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Lara Logan has apologized — again — for an erroneous 60 Minutes report about the events at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
Logan anchored the report that led the 60 Minutes broadcast on Oct. 27, which relied heavily on an interview with security contractor Dylan Davies, whose credibility has since been seriously undermined by conflicting reports about his whereabouts on the night of the attack.
She ended Sunday night’s broadcast of the CBS newsmagazine by explaining what had happened.
STORY: CBS News Chief Calls Faulty Benghazi Report a ‘Black Eye’ for ’60 Minutes’
“In the story, a security officer working for the state department — Dylan Davies — told us he went to the compound during the attack and detailed his role that night,” she said. “After our report aired, questions arose about whether his account was true when an incident report surfaced. It told a different story about what he did the night of the attack. Davies denied having anything to do with that incident report and insisted the story he told us was not only accurate, it was the same story he told the FBI when they interviewed him.”
According to his 60 Minutes interview and a memoir published by a CBS subsidiary about the attack, Davies arrived at the embassy as the attack raged. But he wrote in an official report that he was not actually present during the attack, though he has denied writing that report.
On Sunday night, Logan said that after the segment aired, “we realized we had been misled, and it was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry. The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and the truth is we made a mistake.”
The mea culpa comes two days after Logan first apologized on Friday’s CBS This Morning.
CBS News chairman and 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager told THR last week that the news division would undertake a thorough review of what went wrong, calling the report a “black eye” for the show. But he declined to say if or how anyone would be reprimanded.
“I don’t think people expect we’re going to always be perfect,” he added. “But I really do believe that as a broadcast, we need to explain it and tell people we made a mistake rather than try to beat around the bush.”
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