We’ve spent years obsessing about Russian meddling in our politics, and now it turns out that the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign that morphed into the Mueller probe may have been instigated, in part, by Russian disinformation.

In other words, the Kremlin may have succeeded in getting us to turn even more viciously against ourselves and conduct our politics in an atmosphere characterized by screaming headlines, dark insinuations and endless investigations — all by feeding a few lies to a private eye hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

And the people who did the most to whip up this hysteria were the same ones who professed to be most alarmed at Russia meddling.

If this was the product of a deliberate Russian intelligence operation, it has to be judged one of the most audaciously clever of all time. The operative who first conceived of it deserves high honors, indeed, is a cinch to become a Hero of the Russian Federation.