"60 Minutes" issues apology about Benghazi report

(CBS News) "60 Minutes" has learned of new information that undercuts its Oct. 27 account of an ex-security officer who called himself Morgan Jones.

His real name is Dylan Davies, and he recounted to Lara Logan, in great detail, what he claimed were his actions on the night of the attack on the Benghazi compound.

"The most important thing to every person at '60 Minutes' is the truth, and today the truth is we made a mistake," Logan said on "CBS This Morning." "That's very disappointing for any journalist, it's very disappointing for me. Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake, but if you do, you have to stand up and take responsibility and you have to say that you are wrong. And in this case, we were wrong. We made a mistake.

"And, how did this happen? Dylan Davies worked for the State Department in Libya. He was the manager of the local guard force at the Benghazi special mission compound, and he described for us his actions that night, saying that he had entered the compound and had a confrontation with one of the attackers and he also said that he had seen the body of Ambassador Chris Stevens in a local hospital. And after our report aired, questions were raised about whether his account was real after an incident report surfaced that told a different story about what he'd done that night."

Logan continued, "He denied that report and he said that he told the FBI the same story he told us, but what we now know is that he told the FBI a different story to what he told us and you know, that was the moment, for us, when we realized that we no longer had confidence in our source and that we were wrong to put him on air and we apologize to our viewers."

Asked why she was convinced Davies was a credible source and that the account he provided was accurate, Logan said, "We verified and confirmed that he was who he said he was, that he was working for the State Department at the time, that he was in Benghazi at the special mission compound the night of the attack, and that he showed us, he gave us access to communications he had with U.S. government officials. We used U.S. government reports and congressional testimony to verify many of the details of his story and everything checked out. He also showed us photographs that he had taken at the special mission compound the following morning, and you know, 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. That's what we have to say here, we have to set the record straight and take responsibility.

Last Thursday, the Washington Post ran a report that questioned the central parts of what Davies had told Logan, citing an incident report right after the attack that he gave to Blue Mountain, the security firm he worked for. He told them that he never made it to the compound, that he was at his villa there.

"We did not know about that incident report before we did our story," Logan said. "When the Washington Post story came out, he denied it. He said that he never wrote it, had nothing to do with it and that he told the FBI the same story he told us. But as we now know, that is not the case."

Asked why she continued to believe Davies after he admitted lying to his own employer, Logan said, "Because he was very up front about that from the beginning, that was always part of his story. And it -- the context of it, when he tells his story is that his boss is someone he cared about enormously. He cared about his American counterparts in the mission that night, and when his boss told him not to go, he couldn't stay back. So that was always part of the record for us. And that part didn't come as any surprise."

"60 Minutes" has already acknowledged it was a mistake not to disclose that a book Davies co-wrote about the attack was being published by Simon & Schuster, which is a CBS company. On Friday afternoon, Threshold Editions, the imprint under which the book was published, announced that it has withdrawn the book from publication and sale.

There are also reports that Davies was asking for money. Asked if he ever asked for money, Logan said, "He did not. He never asked us for money. It never came up."

Moving forward, Logan said there will be a report on "60 Minutes" Sunday in which they'll correct the record.

Logan said "60 Minutes" has not been in touch with Davies since the report. "After we learned of the latest news about the FBI report, we tried to contact him, but haven't heard back from him," she said.