Correspondent Lara Logan Files Defamation Suit

Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan is seeking $25 million in a defamation suit filed against writer Joe Hagan and New York Media for a piece published five years ago entitled “Benghazi and the Bombshell.”

According to The NY Post, The New York magazine story stemmed from a “60 Minutes” broadcast on October 27, 2013, about an attack on a US government diplomatic compound in 2012 in Libya, which killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The piece by Logan was ultimately retracted when it turned out one of the on-the-record subjects, a British security contract named Dylan Davies, had lied about his actions that night.

Seven months after the “60 Minutes” piece aired, Hagan published a story Logan’s suit now claims contained “false and defamatory statements” that “caused substantial harm to Logan’s personal and professional reputations.”

Lara Logan

Logan said she apologized for her “mistake” regarding Davies on “CBS This Morning” in November 2013, but that key parts of the story held up. She claims the decision by “60 Minutes” to pull the story “was motivated by politics.”

Despite the fallout from the retracted story, Logan says she was slowly making her way back into the good graces of “60 Minutes” — until Hagan’s article hit in May 2014.

“The plan for Logan’s return to ‘60 Minutes’ was entirely and completely derailed after publication of the Hagan Hit Piece,” the suit claims. Among the false statements, she says, was a gang rape she suffered in Egypt while on assignment, which Hagan characterized as a “groping.”

Logan’s salary suffered as a result, said the lawsuit. At the time the story hit, she was getting paid $2.15 million, up from $1.9 million in 2012-2013, the lawsuit said.

Under a new contract she signed in August 2015, she was paid only $750,000 to produce up to six original segments as a part-time correspondent in a deal that was to last three years.