Lara Logan Takes Leave After Botched Benghazi Report

Lara Logan is out at 60 Minutes, at least temporarily, because of her bogus piece on Benghazi, reports the Hollywood Reporter. CBS News, which has retracted and apologized for the story, says it forced Logan and producer Max McClellan to take a leave of absence of unspecified duration. Logan's report last month featured an interview with former security officer Dylan Davies, who gave a riveting first-hand account of the attack on the US compound. It was only after the report aired that CBS concluded he was lying through his teeth.

"This deception got through and it shouldn’t have," wrote CBS News chief Jeff Fager in an email to staff today, reports the New York Times. An internal investigation into the story found that Logan and McClellan failed to properly vet Davies, who had given a much different account previously to the FBI. It also faulted Logan for her on-air conclusion that al-Qaeda played a role in the attack, and it cited a speech she gave on the topic last year in which she accused the US of misrepresenting what happened. "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," says the internal report. (More Lara Logan stories.)