While we've heard a good deal about Lara Logan's life in the media over the years, there has been nothing but crickets when it comes to her husband, Joseph Burkett. J.K. Trotter of Gawker seems to have stumbled on the reason for that...
Many people know that in 2008 Logan married Joseph W. Burkett, a defense contractor she met while stationed in Baghdad to cover the Iraq War for CBS News. Logan and Burkett were both married to other people when they became involved, and the story of their war-zone love affair—complete with reports of a brawl between Burkett and CNN's Michael Ware, another rival for Logan's affections—lit up the tabloids at the time.
"What most people don’t know, however, is the nature of Burkett’s work in Iraq. He was an employee of the Lincoln Group, a now-shuttered “strategic communications and public relations firm” hired by the Department of Defense in 2005 to plant positive stories written by American soldiers in Baghdad newspapers during the Iraq War.
“He did information operations,” one former colleague of Burkett's told Gawker. “It was really spooky stuff. We worked with one of those special spooky IO outfits that didn’t even have a unit patch.” It's the kind of work for which a close relationship with an American network correspondent might come in handy.
And it paid handsomely. Under an “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract,” the Pentagon promised the Lincoln Group up to $100,000,000 to assist the military’s Joint Psychological Operations with controlling local media coverage of the American occupation. The Lincoln Group later became the target of congressional and Defense Department investigators over its handling of U.S. cash and its propaganda tactics."
Why didn't CBS News ever disclose "...that one of its star war correspondents became romantically involved with a man who was paid by the U.S. government to manipulate civilian public opinion about the disastrous war in Iraq"?
Why won't Logan or Burkett respond to requests to comment? Why won't CBS respond publicly?
