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CBS correspondent Lara Logan apologized Friday for "a mistake" in an explosive 60 minutes report on the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and said the network no longer had confidence in the credibility of its key source. CBS, in a separate statement, said it is investigating whether its informant had misled the network about the Obama administrations' allegedly slow response to the attack.
"Today the truth is we made a mistake and that's very disappointing for any journalist," Logan said on CBS This Morning. "It's very disappointing for me," Logan said. "In this case we were wrong. we made a mistake."
At issue is an account of the night of Sept. 11, 2012, attack by "Morgan Jones," a pseudonym for Dylan Davies, who was the primary source in the 60 Minutes report. Davies was a security officer hired to protect the mission and trained local guards in Benghazi.
In the 60 Minutes interview and in his new book, The Embassy House, Davies says he violated his employer's orders to stay away from the compound and instead scaled the wall of the facility and even fought off a militant. He also claimed to have gone to the hospital and had seen the body of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was among four Americans who died in the attack.
Threshold Editions, the imprint of the Simon & Schuster publishing company that is owned by CBS, said Friday that it was withdrawing the book from publication.
"In light of information that has been brought to our attention since the initial publication of The Embassy House, we have withdrawn from publication and sale all formats of this book, and are recommending that booksellers do the same," according to a statement from Threshold spokesperson Jennifer Robinson. "We also are notifying accounts that they may return the book to us."
CBS News was also criticized for not stating publicly that its subsidiary was publishing Davies' book.
The story raised questions as to whether the Obama administration had sent all possible help to try to save the lives of the Americans. It has been cited by several Congressional critics of the administration's handling of the incident.
The latest controversy comes one week before CIA employees are scheduled to testify about the attack at a closed-door congressional hearing.
In its separate statement, CBS said it has learned new information "that undercuts the account told to us by 'Morgan Jones' of his actions on the night of the attack."
"We are currently looking into this serious matter to determine if he misled us, and if so, we will make a correction," the statement said.
Questions about Davies' credibility first surfaced last week when The Washington Post reported that his recollections on 60 minutes contradicted what he purportedly had told his employer, Blue Mountain security, in a formal incident report.
In that report, Davies purportedly said he had spent the night at a beachside villa after failing to get anywhere near the U.S. compound. He also is said to have written that that he learned of the death of the U.s. ambassador from a Libyan colleague.
Last week, as the contradictions surfaced, Davies told The Daily Beast that he did not write the Blue Mountain incident report and had never even seen it.
CNN quotes an unidentified U.S. official, however, as saying there are discrepancies between Davies' accounts to the FBI and CBS, although the official did not specify them.
In addition, The New York Times, citing two senior government officials, also reported Thursday that Davies told the FBI he did not go the Benghazi compound on the night of the attack.
Logan said Friday that 60 Minutes was unaware of the incident report until the Post story was published, but that Davies, when confronted with the discrepancies, denied any connection to it and said the FBI would corroborate the version he gave CBS.
"What we now know is that he told the FBI a different story to what he told us and you know, that was the moment, for us, when we realized that we no longer had confidence in our source and that we were wrong to put him on air and we apologize to our viewers," Logan said Friday.
Logan said CBS has not been in contact with Davies since the latest controversy erupted.
The progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America asked CBS on Nov. 1 to retract its story after The Washington Post ran its initial story indicating that Davies was nowhere near the compound the night of the attack.
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