Cap Times gets it wrong on travel contract

UPDATE: The Spice Boys now say the Cap Times has not backed off from the entire story, just the part about search warrants.

Spiceblog says Cap Times is backing off its exclusive story about the Adelman travel contract investigation, which the right wing blogosphere has been hyping.

Spivak and Bice:

MONDAY, Feb. 13, 2006, 4:43 p.m.

Now you see it - now you don't

The first hint that The Capital Times' Saturday blockbuster might not be true came about mid-morning today. The exclusive, which said investigators "executed search warrants" in Gov. Jim Doyle's Department of Administration as part of their Travelgate probe, disappeared from the Madison daily's Web site shortly before noon.

Poof! Gone with the wind.

The only online evidence that the story ever existed were postings by some righty bloggers - including Charlie Sykes and Boots & Sabers - celebrating Doyle's mounting troubles.

By mid-afternoon, the printed version of the Cap Times shed some light on the now-invisible story when it - kinda, sorta - issued a correction, quoting DOA Secretary Steve Bablitch as saying, "There have been no search warrants issued to DOA."

The correction did not address the story's claim that one or more members of Doyle's election campaign team had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Editor Dave Zweifel told us today that nobody complained about that paragraph, a comment that left Doyle campaign flack Melanie Fonder fuming.

Said Fonder: "No one from the campaign has been served with a subpoena."

We can hardly wait to see tomorrow's paper.

WisPolitics adds:

A legal source said it would be illegal for a member of the prosecutorial team or court personnel, including grand jurors, to leak information about grand jury testimony or subpoenas. However, anyone who has been called as a witness is free to talk about a subpoena they may have received or to discuss their grand jury testimony.