You’ve probably heard by now that Sarah Palin this week was unwittingly duped into taking a phone call from a guy claiming to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy when in fact it was really a Canadian comedian well known for pulling pranks on celebrities and other well-known politicos.

So how exactly did that happen? According to a senior McCain aide, the caller made initial contact with Palin’s advisers by first calling the governor’s office in Alaska. The call had been routed through France, and the comedian used the name of one of Sarkozy’s top aides, which suggested the phone call was legitimate. “He did all the right things,” this aide insists. The message was passed on by Palin’s aides back in Alaska to the McCain campaign and was ultimately routed up the food chain, ending up in the hands of Steve Biegun, a former National Security adviser to President Bush, who is now one of Palin’s top aides. Seeing no warning signs, Biegun and other top McCain aides signed-off on the call, and the rest is history.

Privately, McCain aides see the phone call as more of an embarrassment for the staff than for Palin—after all, it’s up to the staff who gets to talk to the candidates and who doesn’t. But that may be lost on voters who already have doubts about Palin’s experience and readiness for the office.

UPDATE, 4 PM EST:

A second senior McCain aide clarifies what exactly the campaign knew about the call. According to this aide, none of McCain’s top staffers were aware of the call between Palin and the fake Sarkozy until after the fact. The call was routed from Palin’s Alaska office directly to the advisers working directly with the GOP VP hopeful, and they made the decision to initiate contact without notifying other members of McCain’s senior staff. Upon word of the fake-out, the campaign’s upper echelon organized a conference call yesterday afternoon with both McCain and Palin senior aides to discuss how to handle. According to one participant, who declined to be named, aides went back and forth venting their frustration. “Does anyone not think it’s strange that the French president would want to talk to a candidate in the final 72 hours of the campaign,” one senior McCain aide demanded, noting that the White House and the National Security Council would likely be involved in any such phone calls. “It’s appalling.” Bigger picture, the episode provides a glimpse at what have been increased tensions between the McCain plane and the Palin plane in the final weeks of the campaign. Aides have pushed back in recent days against stories that all is not well between the two camps, but it appears that may not be exactly true.

Six days out, John McCain still hasn’t brought up Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright, but the GOP nominee appears to be ratcheting up his attack on Obama’s ties to 60s era radical Bill Ayers and, in the process, picking a fight with the media. It all started Tuesday, when the McCain campaign called on the Los Angeles Times to release a video it had mentioned in a story published last April, which described a 2003 banquet honoring Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and Palestinian scholar who has been highly critical of Israel. The story, which was about Obama’s friendships with Palestinian Americans in Chicago, quoted from a speech Obama gave at the event, in which he talked of his friendship with Khalidi. The paper reported it had viewed a videotape of the dinner provided to it by an unnamed source.

Five months after the story was published, talk of the videotape resurfaced in blogs and subsequently in a McCain campaign release yesterday calling on the paper to release the tape. McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb accused the paper of “intentionally suppressing information that provide a clearer link” between Obama and Khalidi. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job—make information public.”

This morning, McCain took it a step further, telling a radio station in Miami that Ayers also attended the event and implying that the Times was guilty of a double standard for not releasing the tape. “The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public,” McCain said. “I’m not in the business about talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet. I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different.”

Less than an hour later, Sarah Palin, at a rally in Ohio, echoed the talking points. “Maybe some politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own,” she said. “In this case we have a newspaper willing to throw aside even the public’s right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed. And if there’s a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in kowtowing, then the LA Times, you’re winning. But it’s not too late, and if there is an ounce of credibility there, if the newspaper wants to keep that shred of credibility, let alone its dignity, than I say the public has a right to know. Let’s go to the videotape, LA Times.”

It’s unclear where McCain got the information that Ayers may also be connected to the video. That detail has not been published anywhere. Asked about where the candidate had gotten the information, a McCain senior adviser talking to reporters on the plane this afternoon simply repeated the call for the Times to release the video.

For its part, the Times, in a story published today, said it had promised its source that it would not release the video. Citing criticism from the McCain camp that its decision was somehow tied to protecting Obama’s election chances, the paper pointed out that it was the first news organization to even report on the video. 'The Times is not suppressing anything," said Jamie Gold, a Times readers representative. "Just the opposite. The LA Times brought this matter to light."