GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: "60 Minutes" Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted by Mob in Cairo Protests

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: New York Post

16February2011 1:38pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, "Jew! Jew!" as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo's main square Friday, CBS and sources said yesterday.

The TV crew with Logan, who is also the network's chief foreign correspondent, had its cameras rolling moments before she was dragged off — and caught her on tape looking tense and trying to head away from a crowd of men behind her in Tahrir Square.

"Logan was covering the jubilation . . . when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration," CBS said in a statement. "It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy.

"In the crush of the mob, [Logan] was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.

"She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning," the network added. "She is currently in the hospital recovering." (read full report)

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Battle-tough beauty no ‘wimpy girly girl’

When war reporter Lara Logan's co-workers learned that she had to be hospitalized after being attacked in Egypt, they knew it was serious.

Logan, CBS's chief foreign correspondent, is known as much for her toughness as for her good looks, so it was clear things were bad.

"She's not a wimpy, girly girl — she had a pocket for lipstick sewn into her flak jacket as a joke," one source told The Post yesterday.

Riots, bloodshed and even physical attacks have been part of Logan's job for years, and colleagues said she relishes her role as being a seasoned reporter in the world's worst war-torn areas.

When the 39-year-old South African native was embedded with a US Army unit on the Afghan border shortly after 9/11, the armored Humvee she was traveling in was attacked by an anti-tank missile.

The inside of Logan's mouth was torn up and her face left swollen and bruised.

But when the Army tried to ship her home, she balked.

"I was just enraged," she told The Washington Post in a 2008 interview. "I'd already been blown up. I said, 'I'll just put an ice pack on.' There was no way I was going to leave, no way in hell."

Logan wound up never even telling her mother, who was dying, that she had been hurt.

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