After days of denial CBS and 60 Minutes seem to be considering coming clean about building a blockbuster segment around an apparent fabricator. The account is that of Dylan Davies, the British security contractor who provided a swashbuckling and heroic account of his role trying to defend the US consulate in Benghazi on the night a year ago when four Americans including the US Ambassador were killed.
Only Davies, who’s also got a book coming out, appears to have made the whole thing up.
The problems really got started when the Washington Post discovered that Davies had written an after action report to his employers three days after the incident in which he said he was never even able to get to the consulate the night of the attack. Which would mean that none of the things he told 60 Minutes could have happened.
Davies gave the Daily Beast the preposterously ludicrous explanation that he had lied to his superiors days after the account with a prosaic and unremarkable account of his actions but told the truth in his memoir and 60 Minutes appearance when there was money and fame to be had peddling tales about Benghazi heroics to the Benghazi conspiracy community. For good measure, Davies said he didn’t write the report, despite its being written in the first person.
Then today the New York Times reported that not only did Davies ‘lie’ to his supervisors at the time for no plausible reason. He apparently also ‘lied’ to the FBI, when they interviewed him, for no plausible reason other than to keep secret his heroic exploits the night of the attack.
Huffpo’s Michael Calderone has written two good stories about the unraveling story and CBS’s refusal to address the apparent problems with the story.
In any case, after a week plus of stonewalling, CBS tonight released this statement …
60 Minutes has learned of new information that undercuts the account told to us by Morgan Jones of his actions on the night of the attack on the Benghazi compound.
We are currently looking into this serious matter to determine if he misled us, and if so, we will make a correction.
This would appear to refer to the new information countless reporters have been asking them about and which they’ve refused to address for a week.
Meanwhile, Simon & Schuster, which is a subsidiary of CBS, said it “will review the book and take appropriate action with regard to its publication status.”
So, just to be explicitly clear, 60 Minutes, the flagship news show of CBS, was pumping a book published by a subsidiary of CBS.
The book was published by the Simon & Schuster imprint, Threshold Editions, which “specializes in conservative non-fiction [like] #1 New York Times bestsellers Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin, An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck, and The Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.”
