CBS News has reportedly forced 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan to take a leave of absence in the wake of the discredited Benghazi report. The news comes just after Logan was supposed to host a journalism awards dinner, but was replaced.
Logan was scheduled to host an awards dinner in New York for the Committee to Protect Journalists, but Politico reports that she was replaced. Her 60 Minutes colleague Scott Pelley was picked to replace her. “Given the circumstances, Lara Logan did not want the fact that she was hosting the dinner to take attention away from our award winners,” a spokesperson told Politico in an email.
Then, The Huffington Post obtained a copy of a memo issued by CBS News chairman Jeff Fager, who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes. In it, he announced that Logan and McClellan will be taking an immediate leave of absence.
Fager also included the full findings of CBS News’ internal investigation into the mistakes of the report, which notes several mistakes the organization made throughout the process of putting the story together. He admitted that it was wrong for Logan to make a speech in October 2012, in which she said the government was wrong to suggest that Al Qaeda had anything to do with the attacks on Sept. 11, 2012 and suggested how the U.S. should respond. He also said that it was a mistake never to mention that Dylan Davies - the man who misrepresented himself and was the focus of the story - had his book published by Simon & Schuster, a CBS-owned company.
Logan had issued a short apology on the Nov. 10 edition of 60 Minutes, after apologizing on CBS This Morning. However, many criticized the 60 Minutes apology for being far too short.
The issue was that Davies had told CBS News that his name was Morgan Jones (the pseudonym he used for the book) and gave dramatic details about the night of Sept. 11, 2012. However, his story was different from what he gave the FBI and the security contractor he worked for, telling them that he never left his villa during the incident. A State Department source later confirmed this to CBS News, according to Fager’s report.
image: CBS