Finally A Benghazi Scandal With Legs--Sen Graham Coordinated With Lara Logan On Benghazi Smear Piece

[kpete]

Last edited Mon May 5, 2014, 09:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Ruh-roh - looks like Sen. Lindsey "DuBois" Graham may have coordinated illegally with the awful Lara Logan on her Benghazi smear piece. From Media Matters:

While the walls were collapsing around Lara Logan at CBS News last year in the wake of her bungled Benghazi report on 60 Minutes, and as more and more holes appeared in her poorly-sourced report about the terror attack, the foreign correspondent reached out to a Republican senator and fierce White House critic for advice and counsel.

The partisan move, in which Logan solicited help from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- who's been professionally committed to pushing the tale of a White House cover-up surrounding the September 11, 2012 terror attacks -- suggests Logan viewed both Benghazi and her spin control mission through a political prism.

Indeed, Logan even met several times with Graham while preparing the initial Benghazi story, according to a new report in New York magazine. The senator did not appear in the 60 Minutes report but when the report aired he immediately took to the television airwaves to tout it as a "death blow" to the Obama administration's telling of the Benghazi attacks and their response to it. In retrospect, this looks suspiciously like coordination: Graham helped shape the Benghazi story with an anti-White House angle and then forcefully cheerled it, even announcing he'd block every White House appointee until he got answers about Benghazi. Once trouble erupted, the senator was naturally there for Logan when she called for help.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/05/cbs-still-wont-come-clean-about-lara-logan-and/199164
http://nymag.com/news/features/lara-logan-cbs-news-2014-5/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/05/1297109/-Lindsey-Graham-Gave-Advice-and-Counsel-to-Lara-Logan-on-her-Debunked-60-Minutes-Benghazi-Report

Meanwhile, CBS is still dodging the question about partisan politics and how much of a driving force it might have been in Logan's report. The New York article notes that not only did Logan seek counsel from Graham, but that she had a history of producing "the kind of stories that kept 60 Minutes immune to criticism from the right."

Recall that one of the key conclusions from the panel review of the Bush story was that political bias did not play a role in how the controversial 2004 story was put together. For the Benghazi story, it's impossible to know if CBS was equally free of prejudice because there hasn't been an independent assessment of the reporting process.

Which brings us right back to the central question from 2013: What is CBS hiding about Lara Logan?

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/05/cbs-still-wont-come-clean-about-lara-logan-and/199164

UPDATE:
CBS News Asked Nexis To Delete Transcript Of Discredited Benghazi Report
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/05/05/3434036/cbs-news-lexis-lara-logan-benghazi/

[GeorgeGist]

1. Very interesting.

[The Magistrate]

2. Very Interesting, Ma'am....

[C_U_L8R]

3. Sweet blowback

It's about time to go on the offense against these creeps.

[Fred Sanders]

4. The End of the liberal media myth? The revelations about Graham are stunning....he IS a scumbag.

Then, after months of Logan coming up empty, McClellan was offered an exclusive look at a book published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Titled The Embassy House, it was written under a pseudonym: Morgan Jones, the cover for the former military contractor named Dylan Davies who purported to be an eyewitness to the Benghazi attack, complete with a ripping tale of smashing the face of an attacker with the butt of an AK-47 and seeing the dead body of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in the hospital.

Though CBS has said the segment was a year in the making, the book, which Logan and McClellan had obtained in late spring 2013, would become the majority of the broadcast. Which is why it was unusual that the weekend the report aired, four months after getting the book, the 60 Minutes staff treated it like a breaking-news story being assembled in haste, working after hours to get it ready.

Fager delegated the details of vetting the piece to Owens, whom he’d groomed to be his successor at 60 Minutes but whom some CBS colleagues felt was stretched thin by his duties. Because of the short deadline, and because it was a book by a sister company, 60 Minutes’ usual fact-checking procedures were not followed. No calls were made to the State Department or the FBI specifically to vet Davies’s claims.
..........


Benghazi had been thoroughly politicized from the beginning. But rather than steering clear of the political battle, Logan headed right toward it, consulting with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a strong critic of the administration’s handling of the incident whom she’d met once in Afghanistan. “I really didn’t know her until she started doing this piece on Benghazi,” he told me.

The two met two or three times to talk about the Libya attack, with Graham telling Logan that from his point of view, it was “a fair thing to say” that there was a “build-up of Al Qaeda types” in the area—a major talking point for the right in arguments that the Obama White House tried covering up alleged terrorist links.

Graham declared Logan’s report the “death blow” to the Obama administration’s narrative about Benghazi. But doubts about Davies surfaced quickly. The night of the broadcast, October 27, former State Department officials under Hillary Clinton were watching the program with antennae up and exchanged emails. “I think he’s lying his head off about where he was and what he did,” wrote one former official about the man calling himself Morgan Jones. “I mean, 14 months later we’re hearing about this guy for the first time?” The episode set up the inevitable political face-off. The Washington Post soon revealed that Davies had told his own firm, Blue Mountain, a different story.

[Prophet 451]

26. That myth will never die

The PtB have too much invested to stop pushing it.

[okaawhatever]

5. We keep forgetting to ask why the piece ever made it through fact-checking to begin with. Froim

the Mediate story 5 Takeaways from the NY Mag piece on 60 Minutes/Lara Logan story

4. CBS News’ Fact-Checking and Oversight Systems Failed

Hagan detailed the confluence of events in CBS News that led to a lack of oversight “perfect storm.” Fager, who liked Logan, was overseeing 60 Minutes; Fager’s policy of relying more on books and movies as source material meant Logan and her producer leaned heavily on Dylan Davies’ book, which they figured was fact-checked; a Fager appointee was in charge of vetting the segment, and “didn’t ask the boss’s star the tough questions”; and the senior vice-president of standards and practice, who reviewed segments before they were aired, had left the company and not yet been replaced. “Logan was free to operate as she chose,” Hagan wrote.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/5-big-takeaways-from-ny-mags-piece-on-lara-logans-benghazi-report/

[pscot]

24. Good grief!

CBS has fallen a long, long way. FOX without the competence.

[Enthusiast]

29. CBS News’ Fact-Checking and Oversight System?

LOL

[Gothmog]

6. The House Democrats need to bring this up in the House select committee hearings

The GOP will not want to talk about this

[dem in texas]

7. Lara Logan is another Judith Miller

She'll go the way of Miller, a brief stint on Fox news and then forgotten. Good riddance to both of them!

[rickyhall]

22. Fancy Graham is another Joe McCarthy

[calimary]

23. I saw something on MSNBC about this - comparing what lindsey graham has done to the scumduggery

dick cheney did, stove-piping the unvetted dirt from ahmed chalabi to both judith miller at the New York Times, and to "Meet the Press" - "look, the 'New York Times' had something about it this morning, and it just reinforces our suspicions..." SHIT!!!! He had it fucking FED to her HIMSELF! And she dutifully put it on the front page above the fold in the Sunday morning "New York Times" which he then could conveniently point to, while guesting on the fawning tim russert's widely viewed and respected NBC News Sunday morning showcase. Which then made it "true." And she gets all kinds of people bowing and scraping to her for being this intrepid reporter with great sources and UBER-scoops, so her ego's stroked but good, and she rises to the top of the "journalism" ziggurat, and cheney gets his case for war. Slam, and dunk.

So now we have the latter day version by lindsey baby, and his little pet lara.

GOOD LORD!!!

[WhiteTara]

8. Thanks kpete

You are such a treasure to remember and then to follow the dotted line to corruption.

[McCamy Taylor]

9. CBS=Complete Bull S**t

And we all know why. CBS parent company wants the FCC in Republican hands.

[Cha]

10. Lara Logan & Lindsey Graham=Benghazi!!>>>>>>>

[Dwayne Hicks]

11. She's a hack

Her career deserves to be destroyed after this right wing hack piece she did.

[grasswire]

28. she's worse than a hack...

....but I don't know exactly what terminology suits her best.

[DeSwiss]

12. Of course.

- It all makes sense now. Nice try Sunmer!

K&R

[Augiedog]

13. Scumbag hearings

While the repucklians are holding their Benghazi circular firing squad, the Democrats can hold scumbag hearings to determine which repucklian is the biggest scumbag. At this point I would estimate that L. Graham vs D. Issa is the contending matchup. I would have to go with Graham because he is the one who started slinging the "scumbag" moniker around, not realizing apparently that in pointing one finger at the whitehouse, his other three fingers were pointing at himself. So he has voted three times for himself as scumbag plus mine which makes four( even in the repucklian world three and one add up to four, I hope). Somewhere in here is a joke about how do you tell the difference between a scumbager and a teabagger. Ah....more food for thought.

[Zambero]

39. A finger pointed at the WH & three back at himself...

and a thumbs-up on top of it all. Hey, you have to admire the man for his candor!

[DirkGently]

14. A self-serving leak, then cited as evidence by the leaking politician?

Suppose it's possible.

[krawhitham]

15. k

[yellowcanine]

16. So - Graham helped Logan prepare Benghazi talking points?

Once again, Republican projection seems to be running this story......

[tea and oranges]

17. Does Graham Have it In His Head

That if he's the one to bring down Obama then he gets to be president?

Hasn't it been told all along that Graham must periodically act crazy so that he can get reelected, his base & all that?

This is way beyond getting votes from crackers, this is conspiracy! What would make that mofo behave so recklessly, one must wonder.

This should be investigated immediately! (I know, silly me.)

[chuckstevens]

18. DOES NOT MATTER!

The Democrats won't investigate and the GOP will get away with it like they always do!

[Boomerproud]

27. You are correct Sir.

R.I.P. The Truth

[nikto]

31. IOKIYAR

[UTUSN]

19. R#55 & Kickety kickety kickety n/t

[Takket]

20. time for some congressional meetings

if the right is interfering with the media to push these conspiracy theories, then how far does it go? time to subpoeona graham and logan. when can we expect the democrats to being pushing this?

[riverwalker]

21. Ohhh Blanche, what ever have you done?

[BootinUp]

25. Major network news gone wild! Recall Pathway to 911 for another example. nt

[Firebrand Gary]

30. Lindsay Graham should be expelled from the Senate for this...

It's clear, at this point that he is using his office to harm the government for personal political gain.

[Leith]

32. Issa Won't Do Anything About This

But Scumbag Graham is a senator. What will Harry Reid do about it?

[malaise]

33. Great post

Make them pay Dems

[deutsey]

34. I'll be surprised if this has any significant impact on Graham

But it's still good to be informed on the behind-the-scenes tricks snakes like Graham (and Cheney before him ala Judith Miller) use to deceive.

[rtracey]

35. What we need to do

Anyone interested in this piece, and interested in the truth, should tweet, call write Harry Reid and as citizens of this country DEMAND an investigation into the possible expulsion of Senator Graham for conduct unbecoming of a Senator.

[3catwoman3]

36. Well, sur-prahhhhs, sur-prahhhhs...

...sur-prahhhhs! Bless his heart.

[rtracey]

37. follow up

To follow up, I just tweeted Harry Reid about this situation, we'll see if he does anything or not.....

[myrna minx]

38. K&R - Wow.

[Beacool]

40. Karma is a bitch.......

Right, Senator?

[Jamaal510]

41. *crickets* from FOX. nt

[Takket]

42. guess how many articles on CNN about this?

0

so much for the "liberal" media

[Bill USA]

43. the GOP grinds out Big Lies & propaganda - with M$M toadies participation with such expertise - it's

there bread and butter.

recommended!!!!!!

Bookmarked

[mountain grammy]

44. I'm probably wrong, but I think this is a last ditch effort to impeach the president

before the midterms. These stupid teabag congress critters were sent there by their crazy, teabagger constituents to do just that and time is running out.

[Kingofalldems]

45. Kick for the cavers.

[mattclearing]

46. Somewhere Dan Rather is smiling. n/t