The ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi Scandal—a Fox News Connection?

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/177082/60-minutes-benghazi-scandal-fox-news-connection#

The ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi Scandal—a Fox News Connection?

Greg Mitchell on November 10, 2013 - 9:59 AM ET

Tonight’s the night 60 Minutes promises to come clean(er) about its bogus Benghazi report two weeks back. After stonewalling for so long, claiming that their source only told “one story,” and suggesting critics were mere “partisans,” CBS pulled the segment for its site and Lara Logan and the gang offered a hasty “apology” Friday morning—but only after The New York Times blew their “source” out of the water.

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Rosen, as I have done previously, also raises the issue of the story’s link to Mary Matalin’s right-wing imprint at Simon & Schuster, which just pulled the book co-authored by the same “source.” Did the whole segment come from that Matalin valley of wackiness? If so, you might say 60 Minutes got “Breitbarted.” Or as the saying goes, if you lie down with dogs, don’t complain if you get fleas.

But here’s another angle that’s gotten little attention so far, and I’ll do more on it later: Few seem to realize that a former Fox News exec became the head of the CBS News in February 2011. He is David Rhodes. His bio at CBS declares:

He directs network newsgathering for all CBS News platforms including television, CBSNews.com, and CBS News Radio.

With CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, Rhodes has led a division-wide rejuvenation of the storied CBS News brand, emphasizing the Original Reporting of top broadcast journalists around the world. A rededication to the news division’s hard-news roots runs through every broadcast.

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The bio also reveals:

Rhodes began his career as a Production Assistant at the newly-launched Fox News Channel in 1996, where he later became Vice President of News. At the network he managed coverage of three presidential elections, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricanes including Katrina, and was the channel’s Assignment Manager on the news desk the morning of September 11, 2001.

So, imagine: This was the guy who worked hand-in-glove on the biased, often propagandistic, Fox “coverage” of the run-up to the Iraq war, the 2000/2004/2008 elections, the Plame affair, the worst years in Iraq, and all other things Bush and Cheney, and so on.

What are his own political views? In a Crain’s mini-profile not long ago he cited his “eclectic” voting record. His brother Ben Rhodes famously works for President Obama as his oft-criticized national security adviser, and David Rhodes has said “no one in that house” growing up “agreed on anything.” Brit Hume actually visited Twitter earlier this year to point out that while David’s brother was serving Obama, David “was hardly thought a liberal” while helping to run Fox News during its key years.

Just one month ago, 60 Minutes aired what I called “a hatchet job” on alleged disability fraud.

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