After days of radio silence, here’s Lara Logan fast talking her excuses for using a guy who seems to be a serial fabricator as the lynchpin of a 60 Minutes Benghazi story. Since she “worked on it for a year”, it really is notable that only a couple days of digging by other news organizations was all it took to find out that the story was bullshit. It’s even more notable that Logan and 60 Minutes didn’t have a whole lot of skepticism about any Benghazi revisionism given the massive incentives coming from enemies of the Obama Administration to find evidence of gross malfeasance and incompetence. Logan says over and over, the important thing is that they were wrong. Just as important is why they were wrong, and what she’s going to do to make sure she’s not wrong again.
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JPL
It might be worth listening to again, since when I first listened, I hadn’t had my dose of caffeine yet. On one hand she admits it wasn’t sourced properly but then defends his lies because he was open about them. Okay, now I’ll listen again.
Soonergrunt
When they do a retraction ON 60 Minutes, I’ll give them a sliver of credit. When they fire Lara Logan, I’ll give them a little more.
MikeJ
Everyone wants to be Woodward and Bernstein and bring down a president. Good president, bad president, republican, democrat. doesn’t matter.
Elizabelle
You know what would make me like CBS more (and props to them for coming clean on this one)?
Inviting Dan Rather to participate in their coverage of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
They trashed him over a late career report that could not be verified, and are likely keeping him at a distance to retain wingnut eyes.
Didn’t one of their (soon fired) morning anchors once refer to them as the “Codger Broadcasting System”?
Dan Rather is one of the last of the major network news anchors who was around for November 22, 1963. He deserves to be heard.
I guess Bob Schieffer will be pulling double duties.
Kay
I don’t know what happened in Benghazi, but I think all of media chasing Susan Rice’s talking points for 6 months probably wasn’t a good idea, if media actually wanted to find out what happened.
Why did they do that? They had to know it was a bullshit line of inquiry a month into it. It was very dramatic and all, but parsing her statement again and again and again led nowhere, and by the time they moved off that it was probably too late to find out what (if any) sinister thing happened.
If the administration was hiding something, media pursuing Susan Rice probably helped them conceal it.
Jay C
Well, for Lara Logan, that’s most likely going to amount, in the end, to “nothing”: more important is what CBS will do, or might do, to keep from being wrong (again). Probably not “nothing”, but, I’m guessing, something close to it.
Though if nothing else, this flap might have the salutary effect of finally getting the “mainstream” media to shy away from the Benghazi conspiracy-mongering crapola: though I’m sure Darrel Issa has already scheduled umpty-jillion more hours of Congressional hearings on the matter, just in case anyone might get bored…
Shakezula
There is no way that after a year of even quasi-decent investigation they came up with something this far off. This is the sort of thing that happens when the people reporting the story have already decided how the story is going to go and set out to find people to supply the required quotes.
uila
Let’s not ignore the fact that the guy has a book coming out, and that the book is published by a subsidiary of CBS. Vertical integration, yaaaay!
JPL
The statement by Lara Logan is still confusing. Although, she didn’t know about the Washington Post article, Dylan Davies was upfront about it. It was the statement to the FBI that made them change their mind. Is Simon and Schuster going to bury the book?
Comrade Dread
Well, I would guess cover their asses until the storm blows over and then back to business as usual. Truth doesn’t matter much in the news business anymore, ratings do.
JPL
@uila: The book will be frequently cited by O’Reilly, Beck and Hannity.
MattF
It’s just a fact that news organizations get fooled every now and then– I can think of a half dozen instances off the top of my head. Con artists make a living by being convincing. A reporter and/or an editor trusts someone they shouldn’t have, a unique source turns out to be a serial liar.
I agree that it’s necessary to figure out where things went wrong– but that won’t prevent it from happening again.
RSR
It sure looks like CBS pimped out their premier investigative journalism organization in service to a marketing need of their book publishing arm.
Will the book now be shelved in the fiction racks?
Anya
Lara Logan is full of shit. She claims that she vetted the source, yet she couldn’t verify his story with his employer or the FBI. She took him at his word that he told the FBI the same story? Really, Lara? She had an agenda and she chased the sources that helped her agenda.
Howard Beale IV
It was amazing how the BENGHAZI!1!! crowd jumped all over this story, and nary a walkback by those who were using this story as a cudgel against Clinton.
That’s not to say that the idea of Hilary running for 2016 is wrong on so many levels.
indycat32
She worked on this for a year and it never once occurred to her to get a copy of his official report which completely contradicted what he told her? That’s some mighty fine investigative reporting.
Ash Can
Journamalismin’ is hard.
RSR
What was the other thing 60 Minutes screwed the pooch on recently? Something about SSI/disability payments being a huge source of fraud or something, I think.
Kay
They believed that, but they attributed all kinds of malicious intent and subtext to Susan Rice basically reading a statement.
Who is this guy, anyway, and why is he lying about Benghazi? That might be an interesting story right there.
piratedan
your MSM at work…. sigh…. and this is the former standard of high end journalistic integrity that is supposed to get the stories that matter to Americans who don’t have time in the daily/busy lives to keep up with the news…. Guess I gotta stop thinking that these guys are the inheritors of the Mantle of Big Walter and realize that the golden age of journalism can’t be found on network TV post the fairness doctrine.
Suffern ACE
Maybe those reports were forged or he was pressured into signing them. There’s no way the President wasn’t sitting up watching his all seeing satelitte feed, cackling at the deaths of the Ambassador while playing golf and snorting cocaine and sleeping while ignoring the B-1 bombers that could have ended the seige right then and there. No way that wasn’t the case.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JPL:
That’s exactly what I heard also. Makes no sense.
“We were clearly influenced by FOX “News” and every other right-wing propaganda outlet to want to believe something so obviously suspect so we could join in and not look soft. Being forced to apologize is humiliating enough so that we’re now going to rethink how gullible and susceptible we are to extreme right-wing manipulation”
Now that would have been a suitable statement, but of course all you’ll ever get is this double-talk instead.
uila
@JPL: In their defense, Threshold is the premier outlet for conservative fan fiction:
For folks with a high threshold for bullshit.
Elizabelle
OK, for us codgers who sort of remember this: from September 17, 1989:
CBS NEWS anchorwoman Kathleen Sullivan called her network the ”Cheap Broadcasting System” during live transmissions to the company’s New York headquarters, according to the New York Post. Sullivan’s comments Thursday were projected on closed-circuit monitors in the CBS building and were seen by dozens of employees, sources told the newspaper. The host of This Morning apparently was unaware that her microphone was on. Neither CBS nor Sullivan would comment.
Kathleen exited CBS the following year, and later worked with CNN (among other networks).
kindness
The Gotchya factor and momentary rating blip are more important than the actual facts in our modern media. I would like to say this is new but I would be wrong. What is new is that TV has a different impact than prior ages print media. Previously one had to be educated in order to read. Now days not so much.
Patrick
This is from Lara Logan’s wikipedia site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Logan#Comments_about_Afghanistan_and_Libya
And CBS hired this person as a reporter??? What gives? CBS wants to become FoxNews?
I expect her to be fired. If not, it is time to ask why the hell Dan Rather was fired. What does CBS have to hide?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Maybe 60 Minutes can fire Lara Logan and bring Dan Rather back?
MattF
@uila: That’s quite a lineup. Corsi, all by himself, would be enough to discredit them.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Patrick:
Very much so. They’ve wanted this very badly for years now, as far as I can tell, as has CNN and pretty much everyone else.
mk3872
What the hell was she doing for a FULL YEAR ??
Kay
@Patrick:
I’m just curious if it ends here.
Isn’t the next question “who is paying this man to lie about Benghazi?” Other than his publisher, I mean. They’re all supposed to be so politically savvy, and based on that speech, she’s something of an operative herself. She missed that possible angle?
Bex
@Shakezula: Agree. Nothing about Logan’s “explanation/apology” hangs together.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
Ladies and gentlemen: Your Liberal Media!
eric
Why wont Obama just fess up that Iron Man destroyed the embassy as collateral damage while attacking the terrorists for the US govt? Another example of why we need Rand Paul and his refreshing and unique brand of honesty in the White House.
handsmile
While not excusing or dismissing Lara Logan’s professional incompetence on this Benghazi report in any way whatsoever (and let’s hope (ha!) 60 Minutes leads its next broadcast with a retraction), I will always be mindful of what Logan endured in Tahrir Square in February 2011.
In my book anyways, she’s earned some charity.
eric
@mk3872: editing Rand Paul articles?
EconWatcher
@Elizabelle:
Sorry, but I think you’ve picked a poor example to rehabilitate Dan Rather. He made a colossal mistake in his coverage of the JFK assassination. He was one of the few reporters allowed to see the Zapruder film years before the film was made public. And he reported that Kennedy’s head and body snapped forward when hit with the fatal bullet. In fact, as everyone now knows from the famous film, his head snapped back.
This was a very, very important fact, because if Oswald was the shooter, the shot had to come from behind. The inaccurate narrative that Rather spread was cited as corroboration for the shot coming from behind, and thus as evidence tending not to support conspiracy. While it may not be impossible for the head to snap back from a shot delivered from behind, the story certainly became a lot more complex when that fact became public.
By the way, a revised version of Anthony Summers’ excellent book just came out, and it’s really great for anyone who’s interested. (It carefully weighs the evidence and leans towards conspiracy, but acknowledges that the known facts leave it open to doubt.)
jonas
But have they checked the kerning in that FBI report?
JPL
This is from an article at the NYTimes about CBS’s apology..
Jennifer Robinson, a spokeswoman for the book’s publisher, Threshold Editions, which is part of the Simon and Schuster unit of CBS, said, “Although we have not seen the F.B.I. report, in light of these revelations we will review the book and take appropriate action with regard to its publication status.”
link
piratedan
@jonas: or the fact that original font was “comic sans”…. very disturbing.
Elizabelle
@EconWatcher:
Thank you. I did not know that.
Bob
Lara Logan puts the BS in CBS.
Jay C
@Kay:
And this is surprising because….? From the minute it was reported (anyone remember Mitt Romney’s swiftly-walked-back-and-buried first comment about how the attack was Obama’s fault because he “sympathized with terrorists”?) the President’s/Adminstration’s enemies jumped on the Benghazi attack to try to exploit it for political advantage. The accuracy, or even veracity of their claims and charges has never seemed to be important to them: all that matters is the attack. And the assurance (rarely disappointed) that a friendly or biased media outlet will simply accept and repeat virtually any allegation. Dumping on Susan Rice for her statements to the UN was ridiculous nonsense, of course: but it got the Attack into the media right away. And that was what was important.
Patricia Kayden
@handsmile: Sympathy because of that attack is fine, but not charity to lie and misreport. She ought to be fired, just like Dan Rather was fired.
Another Botsplainer
@handsmile: Umm, no.
cmorenc
@Patrick:
IMHO Dan Rather was deliberately set up by GOP operatives, who realized the only way to spike erosive effect of the story of Bush’s dubious fuflillment of his National Guard Service was to somehow convincingly discredit the media’s efforts to pursue it, since they couldn’t discredit the underlying story itself. And so they set up Rather with a honeypot of a seemingly convincingly well-placed, convincing witnesses to the manipulations which allowed Bush to get away with skating on his guard duites, and a convincing-seeming document to back that up, and once Rather and CBS had publicly committed to covering the story, the witnesses backed out and the document’s authenticity was attacked.
Classic dirty tricks misdirection, which intimidated ANY other mainstream journalist from further pursuing the Bush National Guard story. And yes, this has Rove’s m.o. written all over it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@handsmile:
She’s always seemed like a hack to me. When McChrystal was fired (for attacking Obama) she attacked the reporter who had reported his comments, saying that journalists should be more cozy with and deferring to the military when they’re covering them, basically.
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
Yeah, you can’t forget the personal assault and terrible injuries, but she should be suspended, at a minimum. And maybe reassigned to another foreign correspondent post. There’s a big world out there.
Meanwhile, did we ever hear anything about ABC and Jonathan Karl and those fake emails? He seems to still be the White House correspondent.
Cervantes
@Bill E Pilgrim: Here’s one report.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: seems like she would be perfect for the Fukushima beat…..
Another Botsplainer
Rather paid the price. There will never be a price paid by Logan or Karl or any other these other hacks. Goddamn it makes me mad.
Elizabelle
@cmorenc:
I always thought the documents might have existed, and the core of the reporting was sound, but the original documents were destroyed at some point and newer ones funneled to Rather.
His story was not unbelievable, in the least, and has never been refuted, if memory serves.
Cervantes
@Bob: It’s not just anybody who gets to be CBS’s Chief Foreign Correspondent.
Eric U.
@Patrick: in our media, a reporter can safely make a mistake that damages a democratic president, but if the report the truth and it damages a republican president it’s a real problem for their career. Although this is a general rule, it appears at this point that there is a fairly concerted effort to damage Obama as much as they can.
Cassidy
If her story had been about Syria and how Obama wanted to be a big swinging dick and do manly things like war, I imagine the tone of this post would be completely different.
Elizabelle
@Cervantes:
I am tired of these people failing up.
And the CBS Evening News always seems to be like: defense industry — you need a target for your wares? Here’s your reporting, right here.
It’s always war and conflict and stuff calling for a military response. Which I guess is Fox’s approach, too.
Plutocrat media, passed off as the unbelievable liberal media.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Cervantes: Here are several more reactions, to put it mildly.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/lara-logan-you-suck-20100628
http://www.salon.com/2010/06/28/journalism_9/
Yes one of these is Glenn Greenwald, when he was still at Salon, and the other is Matt Taibbi. However since what McChrystal was fired for was denigrating Obama, certain regulars wanting to pounce might find the “I hate anyone who is ever critical of Obama” calculus a little sticky on this one. Good luck. We’re all counting on you.
Cassidy
@Eric U.: We’ve hit the soft build-up to an election. It’s not about damaging Obama anymore. It’s about damaging the Democratic brand.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
No one could have anticipated that the blurring of the line between news and entertainment would result in low standards of journalism.
Elizabelle
@Cassidy:
Was there public appetite for intervening in Syria (militarily)? I believe the British public brought Cameron up short, and the American public is even more war-weary.
The diplomatic approach seems to be paying off.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@EconWatcher: Ah, horseshit. Watch the Zapruder film at the headshot. Kennedy’s head initially moves forward, then moves back. Also, ejecta from the head wound flies forward, consistent with a shot from the rear.
60 years after the fact, conspiracy theories about the assassination are just jerking off.
Elizabelle
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Roger Stone, if you recall that GOP operative/asshole, is hawking a book on LBJ possibly being involved in the assassination conspiracy.
Don’t know more; just saw a notice he’s doing a book appearance.
rdldot
@Soonergrunt: Exactly. Didn’t Dan Rather and his producer lose their jobs over the Natl Guard story about Bush? Why shouldn’t these people?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@cmorenc: @Elizabelle: Me too. I’m not big on the conspiracy notion in general, but what happened to Rather reeked of Nixon’s plumbers and COINTELPRO. Total deflection from the underlying story as well.
thefax
@Bill E Pilgrim: She did some good work in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion–she was very frank about how badly the war was going, at a time when there wasn’t a lot of pushback against the invasion. In recent years, though, she does seem to have adopted a ‘special forces rock!’ approach that has compromised her integrity.
IowaOldLady
She should be fired. Not just as punishment, but because she’s undercut her own credibility so much that no one would be able to trust her.
Cassidy
@Elizabelle: I agree. I think the diplomatic solution has been working, although it still hasn’t alleviated the killing and fighting. We’ve just kept everyone to the standard rules and courtesies of conventional warfare. I was referring to the mass panic of the left blogosphere, in which our primary FPers were caught up in, to assume the PO wanted to be the big swinging dick and go crush some brown people under tanks. I think hindsight bears out that it was a complicated scenario and was handled with diplomatic finesse backed by the slight menace of bullets, but it was never a given that PO wanted to get his war on.
And just my observation, I got the impression that the American people felt that “something” had to be done, but no one knew what that “something” was. We’re pretty conditioned to assume that “something” equals bombing the hell out of things.
feebog
@Kay:
Exactly. CBS can redeem themselves by digging into this and finding our exactly who bankrolled this. Because you can bet there is one or more “Republican Operative” lying in the weeds.
They won’t of course. But I’m hoping some enterprising young reporter with the support of a newspaper like the LA Times or the Boston Globe will ferret out the real story here.
Bill E Pilgrim
@thefax: Fair enough. I became aware of her only during the McChrystal dustup, due to my not living in the US.
Pongo
@JPL: ‘Straight to remainders’ seems a likely outcome for this book, although it could become a rightwing conspiracy hack bible, I suppose, with Davies doing a red state ‘victim of the liberal media’ speaking tour. Karma willing, Logan will be in need of a new job soon and she can manage his tour.
Cervantes
@Bill E Pilgrim: Yes, thanks. The article I cited simply reported Logan’s criticism of Hastings (which was ridiculous even ignoring her current embarrassment). The ones you cited are (appropriate) reactions to what Logan said about Hastings.
And then the FBI opened a file on Hastings to “memorialize [his] controversial reporting.” And then, a year later, Hastings died in a car crash.
And yes, Logan was attacked and raped in Cairo — and no one should be subjected to such abuse — but to bring this up is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the quality of her work.
thefax
@Bill E Pilgrim: Totally understandable. Her take on the McChrystal story was indefensible, and that’s certainly what I have in mind when I suggest that she’s probably a bit too close to the military nowadays to be a responsible foreign correspondent.
Comrade Scrutinizer
LBJ’s alleged involvement goes back to the late 60s. Really, a really great mashu of all the conspiracy theories would involve the Chicago Mob, the CIA, LBJ, the Secret Service, Castro, the KGB, and the neighborhood milkman sitting down to plot the hit, identifying Oswald as the patsy, setting up Tippit to be killed (by an Oswald lookalike?), while stationing a team of hitmen (with umbrellas?) around Dealy Plaza, invisible to everyone there. Then despite the vast numbers involved, they maintain perfect operational security for decades, and suppress any physical evidence which would point away from Oswald, or point towards a wider conspiracy.
But hey! Benghazi!
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I hate to say it but the only reason Lara Logan has this job is becase she was groped by an Egyptian crowd.
Jane Rockoford
Am I the only one you cannot listen to Lara Logan without getting the creeps? Her affected breathless delivery regardless of content, like she’s trying to channel Marilyn Monroe, and all that cleavage in your face makes it impossible for me to listen to her report anything. Add her infamous slamming of Michael Hastings and she’s an idiot who should not be taken seriously.
handsmile
@Patricia Kayden: , @Elizabelle:
The entire first clause of my #35 comment makes it abundantly clear that I believe Logan and 60 Minutes are guilty of “professional incompetence” and deserve appropriate sanction.
However, when a person has been gang-raped while performing his/her duties as a journalist, my “charity” extends at least so far as to be reluctant to refer to that person as a “hack.”
Kay
@feebog:
That never happens, though. There’s just the fact (someone made up a complicated story and carefully sold it) and then it just lays there.
I wonder of it goes back to the conservative “state versus private interests” idea again.
How conservatives always see all kinds of skullduggery and shadiness on the state side of things (obviously sometimes it’s there) but only pure-as-the-driven snow motives or designs of private, monied interests.
hoodie
That was what they used to call the “modified limited hangout.” It’s bullshit, and this is CBS’s lame attempt to cover up for their own incompetence and hunger for ratings. She didn’t vet this guy because he was telling her what she wanted to hear. How does CBS allow any who gives speeches saying things like this
lead a report on what happened at Benghazi?
Gene108
I had generally liked Lara Logan’s reporting prior to this. I am sort of surprised she chose to do a hit piece.
Pongo
@Anya: NYT calls her out on it this morning, suggesting that the fact she was unaware of the FBI report represents a ‘failure in reporting.’ I agree, but she didn’t put this lousy piece out on her own. There were also editorial and management failures in this process.
Redshirt
I’m astounded that we’re back to this point in our “culture” where the media and the Right Wing so obviously are just filled with pure partisan bullshit, and yet no one says a word.
There’s literally nothing to this story, and yet we’ll hear about it now till the ends of time, because of the corporate propaganda machine.
eric
@Kay: Apparently a CBS subsidiary was paying him to lie.
Cervantes
@thefax: She did some good work in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion–she was very frank about how badly the war was going, at a time when there wasn’t a lot of pushback against the invasion.
True, and she should get credit for that, I agree.
TG Chicago
@MikeJ: I understand that impulse and to some extent I support it, as I think an adversarial press is a good thing (even when a Democrat is in office).
But if you come at the king, you best not miss.
It will be interesting to see how CBS handles this multi-layered mistake (failing to fully vet their lone source, failing to see his profit motive, failing to disclose their own profit motive) as compared to Rathergate.
catclub
Speaking of the Middle East, I am amused that Bibi Netanyahu is throwing fits about the possible deal with Iran.
dww44
@EconWatcher: I don’t know about the conspiracy theories. I’m reading a couple I picked up from the library, including Parkland by Vincent Bugliosi and “The Zapruder Film” by David R. Wrone. It seems there’s a consensus that Bugliosi’s earlier book “Reclaiming History” is accepted as the definitive account of the assasination and pretty much puts paid to the conspiracy theories. My reading of the former 2 books pretty much substantiates this.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
I agree that Logan should face censure from the network for her failure to follow basic journalistic process.
And yet. I recall a few years ago, watching an amazing piece with her where she ripped apart her network and other media over how they did Iraq reporting. And she did this because she had been their woman in Iraq and Afghanistan for years; she’s not sitting at 60 Minutes because of her looks, but because she’s actually done some amazing reporting in really bad circumstances.
And I wonder if they’ve dropped her into a chair that she may not have really wanted, after the sexual assault? Looking at her Wikipedia page, I think I agree a bit with Greenwald when he pushed back on her criticism of Hastings — she’s done some downright kickass work, but I think is in a slot she’s not best suited for, and likely didn’t get the best prep for. Doing a “slow-burn” story is a lot different than her last decade spend covering the GWoT in the theater, where her ties to the military were very necessary to do the work, and where much of what she did was, essentially, in media res that didn’t need a lot of digging around facts.
I don’t know. But I’m not quite ready to give her the Rather treatment; two wrongs don’t make a right, anyway.
Mike G
Her lies harmed a Democrat, aso she won’t suffer the career nuking that would result if she harmed a Repuke President.
Washington is hard-wired for Republican rule.
CBS = See BS
different-church-lady
Why does it always seem to be CBS that ends up eating this particular bird?
Uncle Cosmo
@Pongo:
Looks like it won’t get even that far: A diary over at the Great Orange Satan reprints a Simon & Scheisster e-mail announcement that it is “suspending the publication and sale of this book in all formats, and are recommending that booksellers do the same.” There follows procedures for “obtaining a call tag for the recalled product” & addresses (partially redacted) for sending the copies back.
Comments posted to that diary report the book had vanished from Amazon, B&N Nook Store, Sony eBook store & Google Play.before 5 PM EST today.
Not that I’m rooting for a once-proud publishing house that’s debased itself to Regnery Lite for the sake of a few shekels, but it would be sweet indeed if S&S sued the lying bastard for every penny of his advance & then some.
TriassicSands
@Elizabelle:
Unfortunately, unless it is latrine duty, Shieffer won’t be up to the task.
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
So, what we get is poor journalism and lousy entertainment. Quite a bargain.
Pongo
Anyone have thoughts on why WaPo would put this article in their ‘Style’ section today?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/60-minutes-apologizes-for-benghazi-report/2013/11/08/6e7b6b9a-487e-11e3-a196-3544a03c2351_story.html
Are we to focus on Lara Logan’s outfit rather than on her lousy reporting?