Something like that happening would be an even juicier story than the one they published. I totally buy that some people in the government lied to some credulous reporters to get a false story they wanted out there. But there are tons of reporters out there, some of them are easy to trick, and leaning on reporters is likely to trigger their Woodward and Bernstein fantasies and result in some huge blowback. I'm not going to say that I find the level of incompetence you're assigning impossible, just that I find it unlikely.