Lara Logan, producer ordered to take leave in aftermath of '60 Minutes' Benghazi reporting scandal

CBS takes action after an internal review of the handling of an Oct. 27 story, which interviewed a security contractor who said he was at the U.S. mission in Libya the night it was attacked in 2012, but questions surfaced over his credibility.

BY DAVID HINCKLEY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

PUBLISHED: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2013, 2:25 PM

UPDATED: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2013, 5:32 PM

60 MINUTES

Lara Logan issues an on-air correction on a story ‘60 Minutes’ first broadcast on Oct. 27 about the attack on the American Special Mission compound in Benghazi. A key source was later discovered to have lied about his whereabouts at the time of the attack.

An embarrassed CBS News Tuesday sent reporter Lara Logan on a leave of absence in the wake of her discredited "60 Minutes" report on the Benghazi attack.

CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager called the report "a regrettable mistake." He said Logan and her producer, Max McLellan, had been asked to take the leaves of absence and had agreed to do so.

There was no indication how long they will last.

In a CBS memo obtained by the Huffington Post, Fager also said, "As executive producer (of '60 Minutes'), I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn't have."

CBS's internal sanction follows on-air apologies by both Logan and the show.

This blemish on one of television's best-regarded investigative news programs began with an Oct. 27 report heavily based on the account by Dylan Davies of the September 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

RELATED: '60 MINUTES' APOLOGIZES FOR FLAWED BENGHAZI REPORT

CBS

Lara Logan admits on ‘CBS This Morning’ that she and the news magazine had made a 'mistake' in their reporting.

The show said Davies would provide the first western eyewitness account of the attack, which left Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Amerians dead.

After the "60 Minutes" report aired, it was revealed that Davies had given a conflicting story to the FBI, saying he was not on the scene. Subsequent reports cast further doubt on his story.

An internal CBS investigation summarized by Al Ortiz, director of standards and practices, found that among other things, the Logan-McLellan team "did not sufficiently vet Davies' account of his own actions and whereabouts that night."

The internal report suggested Logan and McLellan could have used the greater resources of CBS News to have questioned Davies's credibility.

It also suggested that even their own reporting, in which Davies said he had lied to his superiors about going to the compound that night, "should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process."

Almost as a footnote, Ortiz's report said Logan may have violated CBS News standards by reporting the story at all.

RELATED: ‘60 MINUTES'S' LOGAN APOLOGIZES FOR BENGHAZI 'MISTAKE'

ESAM AL-FETORI/REUTERS

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames on Sept. 11, 2012.

A month before the "60 Minutes" report, it said, Logan made a speech "arguing that the U.S. Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda and urging actions that the U.S. should take in response to the Benghazi attack.

"From a CBS News Standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government's handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story."

Fager's memo also praised Logan's past work, saying she "has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm's way many times in the course of covering stories for us."

He also noted McLellan's "distinguished career."

But, he said, this was a stumble CBS didn't need.

"There is a lot to learn from this mistake for the entire organization," he wrote. "We have rebuilt CBS News in a way that has dramatically improved our reporting abilities. Ironically '60 Minutes,' which has been a model for those changes, fell short by broadcasting a now discredited account of an important story, and did not take full advantage of the reporting abilities of CBS News that might have prevented it from happening."

He pledged unspecified steps "to reduce the chances of it happening again."

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