Lara Logan

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Chelsea Lately show on the E! network to promote his book, The New New Rules, HBO's Bill Maher denied that a sexual joke he made last February about ABC's Elisabeth Hasselbeck and CBS's Lara Logan was a reference to the rape of Logan in Egypt from that month, as he recounted that he actually made the joke on his Real Time show before Logan's sexual assault occurred.

Wednesday's Fox and Friends on FNC gave attention to the recent confrontation between HBO host and comedian Bill Maher and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the right-leaning co-host of ABC's The View, as Maher appeared as a guest on the ABC show.

Hasselbeck brought up a tasteless rape joke Maher told earlier in the year on his Real Time show after the sexual assault of CBS correspondent Lara Logan as she reported from Egypt in which he suggested sending Hasselbeck to Egypt.

"It seems long past time for reputable news sites to clamp down on the gutter talk."

That is James Rainey, the "On the Media" critic at the Los Angeles Times, fretting in an article today (Sun., 2/27/11) about the tone of readers' comments that are posted on news web sites.

If Rainey wants to "clamp down on the gutter talk" by readers, he needs to take a closer look at his own employer's site, latimes.com.

Howard Kurtz devoted a good part of "Reliable Sources" Sunday to the attack on CBS's Lara Logan when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak resigned as President.

As he addressed some disgraceful comments made about the incident by members of the media, Kurtz made it clear to viewers that Debbie Schlussel was a conservative, better never once depicted Nir Rosen as a liberal (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Disgraced journalist Nir Rosen claimed on Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360 that he didn't know Lara Logan was sexually assaulted when she was attacked by protesters in Egypt. However, Rosen's own Tweets, which he subsequently deleted, revealed that he indeed know about the nature of the attack and tried to downplay it: "Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women."

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper aired his taped interview with the anti-war journalist during the 10 pm Eastern hour of his program. Cooper raised how Rosen brought the CNN personality into his attacks on Logan:

A brief unbylined Associated Press item today with a 9:15 a.m. time stamp, which appears to be based solely on an e-mail to an AP reporter (no other source for the quotes are cited), tells us that Nir Rosen seems to be backtracking from his Twitter claim of being "ashamed of how I have hurt others" in his comments about CBS reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted by a Cairo mob on February 11.

The report also has an odd final sentence (not in the screen grab which follows) that could reasonably be interpreted as an admission that wire service personnel either saw or knew of what happened to Logan, and failed to report it:

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was disgusted by "many intemperate" comments made about the news that CBS's Lara Logan had been brutally and apparently sexually assaulted while covering the Egyptian celebration that followed President Hosni Mubarak's resignation last Friday.

Not at all surprising, the only one he bothered to read on Wednesday's "The Last Word" was written by a conservative (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Nir Rosen, one of the more rabidly left-wing foreign policy commentators out there has finally gotten some just desserts after he ridiculed CBS News correspondent Lara Logan after she was assaulted by a mob in Egypt. After learning the news of the attack on Logan, Rosen took to Twitter to ridicule her and in the process revealed his deep anti-Iraq war bias.

"Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal," he wrote, apparently wishing that former U.S. general Stanley McCrystal and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had been also sexually assaulted by a mob.

Rosen's disgusting comments got worse from there, even as the fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security attempted to rationalize his hatred. "Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don't support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too."

CBS's Lara Logan may be in Uganda, but she recognized the skew of media coverage of the WikiLeaks war documents on the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as she contended “the coverage would indicate that it's more of an issue for the U.S. to kill Afghan civilians than it is for the Taliban to do so.”

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asked her about how the documents cite “the number of Afghan civilians who have been killed. How do you think this will damage the war effort?” Logan took the question in another direction:

Well, the issue of civilian casualties is a major one and the U.S. has taken a lot of criticism because of this. However, what's interesting to note that is according to the documents, 195 Afghan civilians have been killed. But also according to the documents, two thousand Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban, which is more than ten times the number said to be killed by U.S. and NATO forces. And very little is being made of that. The coverage would indicate that it's more of an issue for the U.S. to kill Afghan civilians than it is for the Taliban to do so.

Lara Logan, CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, took to CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to accuse Michael Hastings, who was interviewed by Howard Kurtz in the preceding segment, of using subterfuge and Rolling Stone of pushing an agenda in their hit piece on General Stanley McChrystal, both of which unfairly tarnished McCrystal and will lead to more military wariness toward the journalists. Logan castigated Hastings:

The question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal's? Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.

As for Hastings’ insistence he didn’t break any “off the record” ground rules, Logan declared: “Something doesn't add up here. I just -- I don't believe it.”

The subterfuge really infuriated Logan: “What I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, he's laid out there what his game is. That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do....Clearly, you've got someone who is making friends with you, pretending to be sympathetic, pretending to be something that they're not...”

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, host Howard Kurtz played a portion of a video montage that was posted both on NewsBusters and on NB’s parent organization the Media Research Center’s Web site showing that correspondents on several broadcast and news networks lavished excessive praise on President Obama by calling his decision to replace General Stanley McChrystal with General David Petraeus a "brilliant" move. The CNN host played the portion of the clip that was shown on Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC.

But, as he brought up the montage with guest Lara Logan of CBS News, Kurtz missed the point as he suggested that the MRC/NewsBusters was somehow complaining that the "liberal media are in love with David Petraeus and they’re falling into line," when, in reality, the point was journalistic infatuation with Obama illustrated by so many media figures using the same word, "brilliant," and that since Petraeus is so obviously well qualified for the position it hardly takes genius to name him to the post.

Logan, accepting Kurtz’s flawed premise, responded: "Well, if they had said it was a bad decision, then it would be 'the liberal media hate David Petraeus and they’re not falling into line.'" She later concluded that the decision was, indeed, "brilliant" on Obama’s part: "The only way he had to ensure, to silence the critics and really to move on, this reassured the troops, this reassured the commanders, this reassured people who were in favor of it – the Afghans, the allies. That’s why people are calling it brilliant, maybe because it was brilliant."

I'm not sure which is worse: Sean Penn hoping his critics die screaming of rectal cancer, or CBS News's Lara Logan finding that funny.

As NewsBusters previously reported, CBSNews.com on Friday posted a preview of an interview to be broadcast on "Sunday Morning."

In it, Logan asked Penn, "Does it make you angry when people talk about, you know, 'Sean Penn, the Hollywood star, the movie star, coming in and trying to do something,' and they're kind of cynical about it?"

Penn arrogantly answered, "You know, do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Appearing as a guest on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report on Thursday, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan defended America’s continued war effort in Afghanistan, and argued that it is "crap" that some have made comparisons between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War. Logan: "You know, the ridiculous thing about all these comparisons – it’s the graveyard of empires, it’s Obama's Vietnam – it’s all that crap, right?"

Logan, who has spent years in the field covering the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, went on to make a strong case in favor of staying in Afghanistan and continuing the fight against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror group because of the threat the group still poses, as she cited bin Laden's stated desire to attack America's homeland with weapons of mass destruction:

The truth is that when the Vietnam War ended, the Viet Cong didn't follow the U.S. back home. And that's the big difference. You don't have to listen to one President or another President. It's not political. Listen to bin Laden. Go and read what he has said: We will follow the United States, we will attack the homeland again, we will use nuclear weapons, we will use biological warfare. I mean, it's very simple. Everything al-Qaeda has ever said they were going to do before, they've done. There is no reason to doubt his intentions.

That there has been little love lost between posters and commenters here at NewsBusters and CBS correspondent Lara Logan over the years is not exactly a secret (see previous NB posts by yours truly, Brent Baker, Kyle Drennen, and just warming up).

I don't know what has happened in past couple of years (or is it months?) to knock some sense into Logan ("good war" Afghanistan vs. "bad war" Iraq? Motherhood and/or marriage, even if as a result of seamy circumstances?). But her clear-headed, passionate, alarming interview with CBS News's Bob Orr about the situation in Afghanistan is a must-see (HT Hot Air). In the process, she leaves a number of leftist myths and fantasies, including the rubbish about how pursuing war aggressively only helps the enemy in their recruiting, in shreds on the floor.

Following an interesting back story about our Secretary of Defense's apparent intent to water down what Obama ultimately got to see, the Logan interview goes from about 1:35-8:30 of the YouTube video (don't waste your time with what follows, which is about a Ralph Nader book).

Here's a transcript of most of that interview:

For the second night, CBS devoted time in its “Afghanistan: The Road Ahead” series -- which consumed the entirety of Tuesday's CBS Evening News -- to stressing how the decision to go into Iraq undermined success in Afghanistan. Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign correspondent, rued “the U.S. allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from the Tora Bora mountains” and then, in endorsing the view she credited to “many,” she contended:

What many here see as the gravest error of all: Afghans were wary as the U.S. turned its attention to invading Iraq. And they were right. Everything from reconstruction and aid to the fight itself suffered as the U.S. shifted its resources and its focus away from Afghanistan and the commitment it had made to the Afghan people. Not surprisingly, Afghan support for the war began to fade.

Unaddressed: President Barack Obama is wavering on that commitment since he's now resisting General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for a big troop increase to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban while Vice President Joe Biden is advocating an air strike-centered approach which will leave Afghan citizens in danger.  

Early in Saturday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor reported: "Tonight there are new allegations of torture by the CIA. Newsweek magazine is reporting that a secret 2004 report reveals that interrogators used mock executions to intimidate prisoners."

Glor went on to talk to Newsweek reporter Mark Hosenball, who claimed: "And in the case of one detainee that we know about, somebody named Abdel-Rahman al Nashiri, who was an alleged architect of the USS Cole bombing, this report alleges that at some point CIA interrogators, whether contractors or CIA staff officers, brandished a gun in front of this guy in an effort to frighten him and also took a power drill in front of him and turn turned it on and went ‘bzzz,’ implying therefore that they were going to use it on him."

Meanwhile, neither the Saturday nor Friday Evening News programs made any mention of reports that ACLU attorneys defending Guantanamo detainees illegally showed terror suspects photos of CIA personnel in an effort to implicate interrogators in acts of torture. On Friday, the Washington Post reported: "The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation."

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Lara Logan again highlighted the down side of an American troop withdrawal from Iraq as she focused attention on the plight of Iranian exiles living in Iraq who are now suffering from a violent crackdown by Iraqi police, having lost the protection the group had been receiving from U.S. troops. This group of Iranians, known as the MEK, have a history of alliance with the United States and are credited with relaying information about Iran's nuclear program to America. Anchor Katie Couric set up the story:

When the U.S. began turning over security to the Iraqis, it stopped protecting some valuable allies -- thousands of Iranian exiles -- and their camp outside Baghdad is now under attack. For two days, Iraqi police have been beating the residents. No food or doctors have been allowed in. All with the approval of Iran`s government. Here`s chief foreign affairs correspondent, Lara Logan.

On Monday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Lara Logan relayed to viewers concerns that U.S. troops may be pulling back too quickly for the sake of security in some parts of Iraq. As Logan filed a report about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Mosul, as part of the security arrangement supported by the Iraqi government,  the CBS News correspondent reported that some Iraqi military officers would have preferred U.S. troops stay a while longer to help in the fight against al-Qaeda.

After quoting Iraqi civilians who voiced their beliefs that things would improve after American troops left, Logan continued: "But this city is also where the main fight against al-Qaeda and their allies is still being fought. And off camera, several senior Iraqi officers told us they would have liked to have U.S. soldiers on the city streets with them for another six months."

Below is a complete transcript of the story from the Monday, June 29, CBS Evening News:

The network evening newscasts on Thursday gave positive reviews to President Obama's speech in Cairo, with the NBC Nightly News the most glowingly positive, and ABC giving the most attention to skeptics in the Muslim world. NBC focused on positive reactions to the speech, quoting one observer who got "goose pimples," and another who compared the speech to that of President Kennedy in Berlin. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell seemed to have the most elevated expectations of what will result from Obama’s speech. After acknowledging that Obama risked alienating Jews for his criticism of Israel, she suggested the "rewards" may be worth it: "That said, the reward is huge. This was a transformational speech potentially, by reaching out to the Islamic world, by using the language, as Richard pointed out, by saying "As-Salamu ‘Alaykum," he has transformed the view of America among 1.5 billion people, and that is potentially the biggest, biggest benefit of all. This could change the Obama presidency."

All three made a point of characterizing Obama’s use of the Arabic phrase "As-Salamu ‘Alaykum," or, "Peace be with you," as a gesture that would greatly impress the Muslim world. CBS’s Lara Logan talked about the "excitement" in Cairo over Obama’s "historic" speech, and highlighted Obama’s personal popularity there: "This is a first in Cairo – the name of an American President on T-shirts and souvenirs on sale here. It's a sign of Barack Obama's personal popularity and how much is resting on his shoulders."

President Obama's popularity amongst Muslims pegged to success at “pulling out of Iraq,” “ending torture” and “closing Guantanamo Bay,” are key to the chances of ending terrorism CBS reporter Lara Logan contended Wednesday night. She concluded her preview of Obama's Thursday speech in Cairo: “Terrorists who are threatened by Obama's popularity amongst Muslims do not want America's President to succeed.”

She earlier defined that “success” as:

The Arab world expects a lot of this President. From pulling out of Iraq, to ending torture, to closing Guantanamo Bay. Failure to achieve all this could be disastrous for Obama. But even worse, if he wasn't trying to reach out to Muslims.

Logan then ran a soundbite of Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif: “I think it would be catastrophic. We have been in a downturn for so long. We're creating beds for terrorism to flourish.” Logan prompted him to agree disaster is ahead if Obama's change from Bush policy does not occur: “Creating beds for terrorism to flourish?” Nazif: “That's true.”

On Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Lara Logan described President Obama’s upcoming speech in Egypt’s capital as if it were a campaign stop: "...everywhere you go in this city it's what everybody is talking about...The one word that keeps coming up over and over is excitement. There is definitely a lot of anticipation about this visit...very excited that he chose Cairo."

Logan was responding to co-host Harry Smith asking about the speech during a segment outlining Obama’s trip to the region: "Is there a way to measure the anticipation there for this speech?" Logan did acknowledge some opposition: "And I mean, although there are the detractors, there are extremists, they are small in number. Most of the people that we've encountered, everyone we've spoken to, says that people have great expectations." Logan fretted those "great expectations" would be Obama’s biggest challenge: "...the only concern is that there may be too much expectation riding on the shoulders of one man, because hopes here are extremely high."

While reporting on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Mexico to address the escalating drug war, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Lara Logan gave a glowing review of Clinton’s job performance so far: "Well, she seems very much at ease. That's one of the things that struck myself and other journalists dealing with her in her new role. She has almost come into her own. She's very open, very direct, taking a lot of time. One particularly important thing to note is that she takes a lot of time to meet with local women and young people, disadvantaged groups...she wants to hear from ordinary people. She finds it very useful to hear from the man on the street."

Logan went on to explain how much effort Clinton puts in to meeting with the "ordinary people": "...that's not a small achievement when you consider the time pressures on trips like these. They're very fast-paced and there's a lot of pressure. And so the fact that Hillary makes this special effort to talk to people is actually noted and appreciated wherever she goes."

On Tuesday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Lara Logan reported on the Obama administration’s effort to improve relations between the United States and Russia by abandoning a missile defense system proposed under the Bush administration: "It's become one of the most contentious issues dividing the U.S. and Russia. American plans to deploy a missile defense system on Russia's doorstep...The Obama administration's willingness to even open discussions on the issue is a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy under President Bush, who dismissed Russian objections. That dispute helped bring U.S.-Russian relations to their lowest point since the break-up of the Soviet Union nearly 20 years ago. Today the President made it clear he's already started to change that."

Rather than offer any criticism, Logan cited Steven Pifer of the left-leaning Brookings Institution, who declared: "It seems to me that when we're looking for issues on which we can signal to the Russians that we're prepared to be more flexible and listen to some of their concerns, missile defense is one." At the top of the broadcast, anchor Katie Couric teased the segment by describing Obama’s proposal as an "intriguing suggestion."

On Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" (11/30/08), Lara Logan profiled Army hero Private Monica Brown, an 18-year-old medic who was awarded the Silver Star. Yet as wonderful as Brown's heroics were, Logan's profile could not shake the impression that it really wanted to get in some cheap shots at the United States military. Here's how Logan opened her piece:

Private Monica Brown is only the second woman to be awarded the Silver Star since the Second World War. She’s an Army medic who risked her own life to save two critically wounded paratroopers of the 82nd airborne division in Afghanistan.

O.K. so far. But then Logan abruptly switched gears:

Under Army regulations, women cannot be assigned to front-line combat units, but in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq today, that’s exactly where they often end up. Some male soldiers aren’t so happy about that, including members of Private Brown’s own unit. But her superior officers say she’s a hero, a hero who earned one of the military’s highest awards for exceptional valor when she was only 18 years old.

That women "cannot be assigned to front-line combat units" is a theme that Logan hammered throughout her piece. The problem? Private Brown was not on a front-line combat mission. As Logan's own story indicated, Brown was a medic in a unit that had been "searching for weapons in a village" when it was ambushed while returning to base. (By the way, Logan identifies those who ambushed our men and woman simply as "hidden enemy fighters.")

On Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez discussed Barack Obama’s foreign policy goals with foreign correspondent Lara Logan and asked about Logan’s July interview with the president-elect: "...he said many times during the campaign, that Afghanistan, and not Iraq, needs to be our central focus in this war on terrorism. And this morning in the Washington Post we're seeing that's he's already tackling strategies in Afghanistan. What do you think? How important will this be for him?" Logan replied: "Well, there's no question that Afghanistan is a very pressing and immediate problem because the gains the U.S. made during the invasion seven years ago have been slipping away more...You really cannot separate Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Obama understands that, that's one of key things that he said to me."

Later, Rodriguez asked about Obama’s policy towards Iran: "...what I thought was interesting in this article in the Washington Post, is that President-elect Obama is reportedly considering talks with Iran as part of this new Afghanistan strategy. Do you think the two will go hand in hand?" Logan followed Obama talking points: "Well, he said from the beginning he has no problem sitting down with Iran if it is in the United States’ best interest, because he believes that dialogue is important...it's absolutely critical that the United States reaches some kind of understanding. They've been losing ground to Iran inside Iraq since the invasion of Iraq and that is really a very, very serious problem that has not been dealt with to date."

You know how criminals often get caught because they can't resist bragging about their exploits? What follows may be yet another example of that phenomenon.

CBS correspondent Lara Logan, who spent several years covering the Iraq War, has previously been a news subject herself as a result of her extracurricular activities.

Logan had an affair with "a married federal contractor whom she met while stationed in Iraq," and became pregnant as a result. At the time of the linked Associated Press story, the father was "in the midst of a divorce from wife Kimberly, with whom he has a 3-year-old daughter." Early this year, the New York Post reported that Logan "apparently courted two beaus while she was in Baghdad, and has been labeled a homewrecker ...."

Now it appears that Ms. Logan may have left Iraq with questionable "souvenirs," according to the Post's Page Six (the Post obtained its core information from this ERSnews.com story; bold after title is mine):

For the second night in a row, on Sunday night the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts all led with Barack Obama's overseas trip as CBS Evening News anchor Forrest Sawyer trumpeted: “Tonight, Barack Obama on the U.S. challenge in Afghanistan, laying out the stakes in an exclusive CBS News interview.” Reporter Lara Logan set up a condensed version of her interview which had consumed the first ten minutes of Face the Nation: “Speaking out for the first time since arriving in Kabul this weekend, Senator Barack Obama offered a bleak assessment of the worsening conditions inside Afghanistan.”

On ABC's World News, anchor David Muir led with how “Barack Obama is calling it one of the biggest mistakes made in the war on terror: The Bush administration's decision to focus on Iraq rather than Afghanistan.” NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt admired Obama's need to walk on a “diplomatic and political tight rope, trying to balance his role as a U.S. Senator versus that of a presidential candidate” before heralding:

His words tonight are reverberating from the war fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Pentagon.

As the media systematically ignores the good news in Iraq, the AP instead turns to “reporting” on a “journalist’s” Iraq love tryst. Why we need to see a story of CBS' Lara Logan's romance troubles is anyone’s guess? But apparently the AP thinks that Lara Logan's love tryst with a married contractor in Iraq is "news" while the surge and the complete lack of any real civil war in Iraq is not.

Here is the problem with the news media. Dan Rather fell for it. Walter Cronkite was overcome by it. Each of these "journalists" imagined that they were the news, that their lives and opinions were just as important to the nation as the news upon which they reported.

Sure Logan is a slightly better than average looking newsbabe, but so what? Is her horsing around with a married man something that is important to the world? Is her slutting around with multiple partners during her time as a correspondent in Iraq something that we all have a hunger, a NEED to know?

CBS foreign-affairs correspondent Lara Logan has granted an interview to Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz to acknowledge her messy personal life. Logan laments how she became "tabloid fodder," but she's telling Kurtz that the basic facts of the story are true:

[L]ast November, she broke off an intense relationship with another journalist in Baghdad. Soon afterward, Logan started dating Joseph Burkett, a federal contractor stationed in Iraq who was separated from his wife back in Texas.

Now, having just moved to Washington with an expanded portfolio for the network, Logan finds her romantic life reduced to tabloid fodder. And there is a new complication: She recently discovered that she is pregnant.

Logan, 37, says she and Burkett plan to get married eventually. Her divorce is slated to become final in two weeks, and Burkett's divorce trial is likely to end next month. But the case has turned decidedly messy, with Burkett's estranged wife Kimberly, the mother of their 3-year-old daughter, charging that Logan broke up her marriage.

A family friend told Kurtz that when Burkett came home to ask for a divorce and admit his affair with the CBS reporter, his wife was hospitalized after she overdosed on tranquilizers. Logan says the affair with Burkett came after her affair with CNN reporter Michael Ware: