Weeks after she was forced to retract her “60 Minutes” report on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan will be taking a leave of absence from the CBS News staple.
The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone broke the news.
Logan was forced to admit that the report was a “mistake” after a British security contractor’s account of the attack was discredited.
In a memo circulated Tuesday and obtained by HuffPost, CBS News chairman and “60 Minutes” executive producer Jeff Fager detailed the findings from his review of Logan’s report. Fager wrote that Logan did not adequately attribute “her assertions that Al Qaeda carried out the attack” and that she had an apparent “conflict” in covering the story:
–Questions have also been raised about the role of Al Qaeda in the attack since Logan declared in the report that Al Qaeda fighters had carried it out. Al Qaeda’s role is the subject of much disagreement and debate. While Logan had multiple sources and good reasons to have confidence in them, her assertions that Al Qaeda carried out the attack and controlled the hospital were not adequately attributed in her report.
–In October of 2012, one month before starting work on the Benghazi story, Logan made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the US Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the US 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.
Read Fager’s memo here.
This post has been updated.
