Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writerThe New Yorker magazine on national security matters and has also written for the London Review of Books since 2013.[6][7]
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 ReportingWatergate for The New York TimesUS military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prisonNational Magazine Awards and five George Polk AwardsGeorge Orwell Award[8]
Early years
Hersh was born on April 8, 1937[9] in Chicago to YiddishLithuanian Jewish parents who emigrated to the US from Lithuania and PolandAustin neighborhoodUniversity of ChicagoWalgreens before being accepted into University of Chicago Law School[10] After returning for a short time to Walgreens, Hersh began his career in journalism as a copyboy, then police reporter for the City News Bureau of ChicagoUnited Press International in South DakotaWashington correspondent for the Associated PressI. 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 WarGeoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice regarding an Army lieutenant being court-martialledDispatch News ServiceMy Lai massacre, winning him the Pulitzer Prize[10][11]
In 1972, Hersh was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he served from 1972 to 1975[12] 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 WoodwardThe Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, a portrait of Henry Kissinger
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
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 biographyPBS television documentary Buying the Bomb. In 1993 Hersh became a regular contributor to The New Yorker.[13]
Hersh has appeared regularly on the syndicated television news program Democracy Now![14]
Selected storiesMy 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[15] The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam WarUS peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of US troops from VietnamMy 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[16] A movie was also produced, based on this book, by Italian director Paolo Bertola[17]
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 OceanWilliam ColbyBill Kovach, The New York Times Washington, D.C.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[18]
Korean Air Flight 007
See also: Korean Air Lines Flight 007
In The Target Is Destroyed (1986), Hersh alleged that the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007[19]
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 administrationUS Pacific Fleet[citation needed]
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 VanunuIsrael'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 servicesMossadIsraeldisinformation[20]
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[21]
Attack on pharmaceutical factory in Sudan
Hersh strongly criticized Bill Clinton's decision to destroy, on August 20, 1998, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factorySudan[22]
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 IraqPaul WolfowitzDick 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 IraqRichard Perle[23]
A March 7, 2007, article entitled, "The Redirection" described a recent shift in the George W. Bush administration[24]
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[25] The articles included allegations that private military contractors contributed to prisoner mistreatment and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered tortureBagram Theater Internment Facility and GuantanamoCopper Green[26] Much of his material for these articles was based on the Army's own internal investigations.[27]
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. BushJames Baker that the Iraq sanctionsinvasion and occupation of Iraq[28]
Iran
In January 2005, Hersh alleged that the US was conducting covert operations in IranPakistanWashington 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 IslamabadPakistan
In the April 17, 2006 issue of The New Yorker,[29] Hersh wrote that the Bush administration had plans for an air strikefirst strike (possibly using the B61bunker-buster nuclear weapon) is under consideration to eliminate underground Iranian uranium enrichment[30]
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.[31]
During one journalism conference, Hersh stated that after the Strait of Hormuz incident, members of the Bush administration met in Vice President Dick Cheneyfalse flag operation involving the use of Navy SEALs[32]
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 LebanonIsraeli 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[33] The US government denied these allegations.[34]
Killing of Osama bin Laden
See also: Death of Osama bin Laden § Alternative_accounts
In September 2013, during an interview with The Guardian, Hersh commented that the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin LadenObama administration[35] 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.[36]
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[37] 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 ISIBarack 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.[38]
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-KuwaitiJonathan Bank, the CIA station chief at the US embassy in IslamabadMilitary Academy at Kakul (equivalent of United States Military Academy at West PointSaudi governmentAmir AzizShakil Afridi[38]
Hersh writes that the Pakistan Army and intelligence serviceAshfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha[38] 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
Hersh's story drew harsh criticism from media commentators and officials. Peter Bergen disputed Hersh's contentions, saying they "defy common sense";[39] Hersh responded that Bergen simply "views himself as the trustee of all things Bin Laden".[40] A similar dismissal of Hersh's account came from former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell[41] 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.[42]
Others criticized the press response. In an article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Trevor TimmSlate, for example, "ran five hit jobs on Hersh within 36 hours".[43]
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.[44][45]
On May 20, 2015, a former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, opined in The American Conservative that he found Hersh's story credible.[46]
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[47] After this speech, and prior to the chemical attacks in Ghouta, chemical weapons were suspected to have been used in at least four attacks[48] On March 23, 2013, the Syrian government requested the UN to send inspectors in order to investigate[49] However, on April 25 US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stated that US intelligence showed the Assad government was likely to have used chemical weapons – specifically sarin gas[50]
On December 8, 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 September 10 that the Syrian government had been responsible for the use of sarin gas in the Ghouta chemical attack[51] 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[51]
On December 22, 2015, the London Review of Books published Hersh's article "Military to Military"[52] in which he exposed the divide between the US top brass and the politicians in the White House when it came to dealing with Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq. Hersh reported that the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States Department of Defensehas indirectly supported Syria's President Bashar al-Assad with quality intelligence in an effort to help him defeat jihadist groups, providing said intelligence via Germany, Israel and RussiaJabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic StateRussia, and anger the White House was unwilling to challenge Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey
On June 25, 2017, Welt am Sonntag published Hersh's article "Trump's Red Line"[53] in which he claimed to expose the divide between the U.S. intelligence community and president Donald Trump over the alleged 'sarin attackKhan Shaykhun[53][54] Bellingcat[55] The London Review of Books declined to publish Hersh's investigation.[56]
In his article,[53] Hersh states that the CIA was told directly by the Russians and Syrians of the place and time of the Syrian bombing ahead of time. He asserts that the Russians knew that the CIA was working with the opposition jihadists, and did not want any Americans killed. According to Hersh, the Syrian Air Force officers gave exact flight details in advance to the American deconfliction monitors aboard their AWACS plane, so that the Syrian jets could be tracked precisely, and the U.S. military did a bomb damage assessment (BDA) report on the attack, showing the Syrian Air Force dropped a 500-lb conventional-explosives bomb that wiped out the entire building the jihadis were meeting in.[53] Journalist George Monbiot[57]
Hersh's view on the Syrian Civil War is considered to "echo Assad's propaganda" by Prospect[58]
Criticism and controversyKennedy research
See also: John F. Kennedy document hoax
Hersh's 1997 book about John F. Kennedy, The Dark Side of Camelot, made a number of controversial assertions about the former president, including that:
Shortly before Hersh's publicized announcement that he had removed from his book all references to Cusack's documents, federal investigators began probing Cusack's sale of the documents at auction.[63] After The Dark Side of Camelot became a bestseller, Cusack was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of forging the documents and sentenced to a long prison term.[65] In 1997 the Kennedy family denied Cusack's claim that his late father had been an attorney who had represented JFK in 1960.[63]
Some of Hersh's speeches concerning the Iraq War have described violent incidents involving U.S. troops in Iraq. In July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys:
In 2018, Hersh said he was skeptical that Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks, saying "I don’t necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. We really don’t have an ending to the story. I’ve known people in the [intelligence] community. We don’t know anything empirical about who did what."[76]
In August 2018, Hersh said “the story of novichok poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence services about Russian organised crime”. He said the contamination of other victims was “suggestive ... of organised crime elements rather than state-sponsored actions – though this files (sic) in the face of the UK government's position”.[76]