. Mr. Goldberg’s perfectly plausible explanation – this was a pre-emptive leak by the Democratic side. . . .

Allow me to suggest another possibility: the 9/11 Commission is due to release their report shortly. They have been informed of this investigation, but, as of the release date, it appears that the investigation will not have been resolved.

Isn’t it at least possible that the Commission will have a cryptic, “CYA” sentence in the report mentioning irregularities in the handling of documents? Wouldn’t they have to – if the Sandy Burglar criminal investigation eventually turns into something big, won’t their report be tainted? And how will they explain the omission of any hint of that taint?

From which it follows, they can release the report with the cryptic (or maybe not-so-cryptic) hint, and await the distraction; or “they” can leak it now. And maybe it is someone from the Democratic side who would prefer that the press coverage of the report focus on Bush rather than mishandled documents.

Kevin Drum observes:

I think it must have actually been a Democrat who leaked it. Frankly, if I were a Republican, I would have waited until around the last week of October or so. My guess is that some sharp Democratic operative figured out that this wasn’t going to stay a secret forever and decided (correctly) that it was better to get it into the open now rather than later.

Matthew Yglesias is pointing the finger at Richard Holbrooke.

Jonah Goldberg has already fingered Lanny Davis.

Maybe it was Berger. Sure, that sounds stupid — but so was snitching classified documents.