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Seymour Hersh

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Seymour Hersh

Seymour Myron (Sy) Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and author based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker on military and security matters. His work first gained worldwide 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. His 2004 reports on the US Military's treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.

Early years

Hersh was born into a Jewish family in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago. He 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 DC correspondent for the Associated Press. During the 1968 presidential election, he served as press secretary for the campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. Later that year, 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 was also active in investigating the CIA's Project Jennifer.

His 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 PBS television documentary Buying the Bomb.

The My Lai Massacre

On November 12, 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, prompting widespread condemnation around the world and reducing public support for the Vietnam war in the United States. The explosive news of the massacre fueled the outrage of the American peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. It also led more potential draftees to file for conscientious objector status. Hersh wrote about the massacre and its cover-up in My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath and Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4...

Mordechai Vanunu and Robert Maxwell

In his book The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Hersh revealed that Nicholas Davies, the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror, had tipped off the Israeli Embassy in London about whistle-blower 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 thought to have had extensive 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 as part of a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Israeli government. [1]

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," but he sacked Nick Davies shortly thereafter. [2]

Attack on Pharmaceutical Factory in Sudan

Hersh strongly criticised the aerial destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which provided about half the medicines produced in Sudan, by United States aircraft during the Bill Clinton presidency, on August 20, 1998.[3]

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 a 2004 article, he examined how 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 to say that Hersh was the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." [4] Perle publicly threatened to sue Hersh for libel in the United Kingdom where the standard of proof is much lower, but failed to file suit before the statute of limitations ran out. [5]

In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles describing the torture of detainees by US military police at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq. There are allegations that private contractors contributed to them as well and that intelligence such as the CIA ordered the torture in order to break prisoners for interrogations. There are also accusations that torture is a usual practice in other US prisons as well, e.g. in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Hersh went on to publish an article claiming that the abuses were part of a secret interrogations program, known as "Copper Green", expanded to Iraq with the direct approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an attempt to deal with the growing insurgency there.

At a Columbia University speech given by Hersh in June 2004, author Rick Perlstein reported

[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children and women prisoners, as the cameras run." [6]

At an ACLU convention in July 2004, he further detailed information he had been given about sexual tortures in Abu Ghraib [7]. He claims that there is video footage, being held by the Bush administration, of Iraqi guards raping young boys in the prison. "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."

While being interviewed by KQED host Michael Krasny on October 8, 2004 [8], Hersh claims to have spoken with a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border.

His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them. "He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'"

These public claims have not been independently verified, nor appeared in print under Hersh's byline in the pages of his current employer, The New Yorker, which fact checks its writers, and as Hersh himself has admitted may be distorted to protect sources or for other reasons. [9]

Iran

In January 2005, Hersh revealed that the USA was conducting covert operations in Iran to identify targets for possible strikes. This was dismissed by both US government as well as the Government of Iran. However, US government has not categorically denied that US troops have been on the ground in Iran. Hersh also claimed that Pakistan and USA have struck a "Khan-for-Iran" deal in which Washington will look the other way at Pakistan's nuclear transgressions and not demand handing over of its nuclear proliferator A Q Khan, in return for Islamabad's cooperation in neutralising Iran's nuclear plans. This was also denied by officials of the governments of the US and Pakistan.

Criticisms

Many of his most shocking "scoops" in recent years have come at public speaking events, rather than in print, though Hersh caused a small scandal regarding his credibility when he admitted in an interview with a New York Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop, "Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people...I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say."[10]

Specifically, one of Hersh's dramatic allegations made during a speaking engagement in July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, was later amended by Hersh. He alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys: "basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has. They’re in total terror it’s going to come out.”[11] In a subsequent interview with New York Magazine, Hersh admitted, "I actually didn’t quite say what I wanted to say correctly...it wasn’t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs. And I just realized then, the power of—and so you have to try and be more careful."[12] In his book, Chain of Command, he wrote that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract interpreter at Abu Ghraib, during which a woman took pictures. [13]

Bibliography

  • Hersh, Seymour M. (foreword) (2005) in Scott Ritter: Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Hardcover), Nation Books, ISBN 1560258527
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (2004). Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060195916.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1998). The Dark Side of Camelot (Reprint). Back Bay Books. ISBN 0316360678.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1998). Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345427483.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1991). The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House. ISBN 0394570065.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1986). The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It. Random House. ISBN 0394542614.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1983). The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671447602. Excerpts from The Price of Power hosted by Third World Traveler
  • "Huge CIA Operation Reported in US against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents During Nixon Years" by Seymour Hersh, New York Times, December 22 1974 — Hersh's article detailing CIA covert operations which eventually led to the formation of the Church Committee.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1972). Cover-up: the Army's secret investigation of the massacre at My Lai 4. Random House. ISBN 0394474600.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1970). Chemical And Biological Warfare. Panther Books. ISBN 0586032959.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1970). My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. Random House. ISBN 0394437373.

See also

Articles
  • "Lunch with the Chairman" — Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?, The New Yorker, March 17 2003 issue
  • "The Stovepipe" — How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons. The New Yorker, October 27 2003 issue
  • "Torture at Abu Ghraib" — American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, The New Yorker, May 10 2004 issue
  • "Chain of Command" — How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, May 17 2004 issue
  • "The Gray Zone" — How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, May 24 2004 issue
  • "The Coming Wars" — What the Pentagon can now do in secret, The New Yorker, January 24 2005 issue and the response by the Department of Defense
  • "Watergate Days", The New Yorker, June 13 2005 issue
  • "Get Out the Vote" — Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq's Elections?, The New Yorker, July 25 2005 issue
  • "Up in the Air" — Where is the Iraq war headed next?, The New Yorker, December 5 2005 issue
  • "The Iran Plans" — Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?, The New Yorker, April 17 2006 issue
Profiles, Interviews and Talks
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