At CNN, Dylan Byers is reporting “’60 Minutes’ used ‘planted’ questions, Hillary Clinton email says“:
“I just received confirmation from 60 Minutes that a piece on Julian Assange will air Sunday night,” Philip Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, wrote to Clinton in 2011. “He will be the only person featured. We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to ‘balance’ the piece. 60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with them during the course of the interview. We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program.”
“60 Minutes” spokesman Kevin Tedesco took issue with Crowley’s portrayal of the situation and accused him of trying to curry favor with Clinton.
This is not the first time pointed questions have been raised about CBS News and 60 Minutes’s cozy relationship with the Clinton State Department. A Gawker/Pro Publica investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails earlier this year revealed that former CIA official Tyler Drumheller was working with Sidney Blumenthal as part of a ‘secret spy network’ to provide Hillary Clinton with intelligence and it appears that this was not officially sanctioned by the State. And two days ago, I reported that while Drumheller was working for Hillary Clinton, he was simultaneously working as a consultant to CBS News and 60 Minutes:
CBS does not deny that Drumheller was working with the network, though a CBS spokesman would only say, “Tyler Drumheller was not involved in any way on the Benghazi story.” CBS was also asked if the network understood he was helping Blumenthal prepare reports on Libya for Secretary of State Clinton at the same time he was working with the network. Additionally, THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked CBS to clarify if Drumheller otherwise involved in the network’s coverage sensitive national security issues while he was also apparently working on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. Finally, CBS News was asked if they had done any internal review to determine whether Drumheller had influenced coverage in a way that may have unfairly benefited Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, since the public revelation of his conflict of interest. CBS did not clarify whether their statement that Drumheller was not involved “on the Benghazi story” referred specifically to the controversial Lara Logan report for 60 Minutes or CBS’s coverage of the Benghazi scandal generally. The network was given an opportunity to address these specific questions and actively declined to expand on their terse statement.
It appears that Hillary Clinton’s State Department had an inside man at 60 Minutes and CBS News, and CBS has thus far not wanted to answer any specific questions about the troubling questions this raises. The WEEKLY STANDARD asked CBS about the 60 Minutes report on Julian Assange. A CBS spokesman tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Drumheller was uninvolved in the report, despite the fact he was a consultant to the network on intelligence stories.
