'60 Minutes' Retracts Segment With Star Benghazi "Witness"

One year ago, I reported it this way:  CBS and Lara Logan apologize.  Just a mistake, they claim.  No word on any firings, which must follow.  Looks like they want it just over and done with, or "moving forward," as Logan puts it.

Gross journalist malfeasance, but many media writers seem okay with apology--just want more details and full explanation, and chance to interview Logan and her team.  Remember, Logan boasted about her intimate involvement with the story for a full year.  Unlike, say, Dan Rather, who got called in on project and was more of a host, not chief reporter.   Mary Mapes, the Rather producer who got canned, suggests "60 Minutes" this time bent over backward for rightwing "obsession" with Benghazi. Charles Pierce points out that just this week it emerged that CBS had written Rather out of its coverage of the JFK assassination coming up.

And this report last year had Morgan Jones/Dylan Davies not even at the compound then.

And let us all recall Logan trashing Michael Hastings' reporting.

Erik Wemple at Wash Post is one of those who seems to think Lara Logan and CBS apology is enough. Far from it.

Media Matters suggests Mary Matalin and S&S put its Jones/Davies book on the fiction shelf, if anywhere.   S&S is pulling it now but still on sale at Amazon. 



UPDATE:  The "60 Minutes" web site just removed all the links to its Benghazi segment including the Morgan Jones interview. Will Mary Matalin, publisher of the Jones book at her S&S imprint, now stop shipping to stores and retract?  Simon & Schuster just announced: "We will review the book and take appropriate action with regard to its publication status."

Earlier:  After days of criticism, and its stout defense yesterday, tonight comes word that CBS and '60 Minutes' now have doubts about their star witness in the recent Benghazi report.  "We are currently looking into this serious matter to determine if he misled us," CBS relates.  Politico's Mike Allen tweeted: "SIREN: '60 MINUTES has learned of new information that undercuts the account...by Morgan Jones of his actions' on night of Benghazi attack."

The NYT had just reported that contrary to Morgan Jones' claims, he gave the FBI the same story he gave his boss after the Benghazi attack--which directly contradicts what CBS fell for and what he wrote in the book he is flacking.  Lara Logan just yesterday backed his claim that he gave the FBI and her the same chain of events.  Wrong.  We predicted all this days ago.  Logan and producer must go, if the implosion occurs.

Media Matters responds. 

It's worth noting that the story started to come about after the first scoop not from Media Matters but from the Wash Post.  More soon.