They’ve already apologized, but now they’re making it official. The Los Angeles Times retracts Tupac Shakur story and has removed the article and related materials from their web site:

The Times specifically retracts all statements in the article, and in its related publications, that state or suggest in any way that Rosemond, Agnant and Sabatino orchestrated or played any role in the assault on Shakur or that they lured him into an ambush at the Quad studios.

To the extent these publications could be interpreted as creating the impression that [Sean “Diddy”] Combs was involved in arranging the attack, The Times wishes to correct that misimpression, which was neither stated in the article nor intended.

The Times also reported that Sabatino told Combs in advance that Shakur was going to be attacked. The Times now believes that Sabatino had no involvement in the attack and that he never spoke to Combs about it. Any statements or implications suggesting that Combs was given advance knowledge of the assault on Shakur, or played any role in it, are specifically retracted.

If something sounds to good to be true, it probably is…

Oops. Remember that story we posted last week from the LA Times written by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Chuck Philips? Well, the Smoking Gun has discovered that the whole goddamn thing was based on forged “FBI” documents created by a fat, white nerd who happens to be a compulsive liar and attention seeker:

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”

Doh! Sorry for passing along the bunk. But we assumed that a Pulitzer Prize winner (or at least his editor!) would do his homework. So, um, never mind. And… please don’t shoot us, Mr. Combs, we meant no harm…

Update: The LA Times “will launch an internal investigation into the authenticity of [the] documents…”

Update #2: The LA Times apologizes. “In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”

Update: Oops: LA Times Duped in Tupac Story

The Los Angeles Times has obtained FBI records that show that Sean “Diddy/Puffy/Puff Daddy” Combs was behind Tupac’s 1994 ambush at the Quad Recording Studios in New York. An attack on Tupac Shakur launched a hip-hop war:

Now, newly discovered information, including interviews with people who were at the studio that night, lends credence to Shakur’s insistence that associates of rap impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs were behind the assault. Their alleged motives: to punish Shakur for disrespecting them and rejecting their business overtures and, not incidentally, to curry favor with Combs. […]

The records — summaries of FBI interviews with the informant conducted in July and December 2002 — provide details of how Shakur was lured to the studio and ambushed. Others with knowledge of the incident corroborated the informant’s account in interviews with The Times and gave additional details.

As if Diddy’s music wasn’t crime enough to lock him up…