New York - UPI
Correspondent Lara Logan is taking a leave of absence from "60 Minutes" after the U.S. news program's Benghazi report was discredited, Newsweek reported. The producer of the segment, Max McClellan, is also leaving the show until further notice, the magazine said Tuesday. Logan came under fire after she aired a report Oct. 27 that featured an eyewitness account from security contractor Dylan Davies on the Sept. 11, 2012, assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in which four U.S. citizens -- including Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, were killed. Davies' story was subsequently discredited and CBS News officially retracted the report. Jeff Fager, the head of the network's news division, sent a memo to staffers setting up a Tuesday afternoon meeting to discuss the Benghazi story and Logan's leave of absence, Newsweek said. "I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn't have," Fager said in the memo, which was published by the Huffington Post. The decision to discipline Logan and McClellan came after CBS conducted its own internal investigation of the matter, as critics called for an independent investigation.