Peter Lucas (left), George Regan and Emily Rooney

There have been a couple of additional developments in the brouhaha over the Boston Herald’s classic 1983 “White Will Run” story.

First, on Friday, Emily Rooney and company decided to broadcast an edited-down version of the “Greater Boston” segment with former Herald columnist Peter Lucas and longtime Kevin White spokesman George Regan that had been killed earlier in the week. I got to watch it on the set.

Rooney, on “Beat the Press,” explained that the video wasn’t too incendiary to air — rather, she and others at WGBH-TV (Channel 2) decided it was inappropriate for a show intended as a tribute to White and his legacy.

Second, today the Boston Globe publishes an op-ed piece by my Northeastern colleague Walter Robinson, who was the Globe’s City Hall bureau chief in 1983 when Lucas reported — erroneously — that White would run for a fifth term.

The dispute has always been over whether Lucas screwed up, as Regan claims — or if, as Lucas contends, White set him up as punishment for the rough treatment Lucas had meted out to him in his Herald column. I’m with Lucas, and Robinson comes down firmly on his side:

As the city celebrated the mayor’s life, warts and all, Regan tried to rewrite a settled chapter from the city’s rich political history, about a storied occurrence in which the mayor settled a score against a columnist he disliked intensely. Did he not remember that White, just after his declaration of retirement, hurried off to give Lucas a two-hour interview that Regan himself said that night was done “to make up’’ for the harm that was done to the columnist?

Denying that White was involved in such a clever prank, Robinson writes, would be “a bit like saying that Churchill didn’t much enjoy whiskey and a good cigar.”

Strangely, the Herald itself still hasn’t published a word about one of the most storied moments in its history. I’ve got to believe we’re going to hear something from 70 Fargo St. before this is over. After all, it’s the never-ending story.

Kevin White (left), John Silber and John Kenneth Galbraith in 1977

My friend and former editor Peter Kadzis has written a remembrance of the late Boston mayor Kevin White for the Boston Phoenix that is striking in its depth and nuance. Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich, a White admirer, makes a cameo as well.

Peter grew up in Dorchester and continues to live in the city. His intricate knowledge of Boston’s tribalism helps him negotiate the city’s complexities in a way that few others can match. For instance:

For most of his mayoral career, White was the candidate of middle-class aspiration. White was more than a politician; he was a symbol.

To those already in the middle class and to the far larger number of blue-collar families aspiring to that status, White validated the idea that social and economic mobility was real. A vote for White was a subliminal endorsement of the idea that each generation could expect to better itself.

In contrast, White’s mayoral rivals, School Committeewoman Louise Day Hicks and City Councilor Joseph Timilty essentially defined themselves by not being Kevin White. Hicks and Timilty offered no vision.

Kadzis reminds us that it was the Harvard economist (and Kennedy family intimate) John Kenneth Galbraith who stuck the shiv in White’s aspirations for the vice presidential nomination in 1972 — which, if it had become reality, might have led to a White presidential campaign four years later.

So I was thrilled to find the photo I’ve included here of White and Galbraith making small talk in front of a scowling John Silber five years later. (The occasion was Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler’s birthday.) Clearly White believed in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.

Photo (cc) by City of Boston Archives and reprinted here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Is it over?

A better way of putting it: Do the media want it to be over?

The Florida Republican primary ended last night with dual scenes reminiscent of campaigns past. The winner, hoping to consolidate his gains and close out a divisive intraparty battle, devoted most of his attention to his general-election rival. His nearest competitor vowed to fight on until the convention.

But the incompatible desires of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich do not matter nearly as much today as how the media will now frame the narrative.

Read the whole thing here.

Lucas, as you may know, had a legendary front-page exclusive in 1983 reporting that White would seek a fifth term. Lucas was wrong, and apparently on Tuesday he repeated his contention that White deliberately misled him as punishment for his tough, occasionally mocking coverage. Phillips writes that Lucas and Regan got into it hammer and tongs:

But the screaming match appears to have centered on whether White intentionally misled Lucas about his plan to run again, causing the erroneous headline and story or whether Lucas misinterpreted what White told him. The verbal exchange was intense enough that Rooney was forced to junk the take, calm down her guests, and reshoot the segment so it was suitable for television.

In an interview with Phillips, Regan denies that White intentionally misled Lucas. But as I wrote yesterday, I’ve heard Lucas discuss the incident before. It’s a great yarn — in Lucas’ telling, White gave Lucas the exclusive on the condition that Lucas not identify the mayor as his source, and then pulled the rug out from under him.

Lucas also claims that then-state treasurer Bob Crane was incredulous, telling Lucas he could have warned him away from the story. I’m not going to try to reconstruct something I heard Lucas say some 25 years ago, but essentially he responded that he saw no need to check in with Crane when he’d gotten his information directly from White.

Former Boston Herald editor Kevin Convey, who was a Herald staff member in 1983, tweeted this morning, “There was no doubt in Lucas’ mind or in the minds of the editors” that White had deceived him.

The “Greater Boston” segment was reshot, and Rooney’s conversation with Lucas and Regan is civil and noncontroversial. (Disclosure: I’m a paid contributor to “Beat the Press,” the Friday edition of “Greater Boston.) You can watch it above. The Lucas-Regan segment begins at 19:45.

Three observations: (1) I believe Lucas, even if White may have left himself some wiggle room; (2) I hope he writes about it; (3) it does not tarnish White’s legacy in any way to believe he was involved in a political prank of that magnitude. It only adds to his legend.

Kevin White in 1975

Former Boston Herald columnist Peter Lucas, now with the Lowell Sun, throws a change-up in his tribute to the late Boston mayor Kevin White.

Lucas, most closely associated with great mayoral nicknames like “Kevin from Heaven” and “Kevin Deluxe, the Mayor of America,” dwells at some length on White’s unsuccessful 1970 campaign for governor against the Republican incumbent, Frank Sargent. Lucas’ take:

Beaten politicians are usually humiliated in defeat. Not Kevin White. He grew bigger. While Sargent was ousted four years later by Michael Dukakis, White went on to get elected mayor three more times. And as the city grew, he grew, becoming almost larger than life. He had style and class. He made Boston come alive for the 16 years he was mayor. He put Boston on the map.

Lucas also makes a brief allusion to the “White Will Run” debacle of 1983, when the mayor gave him an exclusive: Lucas could report that White would seek re-election as long as he didn’t attribute it to White. The Herald went with a huge front-page headline the next morning. Later in the day, White publicly announced he wouldn’t run.

Years ago, Lucas told a hilarious version of that story at a meeting of the Northeastern Journalism Alumni Association to which I had invited him to speak. I hope he’ll tell it again.

Photo (cc) by the City of Boston Archives and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Photos © 1978, 2012 by Barbara Kennedy

One afternoon in late 1978, my future wife, Barbara Tanski, and I were ushered into a dark, comfortable room in the Parkman House, a city-owned mansion on Beacon Hill. I was a senior at Northeastern University, and I was there to interview Mayor Kevin White for the Cauldron, the school yearbook. Barbara took the photos.

As you have no doubt heard, White died on Friday night at the age of 82. The must-read is Brian Mooney’s in-depth obituary for the Boston Globe. Also outstanding is this Hub Blog post by Jay Fitzgerald, who observes that White was the best of five consecutive good mayors.

In re-reading my Cauldron piece, I’m struck by how young White was. Just 49 years old at the time of our interview, he would walk away from public life at 53, and was rarely heard from again.

My story has a few cringeworthy moments, including some structural flaws I warn my students about. I’ve fixed a few typos. Other than that, here it is, exactly as it appeared in the 1979 Cauldron.

THIS IS THE CITY:
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

The Mayor talks about his city … where it is
today and where it’ll be tomorrow

Kevin H. White sat down on a couch, balanced himself on the edge and pondered the comeback his city has made during the past five years.

“I think that a city is no different than a single individual inside of it,” he said, pausing every few words for emphasis. “You can just be depressed for so long. And there are periods in which you get hysterical and upset.”

As the 49-year-old mayor munched on cheese and crackers in the historic Parkman House on Beacon Hill, waiting for supper, he tried to explain the sense of optimism he sees infesting Boston today.

“I think that, probably, when you add in all of Vietnam, all the problems of Watergate, throw in busing — those are abnormal problems ladened on the problems of crime and taxes and those things that are normal. Then it does get you down.

“I think city people are particularly resilient and vibrant, and they can take the normal problems,” White said. “It was the abnormal problems thrown on top of them that depressed them, that gave them a sense of malaise and despondency I think hung on the town as you came in in ’74.”

***

It was a hot, muggy day in late September 1974 when the Class of 1979 arrived at Northeastern. Many students were seeing the city for the first time and had no idea what to expect.

And it was a frightening, depressing time.

One month earlier, Richard M. Nixon had ended six years of shame by resigning his presidency to the first unelected chief executive in history, Gerald R. Ford.

The Vietnam debacle was still front-page news every day. American troops were gone, but the carnage they had helped create would not come to its chaotic conclusion for another eight months.

And there was busing. Day after day, public school students — the ones that bothered to go to class, anyway — pulled knives on classmates because they were of a different color. Grown men hurled bricks at buses filled with little children. Politicians such as John Kerrigan, Louise Day Hicks and Elvira “Pixie” Palladino railed against integration and promised to run Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity, the man who ordered integration, out of town. One Friday night in October, a motorcade of South Boston mothers drove up Huntington Avenue, honking their horns and hollering racial epithets.

That’s as close as racial violence ever came to Northeastern. As far as most students were concerned, that was close enough.

Many today would argue that the cynicism and bitterness of five years ago is still here. But there is little doubt that much of the fear is gone. To most people, that is reason enough to rejoice.

***

It’s a cold, rainy Saturday morning, but inside it is warm. Opera music plays in the background of the elegant St. Stephen Street townhouse, while a grand piano commands the living room. It’s not the sort of place you expect to find in the inner city, but the owner, chairman of the Fenway Project Area Committee (FenPAC), says he wouldn’t live anywhere else.

“I think many of us in this area think the city’s making a comeback,” says E. Vaughn Gulo, who grew up on Symphony Road and has lived on St. Stephen Street the past 12 years. “I’m really more upbeat about what’s going to happen in Boston than I’ve ever been in the past.

“We see improvements, we’ve been involved in improvements and we’re planning improvements,” continues Gulo, a professor of psychology in education at Northeastern. “There’s a very definite upbeat. I think it’s much more exciting now than before.”

Yet, for all Gulo’s optimism, there’s a sense that, if certain things don’t happen, Boston isn’t going to be able to make it financially. Could Boston go the way of New York and Cleveland? White believes it could unless the city can change the way in which it collects its revenue.

Boston, like many older cities, depends exclusively on property taxes for revenue. Despite the current influx of younger people who are buying property in Boston to take advantage of depressed land values, White believes there will only be a “minor temporary high” in raising property tax revenue.

White’s assessment is correct, according to the Office of Economic Research of the Massachusetts Department of Commerce and Development. Its statistics show that Boston’s population grew from 616,000 in 1965 to 638,000 in 1975.

However, the same statistics show that the population is expected to drop to 620,000 by 1980, 616,000 by 1990 and 608,000 by 2000. A city that depends as heavily on property taxes as Boston cannot afford to see its tax base dwindling.

“If you depend on property value, you’re in trouble,” said White, claiming that Boston’s tax base is lower today than it was in 1930 — the peak of the Depression. “But if you can get off it, if you can get off that intravenous feeding, you can get up and walk around.”

The solution, according to the mayor, is to reduce the property tax burden and introduce sales taxes to take advantage of Boston’s economic growth. He’s failed before. Several years ago, he attempted to tax nonresidents who work in the city, but the Legislature thwarted him. This time, however, he thinks it will be different. Residents and businesses will favor it, he said, because tourists and commuters will share the burden and because their property taxes will grow.

White citied Faneuil Hall Marketplace as an example. Although the city did all the work in restoring the historic market into what it is today, he said, the state collects many times more revenue from it than Boston does. The reason is that the state can collect sales and income taxes, while the city may take only property taxes.

Of course, Faneuil Hall Marketplace is more than just a symbol of Boston’s tax problems. During its renovation between 1976 and 1978, it became a symbol of the city’s revitalization.

The Quincy Market, North Market and South Market, as the marketplace’s three buildings are known, built by Mayor Josiah Quincy in 1826, are today the city’s most popular attraction, with thousands of people visiting the area every day.

Admirers have called it one of the crowning achievements of White’s 11-year administration. But detractors believe it symbolizes the misoriented priorities of the city government.

State Sen. Joseph P. Timilty believes that downtown expansion such as Faneuil Hall Marketplace has been achieved at the expense of the neighborhoods. Boston’s leaders “have always judged the quality of the vitality of the city by the changes in the skyline,” according to the 40-year-old Mattapan Democrat, who nearly defeated White in the 1975 mayoral election.

“Boston’s a city that’s made up of neighborhoods, and Boston’s got to understand it,” said Timilty, who is the chairman of the National Commission of Neighborhoods — a position President Carter appointed him to after Timilty helped on his 1976 campaign.

The administration frustrates neighborhood organizations, he said, because “they see it as a threat” rather than as a means of buttressing and administering neighborhood programs. He advocates involvement of private enterprise in developing jobs and housing in neighborhoods.

“We have to develop our neighborhoods as well as develop our downtown,” he said. “There’s too much government. And government has become a bastion of employment for social theorists, rather than government programs getting down to where the people can use the assets of the program.”

It is a criticism White has heard before, and he reacts angrily whenever he hears it.

“In 10 years we spent eight times more money in the neighborhoods than we did downtown, and I defy anyone to show differently,” he said, adding that his administration has built more neighborhood schools, libraries and police stations than any mayor in Boston’s history, including James Michael Curley.

“Now I’ll give you another figure,” he went on. “We spent one-on-one on downtown as against only Roxbury. That means I spent as much money in Roxbury as I spent all of downtown.” Indeed, several years ago, members of the white backlash movement dubbed him “Mayor Black” for his involvement in the black neighborhoods.

Gulo believes that, no matter what the White administration is doing elsewhere in the city, it certainly isn’t ignoring his neighborhood.

“I think the city administration has taken more note of it than it ever has in the past,” he said. “It’s a unique part of Boston. I think that through our efforts over the past four or five years, we’ve brought the attention of the city to bear so that the various problems that the entire area confronted are being addressed one way or another.”

Housing for low- and moderate-income people is being developed on Symphony Road and Westland Avenue, alleys have been widened, trees have been planted, streets have been patched up. Those are the kind of improvements Gulo cited.

But he acknowledged that the city is still plagued by a woeful lack of good housing for all classes of people. Unemployment, trash, crime, poor public education and inadequate transportation are just some of the other serious problems that must be addressed, he added.

And until those problems are taken care of, Boston will continue to lose people like Diane Whitehead and Tony Fernandez to the suburbs.

***

“I guess it bothers me more now, after I’ve lived with it for four years, in that I wanted to learn about it. I wanted to put myself in the middle of it to find out what was going on, and so, since I was looking for that, I guess it didn’t bother me. I’m ready for a quieter neighborhood, I think.”

The speaker was Diane Whitehead, 79 LA, the residence assistant at 122 St. Stephen St. Her situation is unique. She transferred to Northeastern from Colby College in Maine so she could see urban problems up close.

“I had chosen to go away from the city,” she said. “After a year, I still knew that I wanted to go into some line of social services or psychology or something related to people. And I found that I didn’t have the ability to talk easily with people anymore, because I spent so much time with academics. I mean, I made lots of friends, and it was really beautiful up there, but I was getting very, very far away from all the issues that I wanted to deal with and cope with by going into social services. It was very isolated — and insulated. I guess I was afraid of losing touch with what’s really happening.”

Although Whitehead had a small-town upbringing — her parents live in Foxborough, Mass., 25 miles south of Boston — she had spent time in the city as a youth, taking tours and working on research projects. So she was better prepared than many to handle the problems of urban living.

Still, there are some things that she’s never gotten used to.

“I think you have to learn how to deal with walking down the street and just getting remarks and comments,” she said. “You do get approached if you’re female.” The fact that she’s never been stopped or robbed doesn’t make her feel any easier. “I keep waiting for the time. It’s been this long. I think my number’s due fairly soon,” she said, adding that she rarely goes out alone at night.

“Once you start being naive,” she added, “it’s going to catch up with you at some point.”

Whitehead said she would always like to stay near the city. But how near would depend on her personal life. After she graduates, she said she would like to move to a neighborhood such as Brighton. But in five years, when she might be raising a family, she will probably leave the city altogether, she said.

Tony Fernandez, 82 E, came to Northeastern to get a degree in chemical engineering after he had already earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Florida.

“I really couldn’t find a job,” said the 32-year-old Florida native and Army veteran. “Finally, I just came to the conclusion that maybe I should go on back to school.”

Although Fernandez finds much about Boston that he likes, he quickly found something he didn’t like — crime. In September 1978, only six months after he had arrived here, he was robbed at knifepoint by two youths who accosted him in the lobby of 122 St. Stephen St., forced him up to his apartment and stole several things from him, including a family religious medal.

The youths ordered him to show up on Opera Place the next day with a brown bag full of cash. Fernandez informed the police, a stake-out was set up and one of the youths was arrested. But Fernandez never did get his stolen goods back.

He said that incident hasn’t influenced his opinion of Boston, but added he doesn’t want to live here after he graduates.

“I’ve never lived in any kind of a city like this before,” he said, although he was stationed in New York City during part of his Army hitch. “As an experience, it’s nice, but I’d kind of like to own my own house.” He added that he isn’t used to noise and air pollution, either.

Students such as Whitehead and Fernandez think that the problems of urban living may eventually force them to leave the city. But some residents feel that students, and the institutions they attend, are a major cause of problems.

Even the mayor, who says students are good for the city because they support the theater, the arts and the social scene, finds some of the problems they cause annoying. Students who live in residential areas frequently make too much noise, he said. He had especially harsh words for Northeastern students.

“That street, Huntington Avenue, is a pigpen,” he said. “I run in the Huntington YMCA every morning between 6 and maybe 8:30. And that guy with the sweeping bucket’s got that place clean at 7 in the morning. By 10, it’s chaos.”

Colleges and universities take a lot of the city’s land and don’t pay taxes, he added. Yet the state hasn’t come through with the aid to private colleges that voters approved in 1974. Instead of the colleges and the city battling, White said, they should work together to get help from the state for aid to the colleges and tax relief to the cities.

Timilty advocates an “adoption” plan, in which each university, college and hospital in the city would take the responsibility of using their expertise to develop housing, education and jobs in each of the city’s neighborhoods.

Northeastern, like all institutions, “is going to have to do more for the community that surrounds it,” he said.

But White said such a plan is already in effect for many types of services. Hospitals work with neighborhood health clinics and churches work with people, he said, adding that, during desegregation, the colleges and universities pitched in by helping the school districts improve their educational offerings.

“We didn’t know Joe [Timilty] was going to call it an adoption policy or we would have waited for him,” White said. “Now what the hell is Joe talking about?”

Gulo said he is skeptical about an adoption plan because “you can be too adopted, you can be co-opted, you can be so little adopted that you could be rejected.” If Northeastern were to adopt the Fenway, he said, it might decide to force residents out and develop more student housing.

The current Memorandum of Understanding that FenPAC and Northeastern are working under, he said, is the strongest possible basis for cooperation between an institution and a neighborhood. Under the agreement, Northeastern promises not to expand into residential areas and to eventually pull out of some residential areas in which it presently holds land.

Gulo said he sees more promise in group action FenPAC is currently negotiating with the Boston Fenway Plan, made up of 20-25 institutions, including Northeastern, to help renovate and develop housing and other projects, he said, adding that the Fenway Plan members would provide consultants, bankers and other technical assistance, and FenPAC would provide planning and advice.

“All of the institutions and the elected members of the community will be working together in this area to bring it up,” Gulo said.

***

People who moved to Boston might say they live in Boston. But a native would never think of saying such a thing. He may live in South Boston, or the North End, or Roslindale, or Roxbury, or Brighton. But only late-comers live in Boston.

Boston’s neighborhoods have been set apart from each other by ethnicity, parish and geography. The distinctness of each frequently surprises newcomers who are more accustomed to unified cities.

Timilty believes the distinctness of the neighborhoods is Boston’s best hope for the future.

“The only way that you have a viable neighborhood community is when you have a certain level of respect and pride for that community,” he said.

He cited a Christian Science Monitor poll which showed that, in many cities, residents who don’t like the way their city is being run “still thought there was an element of pride left in their neighborhoods.

“We ought to encourage that,” he added, “because it makes it more attractive to live.”

White also said he believes neighborhoods are a strong asset to Boston because they provide “roots and history and heritage and pride, so it gives you solidity and strength.”

However, the very distinctiveness of the city’s neighborhoods has led to isolation, he said, and when a problem comes up in which all neighborhoods should work together, it can create a crisis — desegregation being the best example.

“If you’re a progressive mayor, as I think I am, and you’re always pushing your city, then you’re always antagonizing them,” said White. You’re kicking, you’re pushing, you’re cajoling them.

“Most mayors,” he added, “want to smile at them and follow them and wave at them, or follow the pattern of their flow. These neighborhoods flow only inside of themselves. So the strength is one thing. The weakness is — boy, tough to move sometimes.”

***

For many students, their time in Boston has been a time of discovery, of a city and of themselves.

“I love Boston because it’s got a lot of European influence, because it’s a small city, because the buildings have been kept low or enough buildings have been kept low so you can see the sky when you’re walking around,” said Whitehead.

“And everything is here,” she added. “I go to the July Fourth thing every year, I go to all the things at the Hatch Shell. I’ve been to the Shakespeare theater, the Museum of Science, art museum, the Prudential Center. I saw the marathon last year. I go to the Christmas tree lighting every year.”

Although she plans to leave in a few years, she isn’t read to leave yet.

“I’m not tired of Boston yet,” she said. “There are so many things I haven’t gotten out of Boston that I know are just sitting there to be taken advantage of. I’m not going to leave before I take advantage of them.”

Fernandez, too, plans to enjoy it while he’s here. His special interest is long-distance running, and he said Boston offers more to runners than any place he’s been to.

“Up here, there’s so many [races] to choose from,” he said, adding that his high point was running in the city’s Labatt’s race Oct. 1, 1978. “I’ve never seen such variety. All different lengths, from one mile up to marathon length.”

The cultural assets of the city are another advantage, he said.

“One thing that’s nice,” he said, “you live right down the street from Symphony Hall. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.” This past Christmas, Fernandez’ mother came up from Florida to visit. They went to the Pops’ Christmas concert — something his mother had seen many times before on television — and it was one of the highlights of the holiday, he said.

It is Gulo, the Boston native, who is best at describing the charm of the city.

“It’s got many problems, but I think the city’s really coming up,” he said. “I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve been to Africa, Western Europe, Italy ten times, Moscow, Canada, Mexico City, you name it. But to me, Boston is unique. It’s got all the institutions, it’s the center of culture. It’s the educational, the medical hub.

“For a little town, it’s got the intimacy that Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth don’t have,” he added, saying that he knows of people who have moved away from Boston to live in the suburbs and have come back because they miss it.

“Bostonians are very parochial,” he concluded, grinning. “They love their city.”

Dear Dan,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act (S. 968).  I am strongly opposed to this legislation.

As you know, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced S. 968 on May 12, 2011.  The PROTECT IP Act aims to provide law enforcement with tools to stop websites dedicated to online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods.  However, many Americans feared that S. 968 would stifle freedom of expression and harm the Internet.

The Internet has been a source of dynamic growth in our economy and is responsible for employing many people in Massachusetts.  I have very serious concerns about increased government interference in this area and the effect of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261, House companion legislation) on the Internet.  On January 18, 2012, I announced my opposition to the PROTECT IP Act.  You will be pleased to know that with opposition to the bill mounting, on January 20, 2012, the Senate Majority Leader announced that the scheduled vote on the PROTECT IP Act has been indefinitely postponed.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me.  As always, I value your input and appreciate hearing from you.  Should you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at www.scottbrown.senate.gov.

Sincerely,
Scott P. Brown
United States Senator

Good for Brown — both for his opposition to this draconian legislation, and for letting his constituents know where he stands.

Taylor escaped from a jail in Plymouth, Mass., in 1985, under circumstances suspicious enough to stoke rumors that U.S. authorities were involved. He is now facing charges in a war-crimes trial stemming from his brutal reign.

This past Monday, two days before the editor’s note appeared, the New Dawn, based in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, quoted Taylor’s lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, as saying that Taylor denied having worked as a spy for the U.S. government. The article includes this:

“I spoke with Mr. Taylor,” Mr. Griffiths said. “He was very adamant that he has never worked for any American (spy) agency. The Liberian Security Agencies have worked … His National Patriotic Party of Liberia (NPFL) … But he as an individual has never worked (for the US Intelligence Agency).

“I know Mr. Taylor is very angry and he is not taking this likely [sic],” Griffiths told the New Dawn.

The story was carried in All Africa, which aggregates African news from a variety of sources. It includes the text of a letter Griffiths said he sent to Globe editor Marty Baron and others at the newspaper demanding copies of the documents they relied on in putting together their report. But the Globe now tells us there are no documents.

The editor’s note couldn’t be much tougher. It begins: “A front-page story on Jan. 17 drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described former Liberia president Charles Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a ‘sought-after source.’”

It goes on to describe the Globe’s longstanding Freedom of Information Act request that U.S. officials turn over documents related to what if any relationship the government had with Taylor. But though the Jan. 17 story, by longtime Globe staff reporter Bryan Bender, appears to be based at least in part on the documents, the editor’s note says otherwise:

[The US Defense Intelligence 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.

The editor’s note concludes:

Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for US intelligence. The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form.

There is still much that we don’t know. For instance, on Tuesday, Africa Review reported that Griffiths had “acknowledged that the Liberian Security agencies as well as his [Taylor's] National Patriotic Party of Liberia worked or associated with US intelligence organs but not himself personally.” That’s hardly a blanket denial.

And at Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, Joshua Keating doesn’t seem all that upset about Taylor’s injured feelings. Calling the Globe’s note a “near retraction,” Keating nevertheless ends with this: “The fact that these ‘records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence’ [quoting the Globe] exist but the CIA won’t release them is only going to increase the curiosity about what they contain. The correction is unlikely to stop the rumor mills in Monrovia, Washington, or The Hague.”

Bender is a good and careful reporter, and it seems pretty clear that there are other shoes yet to be dropped. The only thing we can say for certain at this point is that it’s all way too weird to come to any conclusions.

The media are having no problem decoding the not-so-secret message from last night’s State of the Union address. More than anything, Barack Obama wants us to know that Mitt Romney is what the president’s new role model, Theodore Roosevelt, would have called a ”malefactor of great wealth.”

You can read the whole thing here.

I’m speaking to Professor Nick Daniloff’s Journalism Ethics and Issues class at Northeastern University tomorrow. Since the topic may be of general interest, I thought I’d post the slides in advance.