The Los Angeles Times, which recently embarrassed itself by publishing a hoax quote in a page one story, has published a lengthy correction to fix incorrect information and note plagiarized material in a Dec 18 column. The column, by staff writer
Some of his critics called him a man without a nation in search of a good fight." That sentence was lifted from an article by Samuel Truett, an assistant professor of history at the University of
New Mexico. So was other language in the article. The correction is below. The Times, however, has not attached the correction to the story online. Nor has it altered the story to credit Mr. Truett and the other sources. The correction:
The L.A. Then & Now column in the Dec. 18 California section, which was about Emilio Kosterlitzky, a Russian imperial sailor who enlisted in Mexico's army and later spied for the U.S. while living in Los Angeles, did not credit some of the sources used. In addition to those cited — Times articles published during Kosterlitzky's lifetime and a 1970 biography by Cornelius C. Smith Jr. — sources included an article by Samuel Truett, assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico, from the 2005 fall/winter issue of Huntington Frontiers magazine, a publication of the Huntington Library. The Times column said that during Kosterlitzky's last days at Ft. Rosecrans in San Diego, an FBI agent offered him a job in Los Angeles. Truett's article provided the specifics of that job offer, including the name of the federal agent who hired Kosterlitzky in 1914 to spy on refugees in the U.S. The column called him an FBI agent, but in 1914 the agency was known as the Bureau of Investigation. The column also said that when Kosterlitzky and his soldiers in Mexico surrendered to U.S. troops to seek American sanctuary from rebels, "according to international law, the neutral U.S. had to hold them as prisoners of war until they could be repatriated." That information should have been credited to Truett. The column said some called Kosterlitzky "a man without a nation in search of a good fight," language that also should have been credited to Truett. Other sources used in the column were Times articles published after Kosterlitzky's death, a dispatch from the El Paso Times and the 1935 book "Los Angeles, City of Dreams," by former Times columnist Harry Carr. In addition, the column reported that Kosterlitzky captured Geronimo but released him because he thought the Indian was an honorable adversary. Kosterlitzky told at least one other version of the Geronimo story; the truth is in doubt. Link
