Seymour Hersh - classic or dud

Drawing from accounts of a number of high-level military officials, Hersh challenges a number of commonly accepted narratives: that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Sarin gas attack in Ghouta; that the Pakistani government didn’t know Bin Laden was in the country; that the late ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in a solely diplomatic capacity; and that Assad did not want to give up his chemical weapons until the U.S. called on him to do so.

jesus effing christ

it must be fun to be a double-retired flag officer slash worn out Pentagon technocrat making up un-fact-checkable stories on the golf course to tell your old pal Sy

I think Sy puts a bit more leg work into his stories than that, Tom. afaics, he doesn't ever rely on single-sourcing.

hence coming up with shit on the golf course so you and your pals can get all the "facts straight" before phoning up Hersh with the crimes of that durned Obammer administration

the usual sign of a conspiracy theorizing is that the rationale for the cover-up doesn't exist or doesn't make any sense. literally every single one of the "commonly accepted narratives" being "challenged" in that list fits the bill.

You realize that you are hypothesizing a conspiracy, too, don't you?

Sure, but senior military and intelligence officials have a demonstrated history of talking smack about Obama and leaking things to the press to embarrass the administration.
The administration itself does not have a history of blatantly lying to the public for the lulz, which is what Sy has spent the last couple of years telling people.

Hersh embarrassed the G.W. Bush and W. Clinton administrations, too. Its less Hersh vs. Obama, than Hersh and his Pentagon sources vs. ideologues that would further ensnare us, the Doug Feiths and Samantha Powers of the world.

Nothing in this interview is new, really. Hersh's reporting already implicated Turkish intelligence in the Ghouta attack more than a year ago, and ties of the Saudis and gulf states to jihadis and Pakistan are open secrets. Anyone who still believes our "friends" in the region are morally superior to our state-enemies has had blinders on for decades.

That's why I didn't say anything to implicate Hersh's own motives? He obviously believes he is doing his job the same way he always has (which comes with its own problems but those are pretty well understood at this point). I retain my position that his sources are wagging the dog because they resent this administration's relatively dovish foreign policy and they apparently *really* hate the idea of Obama getting any kind of credit for Neptune Spear.

oh and btw who the hell came up with that name for the op, Neptune has a TRIDENT, not a damn spear, you jocks

otm

"Trident" is already taken by the U.S. nuclear SLBMs.

Great audio interview, about smoking Mary Jane at the University of Chicago and more:

http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-192-seymour-hersh

"Mary Jane"

guy's an obvious nutter btw

"Mary Jane" because it helps paint the picture of Hersh there around the same time as Nichols & May and Sontag and these other misfit prodigies.

I hope he's active enough to be working his ass off these days.

new Scahill podcast for the Intercept includes SH interview

“The way (the media) behaved on the Russia stuff was outrageous,” Hersh said when I sat down with him at his home in Washington, D.C., two days after Trump was inaugurated. “They were just so willing to believe stuff. And when the heads of intelligence give them that summary of the allegations, instead of attacking the CIA for doing that, which is what I would have done,” they reported it as fact. Hersh said most news organizations missed an important component of the story: “the extent to which the White House was going and permitting the agency to go public with the assessment.”...

“It’s high camp stuff,” Hersh told The Intercept. “What does an assessment mean? It’s not a national intelligence estimate. If you had a real estimate, you would have five or six dissents. One time they said 17 agencies all agreed. Oh really? The Coast Guard and the Air Force — they all agreed on it? And it was outrageous and nobody did that story. An assessment is simply an opinion. If they had a fact, they’d give it to you. An assessment is just that. It’s a belief. And they’ve done it many times.”...

Although critical of the Russia coverage, Hersh condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media and its threats to limit the ability of journalists to cover the White House. “The attack on the press is straight out of national socialism,” he said. “You have to go back into the 1930s. The first thing you do is destroy the media. And what’s he going to do? He’s going to intimidate them. The truth is, the First Amendment is an amazing thing and if you start trampling it the way they — I hope they don’t do it that way — this would be really counterproductive. He’ll be in trouble.”

Hersh also said he is concerned about Trump and his administration assuming power over the vast surveillance resources of the U.S. government. “I can tell you, my friends on the inside have already told me there’s going to be a major increase in surveillance, a dramatic increase in domestic surveillance,” he said. He recommended that anyone concerned about privacy use encrypted apps and other protective means. “If you don’t have Signal, you better get Signal.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/25/seymour-hersh-blasts-media-for-uncritically-promoting-russian-hacking-story/

https://theintercept.com/podcasts/

“They were just so willing to believe stuff..."

lol irony

Hersh also said he is concerned about Trump and his administration assuming power over the vast surveillance resources of the U.S. government.

Damn straight, Seymour.

“They were just so willing to believe stuff..."

lol irony

Given his history I would love to hear a self-reflective take on this from him but sadly I doubt we'll ever get one.

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html

Believable, but using a single source is still disappointing.

there's copies of recordings he used. it wasn't just a person's say-so.

Also, longer interview about this new piece.

Amazed at how absolutely persona non grata he's become in such a short time.

link to recordings?

Audio: Seymour Hersh States Seth Rich Was WikiLeaks Source and the Russia hack was "a Brennan Operation" https://t.co/LkssOVoLdw

— Peter Duke 📷 🇺🇸 (@peterdukephoto) August 2, 2017

Uff da

it's awesome he stockpiled a career of credibility to save up for fueling the seth rich story

He showed up in that NPR article about the Trump and the Rich story but only said he heard rumors that he couldn't confirm.

it's not like this is first misstep into conspiracy land, even this year. The man has been on InfoWars.

was this a private conversation, not intended to be published? disappointing either way.

WaPo quoted him as saying his comments were blown out of proportion by Fox etc., still was sad/disappointing to see him involved in this farrago at all

Leaked, though.

Has anyone read his memoir yet?

https://newrepublic.com/article/148646/seymour-hersh-weekly

see also: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/seymour-hersh-monday-interview.php

^^Always love reading/hearing interviews with him.

There’s (a CIA) guy; I was screaming at him once about fucking up the FBI after 9/11. And he said to me, “Sy, you don’t get it. The FBI catches bank robbers and we rob banks.” I thought to myself, Fuck! That’s just exactly right. They’re criminals, what the CIA does. It’s all criminal activity.

great interview, thanks for posting that mookie

p excited to read his book

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

lol this is the kissinger photo used in the book

https://i.imgur.com/h0f1Bs8.jpg

ha! that's great. the bookforum review was very very positive.

In your memoir, you say, “I can write now what I could not [in 1990], which was that the CIA had impeccable intelligence, conversation on nuclear issues in real-time, from deep inside the Pakistan nuclear establishment.” Why couldn’t you report that?

Because the person who told me was still in. [Now] he’s long gone.

Did you run that by him while you were working on the book to make sure it was okay to disclose?

He’s gone completely crazy. It’s been 30 years.

Yo Seymour Hersh... April 22nd 1915 just called... they would like to know what the fuck you are talking about. https://t.co/wREi6K31on… https://t.co/86LNZ3TZoX

— (((Pat Hilsman))) (@PatrickHilsman) June 27, 2018

“When you could die a highly respected and admired journalist but you just gotta do genocide denial on your way out.“ Sean P. McCarthy

To my knowledge, I'm not sure if chlorine has ever been used in aerial bombs or rocket/artillery shells, except perhaps as a contaminant from production.

More lethal agents like mustard were discovered before gas agents were put in shells in WWI. When Germans used chlorine in the WWI, they'd just tap large tanks upwind of opposing trenches.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/gas-hulton-getty3.jpg

More to the point, if one has chlorine, its a single synthesis step to phosgene (responsible for 85% of gas deaths in WWI, and the Bhopal disaster).

CO + Cl2 → COCl2 (ΔHrxn = −107.6 kJ/mol)

The LC50 for chlorine is around 300 ppm, that for phosgene around 3 ppm, ie its 100 times as effective.

What are we questioning here?

what are you questioning? and can you find any source for it beyond al-bab.com?

I'm more inclined to trust Hersh, insofar as he has long provided an outlet for US IC insiders seeking to avoid US military intervention, than groups that, whether well-intentioned expats, or Gulf state funded, which have sought it.

It’s a verbatim quote.

"You sound like an apologist for Assad?" @Jo_Coburn

"I just believe in facts" Seymour Hersh#bbcdp pic.twitter.com/wZkpioU0gh

— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) June 26, 2018

OPCW concluded that chlorine was very likely used in the attack, no mention of a bomb? he may be caught up in the semantics, but i doubt that anyone involved has the standing to question his anti-war credentials, let alone accuse him of 'apologising' for assad or 'denying genocide'

he, or his sources in american intelligence, could totally be wrong! and if sean p. mccarthy has better sources or info that would be surprising, but cool