Tupac and Lie in L.A.

The Los Angeles Times is apologizing for their recent piece on the 1994 Tupac Shakur shooting. As first uncovered by The Smoking Gun, the L.A. Times story on the Tupac ambush (two years before he was murdered) was based on some forged FBI documents:

A Los Angeles Times story about a brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur was partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated, the reporter and editor responsible for the story said Wednesday.

Reporter Chuck Philips and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, issued statements of apology Wednesday afternoon. The statements came after The Times took withering criticism for the Shakur article, which appeared on latimes.com last week and two days later in the paper's Calendar section.

"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."

In his statement, Duvoisin added: "We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck's. I deeply regret that we let our readers down."

Times Editor Russ Stanton announced that the newspaper would launch an internal review of the documents and the reporting surrounding the story.

The documents, as shared by the L.A. Times, claimed that associates of Sean Combs (you know -- Puffy/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy) were behind the shooting, which took place in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio. The docs, and the LAT story, fingered "promoter" James Sabatino to the attacks.

The problem: Sabatino's a con man, who's been known for forging documents and assuming fake identities. What's more, the FBI documents that were the basis of the LAT story weren't found on any FBI database, were typewritten (the FBI has used computers for three decades) and include horrible grammatical errors.

In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious after reading The Smoking Gun that these docs were more than a tad suspect. Sabatino has attempted to inflate himself into a larger-than-life character in the hip-hop world, when the honest truth is he's been mostly incarcerated for various crimes for more than a decade.

There is also a tragic element to Sabatino -- according to the Smoking Gun, his mother abandoned him as a child. Since then, his desperation for attention has led to all of his various crimes.

Meanwhile, in a story first published on the LAT website Wednesday, the paper says it's investigating the story and the truths behind it. Yet, strangely, the lengthy piece didn't mention the reporter, Pulitzer winner Chuck Phillips, for most of Wednesday. The newly rewritten apology, which I assume will run in Thursday's paper, does.

It also looks like the LAT has removed the PDF files of the documents, which had been posted until mid-day Wednesday; but interestingly, the March 18 live chat Phillips held with LAT readers -- in which he discusses the story -- is still online here.

The question remains: What made the LAT lawyers skittish in withholding publication of the story for two days after it first showed up on the website? And what made them decide it was OK to finally pull the trigger? (OK, terrible reference.)