Lara Logan and the CBS news chair have both issued apologies. The '60 Minutes' breakdown

Jeff Fager, the CBS News chairman and executive producer of “60 Minutes,” has said that his team spent “more than a year” reporting the story about the attack on Benghazi that aired on Oct. 27.

Yet it wasn’t until Thursday night that they learned first-hand what their principal source, a security contractor named Dylan Davies, had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the attack.


In conversations with POLITICO, sources familiar with “60 Minutes” reporting said that it was only on Thursday night that “60 Minutes” obtained the official account of events that Davies had given to FBI officials after the 2012 raid — an account that contradicts the version of events he gave in a new book and in his interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan last month. Those contradictory accounts were the subject of New York Times report published late Thursday night.

( Also on POLITICO: CBS failure recalls Dan Rather in 2004)

The evolution of CBS’s knowledge of the FBI report can be seen in the changing nature of their response to the controversy: On Wednesday, Lara Logan, the correspondent who interviewed Davies, defended the report. On Thursday night, “60 Minutes” announced that it had “learned of new information that undercuts the account told to us by Morgan Jones” (Davies’ pseudonym). On Friday, both Logan and Fager issued full-throated apologies.

That “60 Minutes” could have conducted a year’s worth of reporting without adequately vetting Davies or obtaining the FBI’s report was the subject of much hand-wringing over at CBS News on Friday, according to sources that spoke with POLITICO. For some, it was also proof of a greater truth: that “60 Minutes” greatest asset — its longstanding reputation as one of the most reliable brands in television journalism — can also be its greatest liability.

“60 Minutes” exists in a silo at CBS News, often by choice, these sources said. Throughout their reporting, Lara Logan and the “60 Minutes” team did not seek assistance from their colleagues in CBS News’s investigative unit, many of whom are well-sourced with the FBI and would likely have been able to assist in the vetting process.

( Also on POLITICO: Logan: We were wrong on Benghazi)

“The question folks are asking is: Did anybody at ‘60 Minutes’ reach out to anybody outside of ‘60 Minutes’ to vet this guy. The answer is ‘no,’” one source with knowledge of the events said.

“Between John Miller, Chris Isham and Len Tepper you have three journalists who have about as good as sources as you could have at the FBI,” one source said, referring to members of the CBS News investigative team. “Why weren’t they asked, ‘What does that FBI report say?’”

Over the last year, “60 Minutes” has also become freer from CBS News’s editorial oversight. Until the beginning of 2013, the show’s high-profile news packages were overseen by a senior network vice president responsible for standards. Since the departure of Linda Mason in January, that position has become effectively non-existent. Al Ortiz, who replaced Mason, was not given the same editorial control. He was not consulted for the program’s package on Benghazi, sources said.

Kevin Tedesco, the spokesperson for “60 Minutes,” declined POLITICO’s request for an interview regarding the error and both Tedesco and Sonya McNair, the senior vice president for communications at CBS News, declined to say when the network learned about the FBI account.

( Earlier on POLITICO: 60 Minutes probes source)

Instead, Tedesco forwarded a press release from Friday morning announcing Logan’s apology, which took place on “CBS This Morning.” In that apology, Logan said, “We take the vetting of sources and stories very seriously at ‘60 Minutes’ and we took it seriously in this case. But we were misled and we were wrong, and that’s the important thing.” She added: “We have to set the record straight and take responsibility.”

Logan is also scheduled to deliver another brief apology on the Friday edition of the CBS Evening News, during which the network will tease a longer apology that is set to air on Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes,” POLITICO has learned.

Fager, the “60 Minutes” EP and CBS News chairman, also apologized in an interview with Variety on Friday afternoon.

“We like to think we are perfect as much as we can be. In this case, we were not,” he said. “The most important thing now is that we own it: We made a mistake. We are sorry.”

For some at CBS, Fager’s comments immediately brought to mind the infamous Killian documents controversy of 2004, when Dan Rather presented documents critical of George W. Bush’s tenure in the National Guard. In a report for “60 Minutes II,” Rather said he had documents alleging that President Bush received preferential treatment during his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. After intense scrutiny over the validity of the documents, the network conceded that they could not be authenticated.

CBS fired three news executives and one producer for “rushing” the report on air. Soon after Rather stepped down as CBS’ news anchor and by 2006, Rather was out at CBS. In 2007 he sued the network over his treatment in the aftermath of the report, though the case was thrown out of court.

Now, almost a decade after the fact, CBS News has declined to invite Rather back for its 50th anniversary special on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — despite the fact that the veteran CBS News reporter was present in Dallas on the day of the assassination. (A spokesperson for Rather said he is not commenting on the current “60 Minutes” situation.)

Since taking the helm at “60 Minutes” in 2004, Fager has publicly championed its commitment to accuracy. In 2012, after CNN misreported the Supreme Court verdict on healthcare reform and ABC News erroneously suggested a link between the Aurora, Colo., shooting supsect and the tea party, Fager took the opportunity to stress accuracy.

“The standards and values that we practice at ‘60 Minutes’ are what we’re trying emphasize,” Fager said at the time. “How intense the process is at ‘60 Minutes,’ how much we care about every line, about every interview, about not taking people out of context.”

Now, Fager is forced to reconcile himself with an inconvenient truth: that “60 Minutes” is far from invincible, even under his watch.

In his interview with “60 Minutes,” Davies claimed to have been present at the raid U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 and seen Ambassador Christopher Stevens lying dead in the hospital. He also said he scaled the compound’s 12-foot wall during the raid and hit a terrorist with the butt of his gun.

In his account to the FBI, however, Davies said he was not present at the compound until the morning after the attack. That account was consistent with an incident report Davies submitted to his employer, the British-based contractor Blue Mountain, on Sept. 14, 2012, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

In an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this month, Davies said he had not written the incident report and lied to Blue Mountain because he had been told to stay away from the compound during the attack.

In light of the CBS story, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) vowed to place holds on Obama administration nominees pending a Benghazi investigation. An aide for Graham wouldn’t say whether the senator will reconsider his holds given CBS has backed away from the story. The aide said Graham will address the issue in a Sunday appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Hadas Gold and Burgess Everett contributed to this story.