By Othello B. Garblah

The Boston Globe, a New York Times Company newspaper, has admitted that its report quoting US Defense officials as confirming that ex-President Charles Taylor worked as a hired US spy agent lacks evidence.

"The article was not based on adequate reporting and drew unsupported conclusion...the agency offered no such confirmation," Mr. David McCraw, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of the New York Times Company said in a letter to Mr. Taylor's lawyer Wednesday.


"The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form," an editor's note published Wednesday along with the letter addressed to Courtenay Griffiths said.

When this paper contacted The Globe's Editor Martin Baron via email Wednesday to confirmed whether his paper had retracted the story, directed this writer to the link where the said editor's note was published, saying "It was published here..."

The Globe in its Tuesday January 17, 2012 edition under the caption ("Former Liberian Dictator Charles Taylor Had US Spy Agency Ties") reported that US Defense Department officials had confirmed "what has long been rumored" that Taylor worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world's most notorious dictators.

In his letter to Courtenay Griffiths QC, on Wednesday January 25, McCraw said the paper arrived at this conclusion after a careful review of the article by its editors and concluded that the said article was not based on adequate reporting.

In an editor's note published on its website with the letter addressed to Mr. Taylor's lawyer, The Globe admitted that the said article on the Taylor's CIA link drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described Mr. Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a "sought-after source."

"The story, based on a response by the US Defense Intelligence Agency to a long-pending records request from the Globe, described the agency's response as having "confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s."


But the agency offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for - records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them," paper said in its retraction published Wednesday. Read more...