Former 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice was sacked because of his “deeply flawed and dangerous execution” of the abduction story on the ground in Lebanon, Channel Nine sources have revealed.
An internal review alleges that the producer made a series of “terrible misjudgments”, Guardian Australia has learned, including failing to have passports ready for a quick escape from Beirut after Sally Faulkner’s children were snatched off the street. The blunders also allegedly included putting the cameraman in the car with the kidnappers and failing to spot a CCTV camera at the location of the planned abduction.
The botched plan led to 60 Minutes, the child abduction crew and Faulkner all being arrested by Lebanese authorities and jailed before they could board a boat to Cyprus.
Nine paid an undisclosed sum to secure the release of reporter Tara Brown and her crew and Faulkner, but the team who snatched the children, led by Adam Whittington’s company Child Abduction Recovery International’s (Cari), remains in prison awaiting trial.
A detailed review of the debacle, a summary of which was published last week, said Rice ordered the crew to shoot “overlay” footage in the street in the days ahead of the snatch, which the crew reported drew unwanted attention to themselves on the Beirut streets.
The so-called safe house for Faulkner and the crew was the run-down home of a relative of one of the Cari operatives and was not safe at all, the review found.
Exacerbating the crisis, Rice shut down communication with Nine in Sydney when things started to go wrong, the review panel told Nine management.
Another alleged error identified by the review was that once inside the “safe house” Rice told Faulkner to ring her estranged husband using Whittington’s phone and tell him not to worry because she had the kids and he could see them in a few days’ time.
But the children’s father, Ali al-Amin, went straight to police and within hours authorities had traced Whittington’s phone and everyone was arrested.
The alleged errors made by Rice follow the publication on Wednesday of some Channel Nine emails which show that 60 Minutes’ two executive producers and in-house lawyer were well aware of the plan to pay Cari $115,000 to abduct two children from their father in Lebanon.
In one email Rice told Nine’s in-house lawyer “the plan is for Cari, a child retrieval/rescue service to snatch the kids and get on a boat to Cyprus”.
An email around the same time between the two executive producers and Rice details an earlier plan by another program, Inside Story, to pay Whittington $115,000 to “snatch the kids, escape via water (jetskis) to a boat and then on to Cyprus”. Rice picked up the story for 60 Minutes and organised the payment to Cari after it was dropped by Inside Story.
Rice has engaged lawyer John Laxon to negotiate with Nine after he refused to accept a settlement offered to him on Friday. Laxon says Rice has been singled out for punishment.
The summary of the review, which was released 0n 27 May, referred briefly to the failures without naming Rice, including “lack of consideration given to alternative exit strategies from Lebanon” and “failure to notify 60 Minutes management when it appeared that the plan for implementation would not operate as intended”.
“Rice was singled out by management because his role was replete with terrible misjudgments and for placing his crew in jeopardy,” sources told Guardian Australia. His handling of the story was described as “deeply flawed and dangerous”.
The report’s authors were aware that Rice, Brown and the two executive producers, Kirsty Thomson and Tom Malone, approved the plan without asking any deeper questions. It was recommended that they all be severely censured by management for their role in the debacle.
Brown, Malone and Thompson were all censured and given first and last warnings.
But Rice, who was held to be the most responsible for the decisions, was sacked despite a recommendation by the review that no staff member “should be singled out for dismissal given the degree of autonomy accorded to 60 Minutes”.
The independent review was conducted by the founding producer of 60 Minutes, Gerald Stone; former producer and senior executive at Nine, David Hurley, and the company’s general counsel, Rachel Launders.
The panel said the incident should be seen as “a failure at the management level of Nine”.
“The degree of autonomy granted to 60 Minutes was so great that the executive producer saw no need to consult with the director of news and current affairs on the wisdom of commissioning this story,” the review said.
