60 MINUTES UNDER FIRE FOR DISCREDITED BENGHAZI REPORT

60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan on Sunday apologized for her report on Benghazi two weeks ago, which featured Dylan Davies, a man who insisted that he warned superiors about an attack on the American mission there and told how he himself rushed to the compound on the night of the attack. An FBI report later disclosed that his account was untrue. “It was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry,” she said. She gave no explanation for how the mistake occurred (it was quickly caught by the Washington Post). In an interview with today’s (Monday) New York Times, Paul Friedman, who was ousted as the No. 2 man at CBS News in 2011, said, “In the short term, this will confirm the worst suspicions of people who don’t trust CBS News. … In the long term, a lot will depend on how tough and transparent CBS can be in finding out how this happened — especially when there were not the kind of tight deadline pressures that sometimes result in errors.” (Both the Times and Politico.com reported that Linda Mason, the CBS executive who screened all 60 Minutes reports before they aired, was removed after Jeff Fager, the producer of the program, also took on the job of chairman of CBS News in 2011.) Howard Kurtz, media critic for Fox News, which has also acknowledged using Davies as its source for reporting on Benghazi, tweeted: “CBS put all its marbles on a liar.” Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the fact that Threshold Editions, a conservative book publishing company owned by CBS’s Simon and Schuster Co., had published a book about Benghazi by Davies, who would thereby have profited from his appearance on the newsmagazine, as would CBS, from sales of the books. Logan’s apology Sunday night did not address those questions. Threshold said on Friday that it has withdrawn the book.