A couple of weeks ago, the United States, without explanation, released five Iranian diplomats that the U.S. military had been holding in Iraq for more than two years. The official statement offered nothing about why. What U.S. officials would say privately is that the U.S. military really didn't want to let the Iranians go.

That leaves you with the suggestion that there was good reason to hold the Iranians in the first place, but the new Status of Forces Agreement required that we turn them over to the Iraqis, who let them go. Now, from an unexpected source, comes word that in fact there wasn't any good reason for holding them in the first place.

Barbara Slavin of The Washington Times, the capital's conservative news organ, reported last week that the U.S. actually had no evidence that the Iranians had been involved in attacks on U.S. forces. The Iranians were essentially hostages, she wrote, held as potential "leverage."

Slavin, who used to cover the State Department for USA Today and wrote a book on Iran (Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation), cited two unnamed sources in her report, one a current official and the other a former official. Slavin's report focused on the three Iranians who American officials had said were member the Quds Force. She quoted a current White House official as sticking up for the original version of why they were held but also acknowledging that he didn't know of any specific anti-U.S. actions the three had been involved in.

Actually, her story sounded a lot like what Iraqi officials were saying at the time. To quote then and now Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the U.S. raids that led to the detentions were "very, very embarrassing."

But Slavin's account really ticked off Gen. David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq when the Iranians were arrested and happened to be in Washington the morning Slavin's piece appeared.

 Petraeus and Slavin were both at a conference on Iran sponsored by the U.S. Central Command, which Petraeus now heads, and the Brookings Institution. According to The Washington Post's Al Kamen, Petraeus was livid and gave Slavin a very public dressing down, even accusing her of "irresponsible journalism." Kamen described her as "unflappable."

Today, it was Slavin's turn. In a followup that the Times didn't exactly trumpet (Page A9 in print) Slavin quotes former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker as saying he knows of no evidence that links the three Iranian Quds Force officials to specific acts against U.S.forces. "I was not aware of any specific information linking (the three Iranians) to specific acts against coalition personnel," was the precise quote.

That is an amazing statement coming from Crocker. Petraeus and Crocker were the yin and yang of Bush administration Iraq policy, the Abbott and Costello, the Bogart and Bacall, or, for the younger set, Harold and Kumar, so tightly spooned that an assessment of embassy operations released today made a special point of noting that "the relationship between the embassy and the military is remarkably good. Ambassador Crocker and the military commanders insisted on 'one team, one mission,'and their subordinates followed suit." (Another part of that report was the finding that the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is way overstaffed.)

The two jogged together every Sunday, according to this story by McClatchy's Leila Fadel, and met at least five other times a week to mull over events in the country.

Such tight cooperation surely meant Crocker and Petraeus shared information on why the Iranians had been picked up — especially since Crocker actually met with the Iranian ambassador five months after the three had been seized.

But maybe there wasn't all that much to share. As Foreign Minister Zebari told Slavin for today's story: "Really, they were doing some consular work."