Seymour Hersh - classic or dud

FWIW I agree with poster Aimless.

The posts by Mark S and Unperson are good reminders to be sceptical about what we're told and to look for hidden motives and causes, eg: some of which may be unknown to Hersh.

But they don't, themselves, disprove any claim that Hersh has made. Only factual evidence can do that.

And I think Aimless is correct to say that dismissing Hersh whatever he says becomes incoherent. There must be certain things that he could say that would be true or worth knowing.

Thought these were interesting factual details in his reporting:

The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)

May as well dismiss Biden as a malleable old man if Hersh's age makes him a rube.

May as well dismiss Biden as a malleable old man if Hersh's age makes him a rube.

Do you think that's a zing? Biden is clearly malleable. Make a list of the positions he advocated in the 70s, 80s and 90s and compare them to the positions he's advocated (and things he's actually achieved, legislatively) as Obama's VP and now as president. He has undergone a steady and obvious leftward shift as he has aged, indicating that he is aware of broader social and political changes and is adjusting his thinking accordingly.

By 'malleable' I think Eazy was thinking more in terms of being shaped and directed by someone else's will. iow, being their dupe.

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