The Names column in the Boston Sunday Globe featured this item:
That’s nothing. Here’s what the New York Post reported about the same event, as the hardworking staff has previously noted:
Kraft: Putin stole Bowl ring
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft revealed the real story behind a 2005 meeting with Vladimir Putin, during which the Russian president pocketed his Super Bowl ring, worth more than $25,000. Kraft, at the time, claimed the diamond-encrusted bauble was a gift, but he now admits Putin stole it, and the White House intervened when he demanded it back.
Kraft explained the incident happened while Sandy Weill and other business execs were in St. Petersburg. “I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ ” Kraft told the crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala at the Waldorf-Astoria.“I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”
Subsequently, a Bush administration official told Kraft that, as the Post relates it, “‘It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present.’ (In fact the Soviet Union had collapsed 14 years earlier.)”
But not a word of it appeared in the Sunday Globe, apparently because it’s old news. From today’s Names column:
Vladimir Putin is denying Robert Kraft’s oft-told claim that the Russian president pocketed a prized Super Bowl ring during the Patriots owner’s visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2005. Kraft has long alleged that Putin kept the diamond-studded Super Bowl ring but didn’t make a fuss at the request of then-President George W. Bush who wanted to avoid trouble with Russia. Kraft repeated the story at an awards event in New York the other night.
The hardworking staff then checked out the Globe archive and sure enough, we found this from 2005:
Even so, sometimes old news in the Post is more interesting than new news in the Globe.
Possibly the weirdest non-story?
I hear Mr. Kraft now claims Putin stole his reading glasses.