Brian Kilmeade: CBS' Lara Logan Targeted after Benghazi Speech

CBS News reporter Lara Logan, suspended over a report in which she interviewed a man who lied about his experience in Libya, had been a target ever since she called for the United States to retaliate for the attack on its embassy in Benghazi, says Fox News' Brian Kilmeade.

Kilmeade, filling in as a guest co-host Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "The Five," pointed to a speech Logan gave in Chicago in late 2012 in which she called for retaliation over the Benghazi attack, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

"I think that's the entire reason she's paying the price right now," Kilmeade said.

CBS cited the speech as a reason Logan, whose report appeared on "60 Minutes," shouldn't have reported the story at all.

In the report, she also said it was a lie that the U.S. military had put al-Qaida on the run.

Kilmeade described Logan as one of the top five reporters in the country, adding that members of the military have told him her courage during battlefield reporting is comparable to that of Navy SEALs.

"If anyone has enough integrity in the tank, it's her," Kilmeade said.

Co-host Bob Beckel noted that Logan clearly is emotional and invested in the Benghazi story, which may have colored her "60 Minutes" piece.

"Maybe she didn't use her normally good journalistic judgment," he said.

Kilmeade acknowledged it was possible, but said, "If I was brutally assaulted in Egypt, I would have an agenda. If I watched people blown up in Iraq, I'd have an agenda. But instead, she stayed straight to the story."

Logan was raped by between 200 and 300 men while reporting from Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution in February 2011.

"The speed and the strength of the punishment is curious," co-host Andrea Tantaros observed. "I mean, it was a pretty heavy anti-Obama-administration piece."

Still, Tantaros said she thinks the punishment was correct.

"Lara Logan, why don't you come over to Fox News? We respect journalists here," co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle said. "I just want to see the facts against her in evidence, since she almost gave her life for that network."

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