_The New York Times_ has retracted the core of its hit 2018 podcast series _Caliphate_after an internal review found the paper failed to heed red flags indicating that the man it relied upon

for its narrative about the allure of terrorism could not be trusted to tell the truth. The newspaper has reassigned its star terrorism reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, who hosted the series.

_Caliphate_relayed the tale about the radicalization of a young Canadian who went to Syria, joined the Islamic State and became an executioner for the extremist group before escaping its

hold. Canadian authorities this fall accused the man, Shehroze Chaudhry, of lying about those activities. He currently faces criminal charges in a federal court in Ontario of perpetrating a

that he was making some of it up, we didn't listen hard enough." The highly produced series was announced to much fanfare in March 2018 at the South By Southwest Conference in

Austin, Texas, as a worthy successor to the paper's hit news podcast, _The Daily_. "'Caliphate' represents the modern _New York Times_," Sam Dolnick, an assistant

managing editor, said in unveiling the project. "It's ambitious, rigorous, hard-nosed reporting combined with first-rate digital storytelling. We're taking our audience to

dangerous places they have never been, and we're doing it with more transparency than we ever have before." _Caliphate_ made a huge splash for _The Times_, winning awards, acclaim,

new listeners for its podcasts and new paying subscribers. And it further propelled Callimachi into the journalistic stratosphere. In vivid and visceral detail, Chaudhry, speaking under the

pseudonym Abu Huzayfah, told Callimachi and her colleagues of the atrocities he witnessed in Syria and of his involvement in execution-style killings. It was a coup for the newspaper and

its reporter focusing on terrorism, a notoriously difficult subject to cover. "He gave us a gift with the story," Callimachi told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in May 2018 as

_Caliphate_episodes were being released. "It's an eye-opening account of his passage through the Islamic State." The gift proved tainted. CONFLICTING STORIES On multiple

occasions prior to the release of the podcast, Chaudhry had told Canadian news outlets that he had traveled to Syria in 2014 and joined ISIS. But he had denied playing any role in killings.

To Callimachi and the _Times,_ however, he claimed he had conducted executions. After _Caliphate_posted the episode in which Chaudhry described killing two civilians, an uproar ensued in

Canada. On the floor of Parliament in Ottawa, a leading opposition lawmaker, Candice Bergen, challenged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's efforts to reintegrate former terrorists into

society. "This guy is apparently in Toronto," Bergen said, referring to Chaudhry. "Canadians deserve more answers from their government. Why is it not doing something about

this despicable animal walking around the country?" Chaudhry came forward and once again denied he had participated in any killings — that is, he denied what he had said, in his own

words, on tape, to Callimachi and _The New York Times_. Even so, in 2019 the podcast series was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won a Peabody, one of the highest distinctions in

broadcast journalism. The Canadian media and a handful of critics in the U.S., notably Erik Wemple of The Washington Post__and Hassan Hassan of Newlines__magazine, raised significant

questions about Callimachi's judgment and the accuracy of her reporting. INTERNAL INVESTIGATION The _Times_resisted revisiting Chaudhry's story until his arrest this fall, when

Canadian officials charged him with lying about participating in terrorist activities. It then published the findings into Chaudhry's activities by its distinguished national security

reporter, Mark Mazzetti, who cast significant doubt on the Canadian's claims. A separate internal review of _Caliphate_'s reporting process was led by senior investigative editor

Dean Murphy. He found that Callimachi and her editors repeatedly failed to push hard enough to verify Chaudhry's claims, Baquet tells NPR. "They came back and said, 'If you

look at the guy's story, there is not enough powerful evidence that he was who he claimed to be for us to justify that story," Baquet says. In the interview with NPR lasting nearly

an hour, Baquet says the _Times_did not have evidence Chaudhry had ever been to Syria. Nor could it show he had joined ISIS, much less kill civilians for the group. The man's account

proved to be riddled with holes and contradictions. Even when confronting some of them, the reporting and producing team sought ways to show his story could still turn out to be true. Baquet

says top editors long accustomed to editing complex written investigative pieces were deferential to an ambitious audio investigative team presenting a compelling narrative yarn. He says he

shares in that blame. "I thought we produced another, you know, 'Holy damn!' story," Baquet recalled. "I was really proud of it. Another big story to embrace and

applaud." Callimachi, a noted terrorism correspondent, has won some of the most distinguished honors in foreign reporting and is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She joined

_The Times_ in 2014 after spending seven years covering Africa for The Associated Press. Baquet says editors relied on Callimachi's judgment to guide their own when it came to

_Caliphate._ "She's a powerful reporter who we imbued with a great deal of power and authority," he says. "She was regarded at that moment as, you know, as big a deal

ISIS reporter as there was in the world. And there's no question that that was one of the driving forces of the story." Baquet notes that Callimachi had broken many stories and

says that Murphy had found there had been no dishonesty or attempt by the _Caliphate_ team to deceive editors or readers. As of Friday, Baquet is posting an "Editor's Note"

atop each element of _Caliphate_ saying the series should never have been produced with Chaudhry as a central character. The_Times_ also writes that the series did not meet its standards for

accuracy or fact-checking. Baquet also acknowledges that Murphy's review will yield additional corrections of Callimachi's past work. However, he says nothing rose to the level of

the mistakes in judgment made in _Caliphate_. CALLIMACHI DEFENDS NARRATIVE When questions were first raised about the podcast, Callimachi dismissed criticism of the validity of her series

by saying only her team had been able to get the truth from him. "We were able to get to him both before any other media had gotten to him, but crucially, before law enforcement had

gotten to him," she told the CBC in May 2018, the day after the release of Chapter 5, in which Chaudhry described stabbing a man in the heart repeatedly. "He would speak to us in

this window of time when he essentially thought that he had slipped through the cracks." This fall, as Canadian authorities were wrapping up an investigation on Chaudhry, Callimachi

similarly championed her series. On Twitter, she raised questions about the competence of Canadian intelligence officials in the Chaudhry case. The _Times_ defended her piece to _The

Washington Post_ and others, saying the reporting proved to be true and that doubts about Chaudhry's account were central to the podcast's narrative. Those doubts were acknowledged

at the outset and surfaced most fundamentally in the sixth installment, in which Callimachi and her team confronted fundamental problems in Chaudhry's timeline of his activities. At

the heart of the episode was an effort to figure out how the pieces of his story might fit together — if the_Times_ was willing to shift the dates involved. One audio editor described that

scenario as "Occam's razor," suggesting that it was the simplest resolution to their dilemma and therefore probably the right one. Callimachi also relied on corroboration from

her colleagues Eric Schmitt, Adam Goldman and others that U.S. and Canadian intelligence officials harbored a suspicion — in some cases even a belief — that Chaudhry might have joined ISIS.

But it wasn't clear if those officials relied on hard evidence to verify Chaudhry's story or his own past claims on social media. In posting real-time analyses on social media

about unfolding terrorism attacks, Callimachi has helped to cement her reputation as a leading source on terrorism. Indeed she has frequently appeared on NPR and other networks as an

analyst. Colleagues consider her a fearless force of nature, chasing stories, sources and documents in far-flung places. However, she also has detractors, even within her own newsroom. Some

editors and reporters on the _Times'_ foreign desk kept their distance, according to colleagues who spoke on condition they not be named due to the sensitivity of the topic. In one

case, a scoop required a subsequent "Editor's Note" and a full follow-up story to address doubts about the veracity of the documents she relied upon. In another, the

_Times_disclosed it had bought video footage that included terrorist propaganda. Yet Baquet and Managing Editor Joseph Kahn, a former top international editor, stood behind her. Dolnick, a

scion of the Sulzberger family which has a controlling stake in the New York Times Co., personally encouraged her role and took on oversight of the _Caliphate_ project. As Callimachi served

as the heroic figure of _Caliphate_, on a quest for truth, audio producer Andrew Mills, who helped to develop _The Daily,_ emerged as a recurring character as well. Baquet declines to say

whether other _Times_journalists would receive reprimands or be reassigned as a result of the internal review. He says he would work with Callimachi to determine a fresh assignment, praising

her recent investigation on the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. "I do not see how Rukmini could go back to covering terrorism after one of the highest profile

stories of terrorism is getting knocked down in this way," Baquet says. He says he will inform the judges of the Peabody Awards and others who bestowed recognition on _Caliphate_that

the series was compromised. And Baquet points to media columnist Ben Smith's October look at the controversy as part of what he says is a push for transparency. "_The New York

Times_ has done tremendously ambitious journalism over the last few years. All of it has held up to the greater scrutiny," Baquet says. "When we get it wrong, I want people to

understand we're going to talk about it," he continues. "And what I'm hoping is that by talking about it, people will understand that we want to win their trust. And we

want them to believe what we report." Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.