The fallout continues over at CBS News. Following multiple on-air apologies for a faulty 60 Minutes report, veteran broadcaster Lara Logan has taken an immediate leave of absence from the venerable news magazine -- alongside producer Max McClellan. 
 
 
 
 CBS News chief Jeff Fager announced the news today in a staff memo, following an internal "journalistic review" from CBS standards and practices that determined the series' Oct. 27 report about the 2012 attack of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was not properly vetted. It's the latest development since the network made the decision to retract the story, which relied heavily on misinformation from a source and supposed witness to the events, Dylan Davies. 
 
 PHOTOS: THR's 35 Most Powerful People in Media 2013 
 
 Holes in Davies' story were first pointed out by an FBI report that contradicted his statements. "As soon as we learned about the FBI report, we knew right away. All of us. There wasn't any debate about it," Fager told The Hollywood Reporter in the wake of the retraction. "He deceived us. He works very hard at his deception. There are a lot of people out there who try to deceive reporters. And I think we're really good at finding it. We worked this one hard." 
 
 
 
 Fager's Nov. 26 memo, pasted in full below, notes that he asked Logan and McClellan to take a leave absence and told staffers that he's making adjustments at 60 Minutes to reduce the chances of anything similar happening again. Outwardly, a CBS News spokesperson issued the following statement: "The 60 Minutes journalistic review is concluded, and we are implementing ongoing changes based on its results." 
 
 
 
 No details were given on the possible duration for Logan's leave. She has served as CBS News' chief foreign affairs correspondent since 2006. 
 
 
 
 Read both the review from CBS News' Standards and Practices and the Fager memo below: 
 
 
 
 -------- 
 
 
 
 November 26, 2013 
 
 
 
 
 
 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 
 
 My review found that the Benghazi story aired by 60 Minutes on October 27 was deficient in several respects: 
 
 --From the start, Lara Logan and her producing team were looking for a different angle to the story of the Benghazi attack. They believed they found it in the story of Dylan Davies, written under the pseudonym, “Morgan Jones”. It purported to be the first western eyewitness account of the attack. But Logan’s report went to air without 60 Minutes knowing what Davies had told the FBI and the State Department about his own activities and location on the night of the attack. 
 
 --The fact that the FBI and the State Department had information that differed from the account Davies gave to 60 Minutes was knowable before the piece aired. But the wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account. It’s possible that reporters and producers with better access to inside FBI sources could have found out that Davies had given varying and conflicting accounts of his story. 
 
 --Members of the 60 Minutes reporting team conducted interviews with Davies and other individuals in his book, including the doctor who received and treated Ambassador Stevens at the Benghazi hospital. They went to Davies’ employer Blue Mountain, the State Department, the FBI (which had interviewed Davies), and other government agencies to ask about their investigations into the attack. Logan and producer Max McClellan told me they found no reason to doubt Davies’ account and found no holes in his story. But the team did not sufficiently vet Davies’ account of his own actions and whereabouts that night. 
 
 --Davies told 60 Minutes that he had lied to his own employer that night about his location, telling Blue Mountain that he was staying at his villa, as his superior ordered him to do, but telling 60 Minutes that he then defied that order and went to the compound. This crucial point – his admission that he had not told his employer the truth about his own actions – should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process. 
 
 --After the story aired, the Washington Post reported the existence of a so-called “incident report” that had been prepared by Davies for Blue Mountain in which he reportedly said he spent most of the night at his villa, and had not gone to the hospital or the mission compound. Reached by phone, Davies told the 60 Minutes team that he had not written the incident report, disavowed any knowledge of it, and insisted that the account he gave 60 Minutes was word for word what he had told the FBI. Based on that information and the strong conviction expressed by the team about their story, Jeff Fager defended the story and the reporting to the press. 
 
 --On November 7, the New York Times informed Fager that the FBI’s version of Davies’ story differed from what he had told 60 Minutes. Within hours, CBS News was able to confirm that in the FBI’s account of their interview, Davies was not at the hospital or the mission compound the night of the attack. 60 Minutes announced that a correction would be made, that the broadcast had been misled, and that it was a mistake to include Davies in the story. Later a State Department source also told CBS News that Davies had stayed at his villa that night and had not witnessed the attack. 
 
 --Questions have been raised about the recent pictures from the compound which were displayed at the end of the report, including a picture of Ambassador Stevens’ schedule for the day after the attack. Video taken by the producer-cameraman whom the 60 Minutes team sent to the Benghazi compound last month clearly shows that the pictures of the Technical Operations Center were authentic, including the picture of the schedule in the debris. 
 
 --Questions have also been raised about the role of Al Qaeda in the attack since Logan declared in the report that Al Qaeda fighters had carried it out. Al Qaeda’s role is the subject of much disagreement and debate. While Logan had multiple sources and good reasons to have confidence in them, her assertions that Al Qaeda carried out the attack and controlled the hospital were not adequately attributed in her report. 
 
 --In October of 2012, one month before starting work on the Benghazi story, Logan made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the US Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the US should take in response to the Benghazi attack. From a CBS News Standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story. 
 
 --The book, written by Davies and a co-author, was published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, part of the CBS Corporation. 60 Minutes erred in not disclosing that connection in the segment. 
 
 Al Ortiz 
 
 Executive Director of Standards and Practices 
 
 CBS News 
 
 -------- 
 
 
 
 By now most of you have received the report from Al Ortiz about the problems with the 60 Minutes story on Benghazi. 
 
 There is a lot to learn from this mistake for the entire organization. We have rebuilt CBS News in a way that has dramatically improved our reporting abilities. Ironically 60 Minutes, which has been a model for those changes, fell short by broadcasting a now discredited account of an important story, and did not take full advantage of the reporting abilities of CBS News that might have prevented it from happening. 
 
 As a result, I have asked Lara Logan, who has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm’s way many times in the course of covering stories for us, to take a leave of absence, which she has agreed to do. I have asked the same of producer Max McClellan, who also has a distinguished career at CBS News. 
 
 As Executive Producer, I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn’t have. 
 
 When faced with a such an error, we must use it as an opportunity to make our broadcast even stronger. We are making adjustments at 60 Minutes to reduce the chances of it happening again. 
 
 There is a lot of pride at CBS News. Every broadcast is working hard to live up to the high standard set at CBS News for excellence in reporting. This was a regrettable mistake. But there are many fine professionals at 60 Minutes who produce some of the very best of broadcast journalism, covering the important and interesting stories of our times, and they will continue to do so each and every Sunday. 
 
 Jeff Fager 
 
 Chairman, CBS News 
 
 Executive Producer, 60 Minutes ||||| The CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and her producer, Max McClellan, made serious errors in an Oct. 27 report on the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and will take leaves of absence, the network announced on Tuesday. Four Americans died in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. 
 
 The moves come after weeks of criticism directed at a “60 Minutes” report which was based on an interview with a hired security agent, Dylan Davies, whose comments to CBS News were later discredited. 
 
 CBS did not specify the length of the leave of absence for its two staff members, nor whether they would continue to be paid. In general, television correspondents do not lose salary unless they are suspended. 
 
 Beyond Ms. Logan, who has been a rising star at CBS News, the review could have implications for the leadership of Jeffrey Fager, the chairman of CBS News, who is also the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” Mr. Fager sent an email to the staff on Tuesday, saying: “As executive producer, I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn’t have.” 
 
 He added: “We are making adjustments at ’60 Minutes’ to reduce the chances of it happening again.” 
 
 Mr. Fager has enjoyed a strong reputation both inside and outside CBS News division for emphasizing a hard news approach on the network’s news programs, but one fallout from the discredited report may be continued questions about his dual role as both the top executive at CBS News and the person in charge of its highest-rated, most profitable and best-known program, “60 Minutes.” 
 
 One area likely to be examined is the potential addition of a specific executive, outside of the program itself, who would vet the pieces about to be presented on “60 Minutes.” That position existed for years inside CBS News, headed most recently by Linda Mason. But after Ms. Mason retired from the network at the start of 2013, that level of oversight over “60 Minutes” was eliminated. 
 
 The review of the Benghazi segment, conducted by CBS News’s executive director of standards and practices, Al Ortiz, was unstinting in its evaluation of the report, which Mr. Ortiz called “deficient in several respects.” 
 
 Perhaps chief among the deficiencies, according to Mr. Ortiz’s review, was that the account Mr. Davies gave to Ms. Logan and Mr. McClellan differed from versions he had provided both to his employer, Blue Mountain, and to the F.B.I. This discrepancy, Mr. Ortiz writes, “was knowable before the piece aired.” 
 
 In a previous interview with The New York Times, Mr. Fager said CBS had tried talking to the F.B.I. in advance of the report in an effort to determine what Mr. Davies had told the agency. The network’s sources led the program to believe that the account given to the F.B.I. was “in sync” with the interview Mr. Davies gave to “60 Minutes,” Mr. Fager said. 
 
 In defense of its report, CBS said earlier that it had been duped by Mr. Davies. Mr. Ortiz contradicted that by saying CBS could have, and should have, been able to verify Mr. Davies’s account before presenting him as a reliable source. 
 
 “The wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. He concluded: “Logan and producer Max McClellan told me they found no reason to doubt Davies’s account and found no holes in his story. But the team did not sufficiently vet Davies’s account of his own actions and whereabouts that night.” 
 
 The report also criticizes Ms. Logan for not adequately substantiating her conclusion that Al Qaeda took part in the attack and for making a speech in October 2012 that took a position on the attack, and then participating in a story in which she would have been expected to be objective about the facts of the attack.
– Lara Logan is out at 60 Minutes, at least temporarily, because of her bogus piece on Benghazi, reports the Hollywood Reporter. CBS News, which has retracted and apologized for the story, says it forced Logan and producer Max McClellan to take a leave of absence of unspecified duration. Logan's report last month featured an interview with former security officer Dylan Davies, who gave a riveting first-hand account of the attack on the US compound. It was only after the report aired that CBS concluded he was lying through his teeth. "This deception got through and it shouldn’t have," wrote CBS News chief Jeff Fager in an email to staff today, reports the New York Times. An internal investigation into the story found that Logan and McClellan failed to properly vet Davies, who had given a much different account previously to the FBI. It also faulted Logan for her on-air conclusion that al-Qaeda played a role in the attack, and it cited a speech she gave on the topic last year in which she accused the US of misrepresenting what happened. "From a CBS News standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and al-Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story," says the internal report.