I still don’t know what to make of the allegations of spying against Ahmad Chalabi (there is one strong reason to disbelieve the allegations–the CIA has been wrong about pretty much everything having to do with Iraq up to this point). But this is my favorite detail from the front page New York Times story on the allegation that Chalabi told the Iranians we had broken their secret code—the American who supposedly told Chalabi this information was drunk when he let it slip! Also of interest is another detail. Chalabi defenders have argued that there was no way an Iranian official in Baghdad, told that the U.S. had broken Iran’s communications code, would send a message to Tehran explaining the code had been broken in the same code that had been broken. But, according to the Times, this odd behavior might be explained by the fact that the Iranian didn’t believe Chalabi. So maybe the Iranian government trusts Chalabi as little as the U.S. government does—more coalition-building from the former Iraqi exile.