Central African Republic, 1982 — military coup attempt

The primary account of this event derives from the English Wikipedia article '1982 Central African Republic coup attempt,' which cites a New York Times article by Alan Cowell (March 17, 1982) and Pierre Kalck's Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic (2005) as underlying sources. I could not directly access the NYT archive article (paywalled) or the Kalck dictionary text this session, so those facts are labeled CHAIN rather than VERIFIED. Britannica's country history page confirms Kolingba's September 1981 seizure of power but does not independently corroborate the March 1982 coup attempt itself, so that specific event remains sourced only via the Wikipedia chain. No independent contemporary news archive was accessible to directly verify the coup attempt's details. | Verification performed via live WebFetch of both cited URLs (multiple independent fetches per URL to cross-check consistency). 1) VERIFIED fact (Britannica): URL is real and live. Substance of the fact (Kolingba removed Dacko in a bloodless coup, September 1981, established military rule) is directly confirmed. HOWEVER, the entry's "quote" field was NOT a verbatim quote — it was a paraphrase ("Kolingba removed Dacko in September 1981 through a bloodless coup and established military rule.") presented as if quoted. The actual verbatim text, confirmed identically across two separate fetches, is: "Finally, in September 1981, Gen. André Kolingba removed Dacko from office in a bloodless coup and established a military government." I corrected the quote field to the true verbatim text; the VERIFIED label stands since the underlying fact is accurate and directly supported. 2) CHAIN facts: The Wikipedia article "1982 Central African Republic coup attempt" is real and, on repeated fetch, contains matching narrative content with named citations mapping closely to what the entry claims: Cowell/NYT (17 March 1982, "In Central African Republic, A Coup or Just a Charade?") for the coup attempt and its ~4-day failure; Kalck 2005 p. xxxix for the radio announcement; Kalck 2005 p. 8 for Bozizé fleeing north with ~100 soldiers; Kalck 2005 p. xl plus Doeden 2009 p. 30 plus a Republic of Togo (2007) obituary source for the Togo exile/France refuge details. I added Doeden as a co-source on the last CHAIN fact since it appears alongside Kalck/Togo in the article's citation for the exile timeline — this is a completeness correction, not a downgrade. No invented facts found; all CHAIN claims are plausibly and specifically sourced in the underlying article. 3) target_leader: Confirmed accurate and consistent with both sources; no change. 4) Summary: One unsupported specific claim was found and trimmed — the original summary called Bozizé a "Captain (later General)" at the time of the coup. Neither the Wikipedia article (checked via targeted fetch for rank terminology) nor the infobox specifies his 1982 rank as Captain; the article only ever refers to him retrospectively as "General François Bozizé." Since no fact in the fact list supports the specific "Captain" rank claim, I removed it from the summary, leaving "officers including François Bozizé, who announced the change of power over the radio." The "recently returned from exile" clause was checked and IS directly supported by the Wikipedia article text ("Patassé... returned from exile to the Central African Republic" on 3 March 1982), so it was kept. Net assessment: sourcing is fundamentally honest and the event is well-attested via a real, checkable Wikipedia article with specific named citations, but strict verification surfaced (a) one non-verbatim quote mislabeled as a quote, and (b) one specific factual embellishment (Bozizé's 1982 rank) in the summary with no backing fact. Both corrected rather than requiring full rejection.