How to be a Model Journalist? Lovers brawl in the heat of War

The in-bedded puns are rife, as the NY Post reporter Todd Venezi sounds off on the 'IRAQI TRYSTs' of gorgeous pouting (and brave) Lara Logan.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES: "60 Minutes" star Lara Logan, allegedly kept at least two paramours at once - one of whom, CNN's Michael Ware, brawled over her honor, a source said.

Sexy CBS siren Lara Logan spent her days covering the heat of the Iraq war - but that was nothing compared to the heat of her nights.

The "60 Minutes" reporter and former swimsuit model apparently courted two beaus while she was in Baghdad, and has been labeled a homewrecker for allegedly destroying the marriage of a civilian contractor there, sources said.

Passions got so hot in the combat zone that one of her lovers, Joe Burkett, brawled in a Baghdad "safe house" with her other paramour, CNN war reporter Michael Ware, a source said.

The wife of Burkett, a US Embassy worker, claims the sultry 37-year-old correspondent seduced him while bullets flew overhead.

Burkett's wife, Kimberly, also accuses Logan of teaming up with him to take her 3-year-old daughter away, according to the source.

A close pal of Logan, who confirmed the allegations to The Post, said Burkett's marriage to Kimberly was already finished six months before they sparked up a relationship.

"She is not the cause of their divorce," the friend told The Post yesterday.

"It was going to happen."

The pal also said Logan was particularly hurt by the comments because she had met Kimberly Burkett and thought the two were "friendly."

Kimberly filed for divorce from her husband in January in a court near their hometown of Fredericksburg, Texas.

The husband, 36, and wife, 32, are now battling over custody of toddler Ashley.

Pals of Logan said that the divorce attorney is just grandstanding by dragging the rising television star into the Texas couple's split.

"Lara is not part of their divorce proceedings," a friend said.

"The simple truth is that this was a marriage that was breaking up. And that's the bottom line."

As for the other claims, pals admitted that Logan had a one-time fling with CNN reporter Ware - but denied that there was any sort of fight between him and Burkett in Baghdad.

"There was no screaming match," the pal said.

Tale of the love fight first broke on the freerepublic.com in December.

The scandal comes just as the former model's journalistic career is starting to skyrocket.

It's a stunning turn of events for the respected journalist, who once told The Washington Post that she "has no social life."

Yesterday, CBS announced, without a hint of irony, that she was given a new Washington assignment as chief foreign-affairs correspondent. She joined the network in 2002 and became a "60 Minutes" correspondent in 2006.

The network touted her as the only American reporter who was in Baghdad when the United States invaded in 2003.

Logan was born in Durban, South Africa. She has been going through a divorce from her husband of nine years, Jason Siemon, a former European-league basketball player.

"That is a very sad thing for Lara," a pal said.

It has since been confirmed that Lara, now in Washington in a new position, is pregnant with the chld of the contractor. This has become international news and the 37 year old suffers from celebritification. SHe'll presumably get maternity leave from the cuchy new CHief Reporter job.

CBS journalists missing in Basra, Iraq

Two journalists working for the American network CBS are believed to have been abducted in southern Iraq, the BBC reports.

Police and witnesses said they were seized from a hotel in the city of Basra by at least eight gunmen.

CBS released a statement saying the two were missing and that efforts were under way to find them.

The network did not name the journalists and it requested that others refrain from speculating on their identities.

"CBS News has been in touch with their families and asks that their privacy be respected," the statement added.

The journalists were taken from the Sultan Palace Hotel, police and witnesses said.

A member of staff was quoted as saying the gunmen had arrived at the hotel earlier in the day and inquired about who was staying there. They are said to have returned later in a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Other reports say the group were masked and carrying machine-guns.

The disappearance of the journalists comes amid continuing concern about the dangers faced by media staff in Iraq. International media watchdogs report dozens of journalists killed each year since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern at the fate of the two.

"Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists and the deadliest conflict for the press in recent history," it said.

Rather's $70m suit about Big Brother interference

Ex-Network news anchor Dan Rather filed a lawsuit, in Manhattan challenging the government for its intimidation of the mainstream media, then went on Larry King Live to bellyache about his sullied reputation. The CBS logo, like a big eyeball, is quite appropriate for such a Big Brother analogy. Rather labelled a review of his notorious broadcast about Bush's shirking of National Guard duty "a fraud" and "a set-up." The media scrutinized the details of Rather's evidence rather than the essence, and appeared to turn on the messenger rather than pay attention to the rather long-in-the-tooth assertion that Bush had dodged service hours on the elite duty which had kept him out of Vietnam, and that officers had glossed over his records because he was scion of the heavyweight politico Geo Bush. The documents appeared to be forged.
At this point, with another 15 months of lame duck, 'war on terror' chest thumping, toxic Texan in the White House, it's hard to do more than whimper and shrug. It is about time that the media gets a bit ballsier.

Rather claimed CBS and Viacom Inc. (VIAB) used him as a "scapegoat" and intentionally botched the aftermath of a discredited story about President Bush's military service to curry favor with the White House. He was removed from his "CBS Evening News" post in March 2005.

"They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News," he told King.

Rather didn't mention other instances in which he believed news organizations bowed to corporate and government pressure.

according to the Washington Post:

Dan Rather says he's suing CBS for $70 million to restore his reputation, and that he'll donate most of any winnings. Former CBS News correspondent and Rather critic Bernard Goldberg says the former anchor is a great reporter, "but the dark side is that he's unwilling or incapable of accepting responsibility... This is the man who signed off his newscast with 'courage,' and now he's alleging 'they made me do it, they just put the words in front of me.' This is ridiculous on so many levels."

Anthrax case menace to reporters' sources

Five US journalists are required to finger the sources who leaked details about a scientist under scrutiny in the 2001 anthrax attacks, a federal judge said Monday.
Once again the first amendment comes under attack. When freedom of the press may be sacrificed, it shows contempt for the US Bill of Rights. So what else is new?

Wire services reported that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the reporters to cooperate with Steven J. Hatfill, who has accused the Justice Department and FBI of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving the media information about an FBI investigation of him.

The reporters named are Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today, and James Stewart, formerly of CBS News.

Walton denied Hatfill's request to demand information from the media companies ABC, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, The Associated Press, The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times.

Hatfill's attorneys want the reporters to reveal the identities of law enforcement officials who were cited anonymously in articles about the investigation. The journalists gave depositions under a court order but refused to reveal their sources, arguing that the First Amendment and a federal common-law privilege shield them from having to disclose the names.

Walton disagreed. He said District of Columbia federal courts have historically denied a common-law reporter's privilege and said he would not "bring into being such a privilege."

Creating such a privilege in this case would have the "perverse effect" of handicapping a plaintiff whose good name was destroyed by government leaks, Walton said. The reporters' fear that testifying would chill the flow of information, Walton said, is outweighed by the Privacy Act lawsuit.

Five people were killed and 17 sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hatfill, who worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., from 1997 to 1999, was publicly identified as "a person of interest" in the investigation by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The case remains unsolved six years later. Francis Boyle, a bio-terrorism expert who worked with the Bush administration, contends that the anthrax scare, which heightened terror after the 9/11 attacks, was likely an inside job to push through the passage of the Patriot Act.

The NY Times adds:

The reporters are not defendants in the suit but are likely to face contempt sanctions if they fail to comply with Judge Walton's order.

In April, Judge Walton referred the parties to mediation in an effort to settle the case. A separate lawsuit by Dr. Hatfill against The New York Times, claiming that columns by Nicholas D. Kristof had defamed him, was dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in January. Dr. Hatfill has appealed.

Last year, the government and five news organizations, including The Times, paid Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, $1,645,000 to settle what Judge Walton, in his decision yesterday, called a "strikingly similar" case.