Maybe not directly to Gizmodo, but it was an intentional act. Why? There are a plethora of possible motives.
1) Droid is a serious threat.
2) Ipad is not selling as well as it could/should.
3) They wanted to “spice” things up.
4) Apple has been great on secrecy, letting something slip brings tons of attention to bear.
Could be for a combination of all 4 above or for a great many reasons as yet unknown.
One thing I can say for certain, they let it slip. It was not some inadvertent blunder by the young engineer working for the agency. It was a calculated slip to generate attention. It is doing so very well.