Hersh, Seymour

Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer based in Washington, D.C. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine on national security matters and has also written for the London Review of Books since 2013.^[5][6]

Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In 2004, he notably reported on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. He has also won two National Magazine Awardsand five George Polk Awards. In 2004, he received the George Orwell Award.^[7]

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Early years

Hersh was born on April 8, 1937^[8] in Chicago to Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian Jewish parents who emigrated to the US from Lithuania and Poland and ran a dry-cleaning shop in Chicago's Austin neighborhood. After graduating from the University of Chicago with a history degree, Hersh found himself struggling to find a job. He began working at Walgreens before being accepted into University of Chicago Law School but was soon expelled for poor grades.^[9] After returning for a short time to Walgreens, Hersh began his career in journalism as a police reporter for the City News Bureau in 1959. He later became a correspondent for United Press International in South Dakota. In 1963, he went on to become a Chicago and Washington correspondent for the Associated Press. While working in Washington Hersh first met and befriended I. F. Stone, whose I. F. Stone's Weekly would serve as an initial inspiration for Hersh's later work. It was during this time that Hersh began to form his investigative style, often walking out of regimented press briefings at the Pentagon and seeking out one-on-one interviews with high-ranking officers. After a falling out with the editors at the AP when they insisted on watering down a story about the US government's work on biological and chemical weapons, Hersh left the AP and sold his story to The New Republic. During the 1968 presidential election, he served as press secretary for the campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy.

After leaving the McCarthy campaign, Hersh returned to journalism as a freelancer covering the Vietnam War. In 1969, Hersh received a tip from Geoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice regarding an Army lieutenant being court-martialled for killing civilians in Vietnam. His subsequent investigation, sold to the Dispatch News Service, was run in thirty-three newspapers and exposed the My Lai massacre, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.^[9][10]

In 1972, Hersh was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he served from 1972 to 1975 and again in 1979. Hersh reported on the Watergate scandal, though most of the credit for that story went to Carl Bernstein and Hersh's longtime rival Bob Woodward. Nonetheless, Hersh's Watergate investigations led him in 1983 to the publication of The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, a damning portrait of Henry Kissinger that won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 1975, Hersh was active in the investigation and reporting of Project Azorian (which he called Project Jennifer), the CIA's clandestine effort to raise a Soviet submarine using the Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer. This was one of the most complex, expensive, and secretive intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million ($3.8 billion in 2015) dollars.

After the New York Times

His 1983 book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House won him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book prize in biography. In 1985, Hersh contributed to the PBStelevision documentary Buying the Bomb. In 1993 Hersh became a regular contributor to The New Yorker.^[11]

Hersh has appeared regularly on the syndicated television news program Democracy Now!^[12]

Selected stories

My Lai Massacre

On November 12, 1969, Hersh reported the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US soldiers in March 1968.^[13] The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States. The explosive news of the massacre fueled the outrage of the US peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Hersh wrote about the massacre and its cover-up in My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (1970) and Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4(1972). For My Lai 4, Hersh traveled across the United States and interviewed nearly 50 members of the Charlie Company.^[14]A movie called "Interviews with My Lai Veterans" won an Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subjects in 1971. A movie was also produced, based on this book, by Italian director Paolo Bertola in 2009.^[15]

Project Jennifer

In early 1974, Hersh had planned to publish a story on "Project Jennifer" (later revealed to be named Project Azorian and Operation Matador), a covert CIA project to recover a sunken Soviet navy submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. CIA director William Colby discussed the operation with Hersh in 1974, but obtained his promise not to publish while the operation was active. Bill Kovach, The New York Times Washington, D.C. bureau chief at the time, said in 2005 that the government offered a convincing argument to delay publication in early 1974—exposure at that time, while the project was ongoing, "would have caused an international incident". The NYT eventually published Hersh's account on March 19, 1975, after a story appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and included a five-paragraph explanation of the many twists and turns in the path to publication. It is unclear what, if any, action was taken by the Soviet Union after learning of the story. It was later revealed that the leaks prevented a second recovery attempt of the submarine after a small portion of it was raised in the summer of 1974.^[16]

Korean Air Flight 007

In The Target Is Destroyed (1986), Hersh alleged that the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 in September 1983 by the Soviet Union was due to a combination of Soviet incompetence and United States intelligence operations intended to confuse Soviet responses.

Later releases of government information confirmed that there was a PSYOPS campaign against the Soviet Union that had been in place from the first few months of the Reagan administration. This campaign included the largest US Pacific Fleet exercise ever held, in April to May 1983.

Mordechai Vanunu and Robert Maxwell

In The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (1991), Hersh wrote that Nicholas Davies, the foreign editor of The Daily Mirror, had tipped off the Israeli embassy in London about Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear weapons program first to The Sunday Times and later to the Sunday Mirror. At the time, the Sunday Mirror and its sibling newspaper, the Daily Mirror were owned by media magnate Robert Maxwell who was alleged to have had contacts with Israel's intelligence services. According to Hersh, Davies had also worked for the Mossad. Vanunu was later lured by Mossad from London to Rome, kidnapped, returned to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. Davies and Maxwell published an anti-Vanunu story that was claimed by critics to be part of a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Israeli government.^[17]

Hersh repeated the allegations during a press conference held in London to publicize his book. No British newspaper would publish the allegations because of Maxwell's famed litigiousness. However, two British MPs raised the matter in the House of Commons, which meant that British newspapers were able to report what had been said without fear of being sued for libel. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention". He fired Davies shortly thereafter.^[18]

Attack on pharmaceutical factory in Sudan

Hersh strongly criticized Bill Clinton's decision to destroy, on August 20, 1998, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Al-Shifa, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, accounted for half the country's domestically produced medicines.^[19]

Iraq

Hersh has written a series of articles for The New Yorker magazine detailing military and security matters surrounding the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. In March 2002, he described the planning process for a new invasion of Iraq that he alleged had been on-going since the end of the First Gulf War, under the leadership of Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Fried and other neo-conservatives. In a 2004 article, he alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld circumvented the normal intelligence analysis function of the CIA in their quest to make the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Another article, "Lunch with the Chairman", led Richard Perle, a subject of the article, to call Hersh the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."^[20]

A March 7, 2007, article entitled, "The Redirection" described a recent shift in the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy, the goal of which Hersh said was to "contain" Iran. Hersh asserted that "a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."^[21]

In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles which described the treatment of detainees by US military police at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq.^[22] The articles included allegations that private military contractors contributed to prisoner mistreatment and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered torture in order to break prisoners for interrogations. They also alleged that torture was a usual practice in other US-run prisons as well, e.g., in Bagram Theater Internment Facility and Guantanamo. In subsequent articles, Hersh wrote that the abuses were part of a secret interrogation program, known as "Copper Green". According to Hersh's sources, the program was expanded to Iraq with the direct approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both in an attempt to deal with the growing insurgency there and as part of "Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A."^[23] Much of his material for these articles was based on the Army's own internal investigations.^[24]

Scott Ritter, a disaffected former arms inspector, asserted in his October 19, 2005 interview with Seymour Hersh that the US policy to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power started with US president George H. W. Bush in August 1990. Ritter concluded from public remarks by President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker that the Iraq sanctions would only be lifted when Hussein was removed from power. The justification for sanctions was disarmament. The CIA offered the opinion that containing Hussein for six months would result in the collapse of his regime. According to Hersh, this policy resulted in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.^[25]

Iran

In January 2005, Hersh alleged that the US was conducting covert operations in Iran to identify targets for possible strikes. Hersh also wrote that Pakistan and the United States had struck a "Khan-for-Iran" deal in which Washington would look the other way at Pakistan's nuclear transgressions and not demand handing over of its infamous nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, in return for Islamabad's cooperation in neutralizing Iran's nuclear plans. This was also denied by officials of the governments of the US and Pakistan.

In the April 17, 2006 issue of The New Yorker,^[26] Hersh wrote that the Bush administration had plans for an air strike on Iran. Of particular note in his article was that a US nuclear first strike (possibly using the B61-11 bunker-buster nuclear weapon) is under consideration to eliminate underground Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. In response, President Bush cited Hersh's reportage as "wild speculation." ^[27]

When, in October 2007, he was asked about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's hawkish views on Iran, Hersh stated that Jewish donations were the main reason for these:

“

Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let's not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it's as simple as that. When you're from New York and from New York City, you take the view of – right now, when you're running a campaign, you follow that line. And there's no other explanation for it, because she's smart enough to know the downside.^[28]

”

During one journalism conference, Hersh stated that after the Strait of Hormuz incident, members of the Bush administration met in vice president Dick Cheney's office to consider methods of initiating a war with Iran. One idea considered was staging a false flag operation involving the use of Navy SEALs dressed as Iranian PT boaters who would engage in a firefight with US ships. According to Hersh this proposed provocation was rejected. Hersh's allegation has not been verified.^[29]

Lebanon

In August 2006, in an article in The New Yorker, Hersh wrote that the White House gave the green light for the Israeli government to execute an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Supposedly, communication between the Israeli government and the US government about this came as early as two months in advance of the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hezbollah prior to the 2006 Lebanon War in July 2006.^[30] The US government denied these allegations.^[31]

Killing of Osama bin Laden

In September 2013, during an interview with The Guardian, Hersh commented that the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was "one big lie, not one word of it is true". He said that the Obama administration lies systematically, and that American media outlets are reluctant to challenge the administration, saying "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]".^[32] Hersh later clarified that he didn't dispute Bin Laden's death in Pakistan, and rather meant that the lying began in the aftermath of bin Laden's death.^[33]

On May 10, 2015, Hersh published the 10,000-word article "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" in the London Review of Books (LRB) on the fourth anniversary of the Abbottabad raid that killed bin Laden (Operation Neptune Spear). It immediately went viral, crashing the LRB website.^[34] Hersh outlined with extensive quoting of both named and unnamed sources the background to how bin Laden's presence in Abbotabad came to be known to the U.S. government and how the SEAL raid was in fact known to the Pakistanis and had ISI cooperation. Hersh alleges the U.S. government's narrative was in fact an elaborate cover story meant to conceal Pakistan's relationship with the Al Qaeda leader and to yield maximum political payoff for President Barack Obama in the runup to the 2012 election season:

The killing was the high point of Obama's first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration's account.^[35]

Operation Neptune Spear is often contrasted^[citation ^needed] with a low point—Operation Eagle Claw, the botched 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran ordered by President Jimmy Carter that killed eight troops and freed no captured Americans.

The official U.S. version is that bin Laden's location at Abbottabad was identified by the CIA by tracking an al-Qaeda courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Hersh reports that in August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer walked into the office of Jonathan Bank, the CIA station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad and betrayed the secret of bin Laden's whereabouts in return for part of the $25 million reward, and has since been relocated with his family to Washington and is a consultant to the CIA. The ISI had captured bin Laden in 2006; he had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains. The ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him. Bin Laden was very ill and was living as prisoner under ISI control in the garrison town of Abbottabad less than two miles from Pakistan's National Military Academy at Kakul (equivalent of United States Military Academy at West Point). The Saudi government also knew about Osama's presence in Abbottabad and had advised the Pakistanis to keep him as a prisoner and gave financial assistance. Major Amir Aziz, a Pakistani Army doctor, was ordered to move near his compound to provide treatment. Aziz was also given a share of the $25 million reward because he got the DNA sample which conclusively proved that it was bin Laden. A real casualty in the whole affair was the doctor named Shakil Afridi. His perfectly legitimate hepatitis B vaccination programme was claimed to be the way the US obtained bin Laden's DNA. Afridi became the sacrificial lamb because the US wanted to protect its real CIA informant, Amir Aziz, who had been held by the Pakistanis. Afridi was sentenced to 33 years by the Pakistanis. Other vaccination programmes were canceled once this lie was put forth.^[35]

Hersh writes that the Pakistan Army and intelligence service was warned about the U.S. Navy SEALs' raid and made sure that the two helicopters carrying the SEALs to Abbottabad crossed Pakistani airspace without triggering an alarm: "The most blatant lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military leaders—General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI—were never informed of the US mission."^[35] The report also states that Pakistani officials knew about the raid before it happened in May 2011 and instructed those monitoring bin Laden's compound to allow the SEALs to conduct the operation unobstructed.

Since his killing in 2011, the U.S. media has reported that bin Laden was given a perfunctory naval funeral off the deck of an aircraft carrier, to prevent any gravesite from becoming a symbol of martyrdom. According to Hersh's account of the assassination, bin Laden's corpse never made it to the USS *Carl Vinson*, because it had been torn apart by automatic fire at point-blank range before the CIA took whatever shreds were left: "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." And bin Laden's wives and children were never turned over to the Americans for questioning.

Hersh's story drew harsh criticism from media commentators and officials. Peter Bergen disputed Hersh's contentions, saying they "defy common sense";^[36] Hersh responded that Bergen simply "views himself as the trustee of all things Bin Laden".^[37] A similar dismissal of Hersh's account came from former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.^[38] A former intelligence official who had direct knowledge of the operation speculated that the Pakistanis, who were furious that the operation took place without being detected by them, were behind the false story as a way to save face.^[39]

Others criticized the press response. In an article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Trevor Timm wrote that "barely any follow-up reporting has been done to corroborate or refute his [Hersh's] claims", and observed that Slate, for example, "ran five hit jobs on Hersh within 36 hours".^[40]

On May 12, the Pakistan-based journalist Amir Mir disclosed that the "walk-in" who had provided the CIA with the information about bin Laden's whereabouts was Brigadier Usman Khalid of ISI.^[41][42]

On May 20, a former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, opined in The American Conservative that he found Hersh's story credible:

“

I have known Sy Hersh for more than 15 years and have a great deal of respect for him as a journalist. I am aware of how carefully he vets his information, using multiple sourcing for many of his articles, and I also know that he has a network of high-level contacts in key positions scattered throughout the defense, intelligence, and national security communities. . . . If Sy says that someone revealed something to him either on background or anonymously, I am sure that he accurately conveys what was said, though that does not necessarily rule out the possibility that the source might be intentionally misleading him or somehow be mistaken.^[43]

”

Syrian Civil War

During the Syrian Civil War US President Obama argued in a 2012 speech that a chemical attack in Syria would constitute crossing a "red line" and that this would trigger a US military intervention against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.^[44]

After this speech, and prior to the chemical attacks in Ghouta, chemical weapons were suspected to have been used in at least four attacks in the country.^[45] On 23 March 2013, the Syrian government requested the UN to send inspectors in order to investigate an incident in the town of Khan al-Assal, where it said opposition forces had used chlorine-filled rockets.^[46] However, on 25 April US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stated that US intelligence showed the Assad government was likely to have used chemical weapons – specifically sarin gas.^[47]

On 8 December 2013, the London Review of Books published "Whose Sarin?", in which Hersh argued that President Obama had "omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts" in his assertion during his televised speech of 10 September that the Syrian government had been responsible for the use of sarin gas in the Ghouta chemical attack of 21 August 2013 against a rebel-held district of Damascus.^[48] In particular, Hersh wrote of anonymous intelligence sources telling him that the Syrian army was not the only agency with access to sarin, referring to the Al-Nusra Front Jihadist group, and that, during the period before the Ghouta attack, secretly implanted sensors at the country's known bases had not detected suspicious movements suggesting a forthcoming chemical attack in the period.^[48]

...

In mid-May, President Trump encouraged Fox News to publish a false story about slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich in order to distract attention from the ongoing investigation of ties between his campaign and Russia, according to a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on Monday.

The 33-page lawsuit provides a glimpse into the extraordinary duplicity that fueled Fox News’ reporting on the Seth Rich story. Rich, a voter data analyst in DNC, was murdered on a Washington street last April in what D.C. police believe was a botched robbery.

The allegations in the lawsuit may have legal consequences for Trump and Fox News.

The lawsuit was filed by Rod Wheeler, a former police detective and longtime paid Fox News commentator hired by Rich’s family to investigate the crime. Wheeler claims Fox News commentator Ed Butowsky and correspondent Malia Zimmerman collaborated with the White House to spread the story that Rich, not the Russians, had provided DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

'Pressure'

Trump was personally involved, says Wheeler. Butowsky, he alleges, sent him a text May 14, two days before the story ran, saying, "Not to add any more pressure but the president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It’s now all up to you. But don’t feel the pressure."

Butowsky told Wheeler he hoped the story would rebut allegations of Russian support for Trump during the 2016 campaign, according to Wheeler.

“Everyone, there’s so many people throughout Trump’s four years and maybe eight years are always going to fall back on the idea that he is not legitimate and the Russians got him elected," Butowsky said, according to the lawsuit. “This [information about Seth Rich providing emails to WikiLeaks] changes all of that.”

On May 16, the day the story ran, Butowsky told Wheeler in a voice mail:

“A couple minutes ago I got a note that we have the full, uh, attention of the White House, on this. And, tomorrow, let’s close this deal, whatever we’ve got to do. But you can feel free to say that the White House is onto this now.”

The suit also alleges that Butowsky maintained “regular contact with Trump administration officials,” including Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon and Sarah Flores, the public affairs director at the Department of Justice, regarding “his efforts relating to Seth Rich.”

The Fox News story, promoted as a "bombshell," quoted Wheeler as saying that Rich had been in touch with WikiLeaks and someone in the government was blocking the investigation. Wheeler says both quotes were fabricated.

Extorting the News

Wheeler says Butowsky disclosed the plan to “extort” Hersh in a phone conversation May 19. He says Butowsky said he planned to send Hersh a five-second tape recording of his voice and a demand that he disclose one of his FBI sources on the story.When the story was denounced by Wheeler and the Rich family, Butowsky proposed blackmailing investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to “save” the story.

“You have three hours to write back who at the FBI you spoke to, with his name, that read you the Seth Rich report,” Butowsky allegedly said. “If you don’t give us that in three hours, a full recording of everything we have will be at every news agency tonight with your name and phone number on it. If you give it to us, you will never hear from us again."

The lawsuit does not say why the tape recording would have been so threatening to Hersh.

On May 23, Fox News retracted the story, saying it did not adhere to the agency's standards.

On Monday, Sean Spicer confirmed to NPR that he had met twice with Butowsky about the story, but denied Trump was involved. Butowsky told NPR he was "joking" about the president's involvement.

Asked to comment on the allegations, Hersh replied, via email, "Hey, I live in the real world."

Consequences

Trump’s role in the story has two possible implications, one for the Russia investigation, the other for Fox News.

Trump’s involvement in promoting a false story would only be significant for the ongoing Russia investigation if other solid evidence of obstruction of justice emerges. Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, says such evidence is lacking.

"While [Trump’s involvement] can be cited as part of a pattern,” Turley said in an email, “there is still not a compelling mosaic of a crime. This is a particularly small tile in any mosaic theory. There is a danger when otherwise lawful acts are assembled to create a criminal claim.”

Trump’s involvement is also relevant to the bid of 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, to buy the Sky, a European satellite TV network.

In June, British authorities delayed approval of the $15 billion transaction and asked regulators to further examine whether the deal would give the Rupert Murdoch family too much control over the country’s media.

“The transaction may increase members of the Murdoch Family Trust’s ability to influence the overall news agenda and their ability to influence the political process,” British culture minister Karen Bradley said in a statement.

The bogus Seth Rich story provides British regulators a glimpse into how Fox seeks to influence the news agenda and the political process: with fabricated quotes, blackmail threats and the encouragement of the president of the United States.

Jefferson Morley