Following an internal investigation, CBS has doled out its punishments for the bogus 60 Minutes report on the 2011 Benghazi consulate attack starring lying security contractor Dylan Davies. Anchor Lara Logan and her producer Max McClellan were both “asked” to “take a leave of absence,” and agreed, according to a memo from CBS News chairman and 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager. “I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn’t have,” he wrote, according to the Huffington Post. (Davies’s book, which was published by a division of CBS, was previously pulled from shelves.)
After more than a week of standing by the report, CBS finally apologized, but without many answers. A more detailed examination of what went wrong found that the Benghazi story “was deficient in several respects,” including the fact that Logan previously said the U.S. should be after “revenge” for the attack. (Logan’s husband is a former defense contractor, which raised further questions about the appearances of Davies on her show.)
“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,” the report found.
