CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan is taking a leave of absence for her work on a piece about Benghazi. This treatment of her is a disgrace on multiple levels. Before we get to that, consider some recent history.
Lara Logan: Moments before being Robbed of her dignity the first time.
Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak ultimately stepped down as a result of Barack Obama’s support for the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt on February 11, 2011. In hindsight, that support appears to have been in greater supply than we knew at the time. On the day Mubarak resigned, CBS reporter Lara Logan was in Tahrir Square to report on the celebrations. She barely escaped with her life after she sustained a massive sexual assault at the hands of a crazed Muslim mob.
Courageously, Logan came forward less than three months later, told her story, said she never wanted to talk publicly about it again, and said she wanted to get back to work. After being stripped of her dignity, Logan decided to fight tooth and nail to get it back.
She did just that.
Fast forward to October 27, 2013. In a piece she did about Benghazi for 60 Minutes, Logan interviewed Lt. Col. Andrew Wood and Gregory Hicks, both impeccable witnesses who testified in front of Congress. She also interviewed a British soldier named Dylan Davies (aka Morgan Jones) who was employed by the Blue Mountain Group to provide security.
Lt. Col. Wood and Hicks: unassailable Benghazi testimony.
Since the report, Davies has been discredited, Logan issued an unequivocal apology on national television, and 60 Minutes took down the entire piece from its website despite Davies’ account being the only questionable aspect of the report.
Of course, what this means is that because one portion of a body of work is discredited, the entire body of work is discredited. Why doesn’t this hold true relative to the Obama administration’s original lies about Benghazi?
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that 60 Minutes, Lara Logan, or her producer intentionally set out to mislead viewers. The worst that can be said about them is that they failed to fully vet an alleged witness.
Incidentally, one of the claims made by Davies that should be easily confirmed or debunked is that he was ordered to stand down. If he was, it means the CIA Annex and the State Department may have been singing from the same sheet of music that night in Benghazi.
Dylan Davies: Was this man ordered to stand down in Benghazi?
Contrast this with the Obama administration. On September 16, 2012, then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday talk shows and lied; she said the attack was the result of a protest in response to a video. The entire administration – including Barack Obama himself – parroted that lie for two weeks. Susan Rice was ultimately rewarded with a promotion to National Security Adviser for this despicable behavior.
Susan Rice: Disgraced but promoted.
Another aspect to Logan’s report involved her contention that employees from the CIA Annex “ignored orders to wait” and went to the Special Mission Compound in response to the initial attack. The “independent” Accountability Review Board (ARB) commissioned by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found that CIA Annex personnel were “not delayed by orders from superiors”. Amazingly, the forces that sought to discredit Logan and 60 Minutes did not dispute Logan’s claim about CIA personnel ignoring orders.
Who was right on that count? If Logan was right, shouldn’t it mean that the entire ARB report should be discredited?
The real disgrace here is that after all that Logan has been through, CBS is not standing by her. It is beyond a disgrace; it is a moral outrage. By all indications, she filed a report that was based on an honest attempt to get to the truth while the Obama administration has proven to be an entity that lies with impunity.
Logan should hold her head high.