Seymour Hersh on bin Laden death: ‘One big lie, not one word true’

Guardian reporter Lisa O’Carroll last Friday wrote, “Seymour Hersh has some rogue ideas on how to fix journalism: close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.” Right on, Sy.

“It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican Party as ‘the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.’” One man’s terrorist is another’s teller or truth. “Hersh is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

“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.”

Well, making a huge story out of Obama SEALs offing Osama bin Laden then dumping the body in the ocean is for one thing a lie. It is not an Islamic tradition to do that. But burying a corpse wrapped in a white sheet in an unmarked grave facing Mecca is an Islamic tradition. What’s more, the lack of photos of the dead Osama does not induce much belief in the general public’s confidence. Nor does it create believability to have one of the SEALs on “60 minutes” detailing the incident.

“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 Abbottabad 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. Seymour, bless him, strikes again.”

But Hersh says the Obama administration lies systematically. He rightly claims that none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, have challenged him. No, it’s the blogs that challenge Obama—the investigative reporters who don’t get paid big bucks to write big lies or work pro bono, like myself and everyone for instance, at Intrepid Report, and quality sites like it. The mainstream reporters are “’pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],’ he declares in an interview with the Guardian.”

Hersh, fairly heated says, “It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen anymore. [That’s largely because mainstream media specializes in prefabricating stories, making and running them.] Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.” Yes, sir, Mr. Hersh, they do.

Hersh “isn’t even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.”

Snowden changed the debate on surveillance

“He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden ‘changed the whole nature of the debate’ about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence—although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government’s policy.” I think it will, if out of pure fear if nothing else.

“’Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange [Australian] and me [Hersh] and the New Yorker, we’ve all written the notion there’s constant surveillance. But he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate; it’s real now,’ Hersh says.” I ask him not to forget Bradley Manning, as well, for handing Assange thousands of emails, including the footage of U.S. choppers gunning down innocent Iraqis, including a Reuter’s photographer on an Iraqi street. It’s probably going to cost Manning his life in jail.

Hersh adds, “’Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn’t touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game,’ he adds, before qualifying his remarks.

“’But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America—the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaida, al-Qaida’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic,’ he says.” Personally, I believe the American public has been conditioned by an ongoing demonization of Muslims so that mentioning Muslims is now synonymous with saying al-Qaida, al-Qaida.

“Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London’s summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden.”

Hope of redemption

“Despite his concern about the temerity of journalism he believes the trade still offers hope of redemption.” Nothing is like telling the truth, as accurately as you possibly can, I say.

Hersh comments, “I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever . . . Not that journalism is always wonderful, it’s not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.” I might add, we offer the power of truth, the right to rebut bullshit, the power to stand up to the USG and say, “You’re lying finks, all of you.”

“His story of how he uncovered the My Lai atrocity is one of old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism and doggedness. Back in 1969, he got a tip about a 26-year-old platoon leader, William Calley, who had been charged by the army with alleged mass murder.

“Instead of picking up the phone to a press officer, he got into his car and started looking for him in the army camp of Fort Benning in Georgia, where he heard he had been detained. From door to door he searched the vast compound, sometimes banging his way, marching up to the reception, slamming his fist on the table and shouting: ‘Sergeant, I want Calley out now.’

“Eventually his efforts paid off with his first story appearing in the St Louis Post-Dispatch, which was then syndicated across America and eventually earned him the Pulitzer Prize. ‘I did five stories. I charged $100 for the first, by the end the [New York] Times was paying $5,000.’” They underpaid you, Sy. NYT revenue rose via the rise in readership and public estimation.

“He was hired by the New York Times to follow up the Watergate scandal and ended up hounding Nixon over Cambodia. Almost 30 years later, Hersh made global headlines all over again with his exposure of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.” Speaking of Abu Ghraib . . .

Last week I wrote, “The barbarism of CACI et al versus Al Shimari. I noted that, “Al Shimari v. CACI is a federal lawsuit brought by four Iraqi torture victims against private US-based contractor CACI International Inc., and CACI Premier Technology, Inc. It asserts that CACI participated directly and through a conspiracy in war crimes, including torture, and other illegal conduct while it was providing interrogation services at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

I came upon the name of CACI and the situation while listening to Abby Martin of Russia Today, RT.com, and I was moved to write about the collateral injustices of this case. You may or may not be able to get through all of this gruesome legal fight, but even just to scan it informs you of what the Iraqis were up against and how vicious CACI is. The kicker is that now CACI, the defendant, is suing the Iraqis, the plaintiffs, for CACI’s legal costs.”

BTW, Russia Today happens to be the premier source of true news in the world right now, and each one of their reporters here and everywhere are ready to go to the wall at any time. So make time to read the article and others from this excellent source.

Put in the hours

“For students of journalism, Hersh’s message is put the miles and the hours in. He knew about Abu Ghraib five months before he could write about it, having been tipped off by a senior Iraqi army officer who risked his own life by coming out of Baghdad to Damascus to tell him how prisoners had been writing to their families asking them to come and kill them because they had been ‘despoiled.’” This is what my article is all about.

I listen and look for documents in this manner, because without a document, there’s nothing there, it doesn’t go anywhere. I found the Abby Martin article by happenstance and turned it from a TV narration to print (no pictures) article.

“Hersh returns to US president Barack Obama. He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush.” I believe he’s worse because he entered the presidency as the shining black man on a white horse, who was going to bag torture, get rid of Guantanamo, stop the killing and the lives of average Americans. He hasn’t yet.

Hersh asks, “’Do you think Obama’s been judged by any rational standards? [No, I don’t]. Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? [No] Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? Yes, we are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now; what the hell does he want to go into another one for? What’s going on [with journalists]?’ he asks.” Also, Manning’s gotten 60 years. Snowden had his butt saved by Putin, for political currency, and given an immigration visa for a year. Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than a year.

“Hersh says investigative journalism in the US is being killed by the crisis of confidence, lack of resources and a misguided notion of what the job entails.” Yes.

“’Too much of it seems to me is looking for prizes. It’s journalism looking for the Pulitzer Prize,’ he adds. ‘It’s a packaged journalism, so you pick a target like—I don’t mean to diminish it because anyone who does it works hard—but are railway crossings safe and stuff like that, that’s a serious issue but there are other issues too.’

“’Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone program, why aren’t we doing more? How does he justify it? What’s the intelligence? Why don’t we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings? Why don’t we do our own work?’” Yes, but why, Mr. Hersh, don’t you do some research on the blogosphere and see how much is being revealed there?

“’Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say—here’s a debate’—our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who’s right and who’s wrong about issues. [Yes]. That doesn’t happen enough. It costs money, it costs time, it jeopardizes, raises risks. There are some people—the New York Times still has investigative journalists but they do much more of carrying water for the president than I ever thought they would . . . it’s like you don’t dare be an outsider anymore.’” Outside, too, can be the place to be, where you’re free to say what you know is the truth.

Hersh “says in some ways President George Bush’s administration was easier to write about. ‘The Bush era, I felt it was much easier to be critical than it is [of] Obama. Much more difficult in the Obama era,’ he said.” Yes, because Obama is one of the most multi-faced politicians we’ve ever encountered in American politics.

“Asked what the solution is, Hersh warms to his theme that most editors are pusillanimous and should be fired.

“’I’ll tell you the solution, get rid of 90% of the editors that now exist and start promoting editors that you can’t control,’ he says. ‘I saw it in the New York Times; I see people who get promoted are the ones on the desk who are more amenable to the publisher and what the senior editors want and the trouble makers don’t get promoted. Start promoting better people who look you in the eye and say I don’t care what you say.’”!

“Nor does Hersh understand why the Washington Post held back on the Snowden files until it learned the Guardian was about to publish.” The WP laid the blame to avoid the initial flack on them, and take credit at the same time for publishing them.

“If Hersh was in charge of US Media Inc, his scorched earth policy wouldn’t stop with newspapers.

“’I would close down the news bureaus of the networks and let’s start all over, tabula rasa. The majors, NBCs, ABCs, they won’t like this—just do something different, do something that gets people mad at you, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing,’ he says.” YES! The networks, are like too-big-to-fail News Banks. They want to profit without taking risks so they take shortcuts and readers suffer.

“Hersh is currently on a break from reporting, working on a book which undoubtedly will make for uncomfortable reading for both Bush and Obama.” Amen! “’The Republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.’ And he implores ‘journalists to do something about it.’” Yeah, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.