CBS’s Lara Logan accused of theft

Lara Logan, the alluring chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS and sometime presenter of the network's Sixty Minutes programme, could be in hot water for swiping souvenirs from the wreckage of bombed-out Baghdad. In a video profile of Logan recently aired on the internet by the industry magazine Broadcasting & Cable, called Lara Logan's Spoils of War, mementos from Iraq and Afghanistan were shown in her Washington office.

Taking such items out of the country is considered theft under a federal provision designed to protect Iraqi heritage. One former Fox News engineer has already been prosecuted and placed on probation for smuggling paintings from Iraqi palaces.

"The prize pieces are . . . pre-Iraq invasion portraits of Saddam Hussein,” reported Broadcasting & Cable. “In one [he's] shown in military fatigues. Logan told us she found it in pieces, in the ruins of the Olympic committee building after it was bombed.”  A second portrait, apparently recovered from the ruins of a shelled palace in Baghdad, showed a paternal Saddam surrounded by a group of adoring children.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are looking into it, but Logan is unbothered. Says a CBS spokesman: “Sorry, but this one's not worthy of a comment.”

Logan, a former swimsuit model, made headlines this year when a CNN reporter and a US defence contractor in Iraq got into a brawl over her. Logan is expecting a baby by the defence contractor, Joe Burkett, in January. ·