The New York Times is reporting that its cross country rival the Los Angeles Times is backpedaling on its aggressive article it published last week about the 1994 assault on Tupac Shakur. The LA Times announced on Wednesday that has open an investigation into whether the article was based on fabricated information.

According to the report, the L.A. Times reporter, Chuck Phillips used FBI summaries of an interview with an informant to finger both Biggie and Puff as having knowledge of the shooting which sparked the entire East Coast-West Coast beef that would eventually cost Pac and Big their lives.

The report was brought into question when The Smoking Gun, an online investigative magazine, reported that James Sabatino, (31) the key information in Chuck Phillips LAT report, was provided by “an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger.”

William Bastone, editor of The Smoking Gun contends “The whole thing did not pass the smell test.” The article in The Times said that a central figure in the plot to attack Shakur was Mr. Sabatino, a Zelig-like figure in the hip-hop world. “Here you have this white teenager from Boynton Beach, Fla., who was in the middle of all these events and no one has ever heard of him.”Mr. Bastone and his team began questioning the report as soon as they saw digital reproductions of the documents that summarized the F.B.I. interviews – so-called 302 Forms. “The acronyms, the redactions, the type face – none of it looked like any 302′s we had seen and we have thousands of them around this office,” Mr. Bastone said. “I reached out to Chuck and told him that these things just didn’t look right.”

I know the New York Times is loving reporting this bit of news about their rival. Reading this really brings me back to that final season of The Wire. Could this be a case of a greedy Scott Templeton-like reporter trying to win (another) Pulitzer? Its’ in my notes Gus! Its in my notes! Well Chuck Phillips it looks like we’ll all have a peek at those notes now.