Seymour Hersh - classic or dud

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever

If the death of bin Laden was all a hoax, then either OBL died a while earlier of some other cause, or else the USA cut a deal with him, bcz nothing would suit OBL more than to pop up in a video after loudly being proclaimed dead, making the USA look very bad indeed and would add to his legend - something he is quite vain about.

i don't think he's claiming it was a hoax, just that it didn't happen at all like the new yorker and kathryn bigelow said it did.

was just looking at my copy of Chain of Command this morning and wondering what Hersh was up to

If I were near NYC, I would go to Bethlehem and see him speak next week:

http://lehighcalendar.activedatax.com/LehighU/EventList.aspx?view=EventDetails&eventidn=25353&information_id=34070&type=&syndicate=syndicate

Seems like the necktie would draw attention when meeting a source in a parking garage.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/9/27/1380263187095/Seymour-Hersh-008.jpg

"The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.

This story gets printed because it is not a story about government lies and lying, but a story about Seymour Hersh complaining about goevernment lies and lying. Then the reporter and editor can say to themselves, maybe we didn't break a real story, but at least we sort of almost courageously hinted at one.

i wouldn't exactly accuse the guardian, of all papers, of being afraid to print stories 'about government lies and lying.'

point taken

Hey Sy if things have been so bad for the past five years, where have you been?

Is he saying he can't find an editor to print all these vast truths that everyone's ignoring?

I'm not one to defend the water carrying ability of the NYT, but guys like Hersh can get published anywhere they want.

^ this

first thought was yeah yeah yeah, wake me up when there's a story to go read somewhere

I'm not one to defend the water carrying ability of the NYT, but guys like Hersh can get published anywhere they want.

Hersh, re:Snowden:

Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn't touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game,"

Maybe Hersh is sitting on a trove of stories, but chicken-shit editors - and one might presume an implicitly chicken-shit Hersh - are afraid to publish them due to all the anonymous sources, lack of hard documentation, etc. Which is, you know, good journalism, but indeed perhaps counterproductive to breaking stories of secrets and lies.

Unclear, since Hersh is quick to qualify, but the whole Osama story is a lie line: does that include the New Yorker's take on it, or is he just ripping on the Times?

Hersh may still be under contract and in-house at the New Yorker, and so can't publish elsewhere other than in book form.

His recent pieces for the New Yorker have been surprisingly online-only, off in a corner:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/seymour_m_hersh/search?contributorName=seymour%20m%20hersh

...or he just means that chickenshit editors have less faith in putting journalists on the road for months and months in search of documents that may or may not turn up.

By chickenshit I assume you actually mean "broke." The major paper I often write for was just asked to shave $100 million off its budget.

dud, for inspiring anyone to work "within the system to change it"
― You've Got to Pick Up Every Stitch (tracerhand), Monday, September 6, 2004 7:01 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

geez....tough crowd...

I should've put "chickenshit" in quotes (Hersh's word, not mine).

I like it, but then I would. ...Where did I read recently that when Hersh first met Lieutenant Calley at Fort Benning, Calley vomited blood at the mention of My Lai, which was how Hersh knew he was talking to the right person? Is that fake?

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would"

hmmmm, I have to dock him IQ points for this surprise.

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/131080-40-years-later-hersh-on-my-lai/transcript/

New:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

Between this and the Bin Laden thing, I'm starting to wonder if Hersh has gone off the deep end. Is there any consensus emerging on how credible Hersh is anymore? Has someone done a really tough, critical interview with him lately?

here's the FP rebuttal piece
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/09/sy_hershs_chemical_misfire#sthash.Tr2j2WTW.HEFsZH7A.dpbs

Washington Post & New Yorker passed on Hersh's Syria story, as someone noted abouve the NYer does seem to be quietly edging him out
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/seymour-hersh-syria-report_n_4409674.html

In looking up reactions to the new article, I stumbled onto this from 2006:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/sy-hersh-nsa-listened-to-u-s-calls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2G39yJtyl0

The idea that the government wants to control the conversation about wars and foreign policy and it attempts to distort our opinions through lies and concealment is not a shock, but it certainly is a legitimate news story when they are discovered doing it. Presumably, Hersh has enough experience around disinformation campaigns that he would be difficult to use to 'plant' disinformation in the media. But it is not inconceivable he could be fooled into reporting well-crafted untruths.

Lots of backlash, but another Hersh piece on Syria.

Yowsa. Turkey looks pretty bad there, Al Nusra more evil than before, and Denis McDonough willfully ignorant in the Feith/Perle/Wolfowitz mold.

This is from back in December, but a good interview:

http://thepolitic.org/syria-snowden-and-obama/

Bio:

http://scoopartistthebook.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/cover.jpg

New interview:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/seymour-hersh-nsa-surveillance-useless

Come on, Sy. Publish the book.

Return to My Lai:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-scene-of-the-crime

Here's what he's been hinting about in speeches for the past few years:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

So--what happened to the body, according to Hersh's sources? I'll have to try wading though all that again later.

Small portion of the story, but:

The retired official said there had been another complication: some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed. At the time, the retired official said, the Seals did not think their mission would be made public by Obama within a few hours: ‘If the president had gone ahead with the cover story, there would have been no need to have a funeral within hours of the killing. Once the cover story was blown, and the death was made public, the White House had a serious “Where’s the body?” problem. The world knew US forces had killed bin Laden in Abbottabad. Panic city. What to do? We need a “functional body” because we have to be able to say we identified bin Laden via a DNA analysis. It would be navy officers who came up with the “burial at sea” idea. Perfect. No body. Honourable burial following sharia law. Burial is made public in great detail, but Freedom of Information documents confirming the burial are denied for reasons of “national security”. It’s the classic unravelling of a poorly constructed cover story – it solves an immediate problem but, given the slighest inspection, there is no back-up support. There never was a plan, initially, to take the body to sea, and no burial of bin Laden at sea took place.’ The retired official said that if the Seals’ first accounts are to be believed, there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case.

Oh yeah, I saw that, didn't know if I'd missed any more in skimming, thanks.

"Did not think their mission would be made public by Obama within a few hours": but what were they gonna do if if they had more time? Some of this just seems pretty squirrely, also for inst like Pakistan vs/ Saudis re each one being competitive/complicit/responsible for bin Laden's maintainance, and paranoid/threatening. Hope some other investigators can verify some of this.

ya amazing read but seems to be primarily based on one anon source

the idea that bin laden was being held captive by isi does make a lot of sense tho, some of the other details maybe not as much

If a feeling counts this feels more right than wrong!

narrative primarily based on one source but validation from others...typical for Hersh.

But who cares anyway, right?

new yorker clearly wldnt touch it

I care, but want verification, like with My Lai. A lot (maybe most) people thought that at least some Pakistan govt. elements had to know bin Laden had settled into that city, so why not say, Oh yeah, we were gonna use him as a bargaining chip, 'til that guy betrayed the secret, as Hersh put it. Yeah, whatta party-pooper/ And maybe that's true, but the whole thing w Saudis, like I mentioned also needs much more parsing---Hersh's paraphrasing of sassy insiders raises as many questions as it answers, at least.

My Lai was way past verified, even if the perps got off light.

I don't doubt that ISi played a role in Bin Laden's confinement to Abbottabad, that Pak air defense withheld response to the SEAL insertion, or that Saud intelligence maintain ties to Al Qaeda (their support of affiliate Al-Nusra in Syria is overt).

I do have doubts that the SEAL team members who've disclosed elements of the raid that they were privy to were pushing an administration fabrication; as a group they take these things very seriously, and arguably none would risk ostracism by peers. While I've no idea whether Bin Laden's remains are at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, the requirement that there be no locus for a martyr's cult adequately explains why his remains or even post-mortem photos weren't released.

It may have been an utter mess, with a totally desecrated body torn into a dog's breakfast, but the resolution of the mess through the 'burial at sea' was about as good a resolution as could have been planned, even if they'd thought it through a hundred times and decided on it months beforehand. Kind of an 'all's well that ends well' story.

Can't imagine Kathryn Bigelow being very happy, if there's a chance her movie told all of the potentially false parts of this story.

Genuine question. If say in two weeks Hersh’s story becomes undeniably ‘the truth’ ? Like Biden admits to it. Would it change your perception of the intelligence community or US foreign policy? Or even the current invasion of Ukraine?

If say in two weeks Hersh’s story becomes undeniably ‘the truth’ ?

the key piece of the whole operation was its deniability. its a lock that whoever did it will continue to deny responsibility. hersh's story is an attempt to cut through that fog to expose who did what to whom and how. how the world uses those facts is not his concern as a journalist. getting the story right is his job, which isn't easy in the world of spying and covert operations.

My question is more about the different possible impacts of such an act.

The most important impacts aren't likely to be public knowledge. But I think it's safe to speculate there are more Germans pissed off at the USA today than there were before this story was posted.

This piece goes after Hersh's credibility as a journalist; I was not aware of just how often he has fallen victim to forged documents, made factual errors, etc.

This piece digs into the details of Hersh's reporting on the Nordstream story and finds numerous factual errors and timeline fuckups.

Hersh interviews Thomas Frank:

TF: I think Bill Clinton was the pivotal figure of our times. Before he came along, the market-based reforms of Reaganism were controversial; after Clinton, they were accepted consensus wisdom. Clinton was the leader of the group that promised to end the Democrats’ old-style Rooseveltian politics, that hoped to make the Democrats into a party of white-collar winners, and he actually pulled that revolution off. He completed the Reagan agenda in a way the Republicans could not have dreamed of doing—signing trade agreements, deregulating Wall Street, getting the balanced budget, the ’94 crime bill, welfare reform. He almost got Social Security partially privatized, too. A near miss on that one.

He remade our party of the left (such as it is) so that it was no longer really identified with the economic fortunes of working people. Instead it was about highly educated professional-class winners, people whose good fortunes the Clintonized Democratic Party now regarded as a reflection of their merit. Now it was possible for the Democratic Party to reach out to Wall Street, to Silicon Valley, and so on.

fuckin preach! it simply cannot be emphasized enough.

gotta love that neoliberalism baby

Lots of laughter about Hersh's latest:

At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the [American] official said, “Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It’s as if he’s an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden’s support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky’s knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden’s son.”

What's making people...skeptical, to put it mildly...is that "poor waif in his underwear" line, which is a Russian idiom that no American would ever use. The sidelong shot at Nigeria is also pissing some people off.

its ridiculous, zelensky is quite robust, hes a stocky boi