What is up with Sy Hersh?

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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby The Consul » Wed May 12, 2010 8:21 pm

Jack wrote

As for the detainees - would it be surprising? However, it's something Hersh needs to back up.


There is other reporting going on such as that done by Scott Horton regarding the "suicides" at camp no in Guantanamo.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

Hersh has a tendency to make public comments that might have something to do with getting the lead out of an editor, or pumping a background source. He is probably sitting on a lot of damaging stuff at any time since he is known for taking long times to develop stories. His role in the release of the Abhu Graib disgrace was pivotal. And yet, one can ask....what difference did that make?

He has said the unpublished photos from there include pictures of child rape. I would not be surprised if he has unauthorized access to them. It is a smalle needle he has to thread between keeping the access he has because of who he is and being thrown under the bus if he lets loose too much.

I can imgine the conversation he would have at a bar with Dan Rather.
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
— B. Traven
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby elfismiles » Thu May 13, 2010 11:22 am

MinM wrote:
elfismiles wrote:Man MinM, now everytime this page loads I get to hear "Stem Cell Research" and scramble to to hit the pause button...

Oops :oops: That apparently happens with IE because it's not a problem with Firefox. :shrug:

Fixed. :thumbsup001:


Thanks MinM! Yeah, when I'm at work at the ole day job I HAVE to use IE.

And thank you for posting that audio link as it really speaks to the speculation about Hersh.
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby MinM » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:38 pm

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Good find, jingofever. You might change the thread title to reflect that this is Gary Webb's book list. I wonder what year he put this up.

My two books would both be exposes of how the CIA worked to entrench the military-industrial-media complex in the 20th century written by two men who were in a unique position to see the big CIA picture instead of just the compartmentalized view-

1) 1973 book by L. Fletcher Prouty (available online), the Pentagon-CIA liason from 1955-1964, 'The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World.'

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/ST.html

(This man is the reason for the decoy 'Fletch' novels and movies. A new one is coming out in 2007 because Prouty helped expose CIA men in Dealey Plaza and it is anniversary time for JFK's murder.)

2) 1974 book by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks called 'The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.' Marchetti had been executive assistant to the deputy director of Central Intelligence and attended regular planning meetings along with Richard Helms. Marchetti had also been a courier for the Agency group that plans covert operations.

http://www.amazon.com/CIA-Cult-Intellig ... 700&sr=1-1

-----------------------------

Here's Gary Webb's Amazon.com list-
The Way the World Really Works
A Listmania! list by Gary S. Webb (Sacramento, CA)

1. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb
Gary S. Webb says:
"My own modest contribution"


2. The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion by Edward Jay Epstein
Gary S. Webb says:
"Astounding look at what good public relations can accomplish."

3. Endless Enemies: Americas Worldwide War Against Its Own Best Interests. by Jonathan Kwitny
Gary S. Webb says:
"A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Kwitny was one of the best investigative journalists ever; this book is a mind-blowing expose of US foreign policy."

4. Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour M. Hersh
Gary S. Webb says:
"From another giant of investigative reporting. A meticulous indictment of an extremely dangerous man."

5. Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Gary S. Webb says:
"My nominee as the most impressive work of pure journalism of the 20th Century."

6. The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951: A Nonconformist History of Our Times by I. F. Stone
Gary S. Webb says:
"Stone's legendary expose of the secrets reasons behind the Korean War -- written while the war and McCarthyism were in full swing. Truly inspired and courageous reporting."

7. The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
Gary S. Webb says:
"Lively, shocking, appalling and addictively readable account of military folly. One of the best works of non-fiction written."

8. Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press by Kristina Borjesson
Gary S. Webb says:
"Details the lingering death of investigative reporting"

9. Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA by Jim Hougan
Gary S. Webb says:
"The most intriguing Watergate book out there. An unjustly neglected work of serious journalism."

10. Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There by Mark Baker
Gary S. Webb says:
"Vietnam uncensored and verbatim."

11. INSIDE THE COMPANY: CIA DIARY by Philip Agee
Gary S. Webb says:
"Former CIA agent's tell-all book about CIA dirty tricks in South America during the 1960s. ." ...

viewtopic.php?p=117499#p117499

While looking for something else I came across this list by Gary Webb. It's a little surprising to see that Webb was taken in by the likes of Seymour Hersh and Edward Jay Epstein.

The Spartacus Forum has a recent thread on Hersh:

Reznikoff and Hersh hoodwinked by fake documents | The Education Forum
Originally aired 02.11.2011
427: Original Recipe | This American Life

Act Two. Ask Not What Your Handwriting Authenticator Can Do for You; Ask What You Can Do for Your Handwriting Authenticator.

Jake Halpern tells this story about document expert John Reznikoff, who came into possession of some materials which—if authentic—would change history. Then things got complicated. Jake is the author of several books, including World's End. (32 minutes)

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... nal-recipe

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=17385
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Seymour Hersh: Assassination Of JFK Was Form Of “justice”

Postby MinM » Fri Apr 13, 2012 9:05 am

"There might have been some justice" in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said in a letter to a reader.

Hersh made the shocking suggestion in 1998 correspondence with Albert Alioto, a San Francisco bus driver who had written to the New Yorker journalist about his controversial book about the Kennedy clan, The Dark Side of Camelot.

“If your portraits of John and Robert Kennedy are essentially accurate, given the emphasis on assassination plotting,” Alioto asked, “do you see any moral difference between the Kennedys and Oswald and Sirhan?” Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were, respectively, the killers of JFK and his younger brother Robert.

“The morality of JFK in comparison with Oswald and/or Sirhan,” are “obvious questions,” wrote Hersh — whose latest story for the New Yorker alleges that the United States is training members of an Iranian terrorist group in Nevada. The 35th president’s backing of assassination attempts against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Hersh explained, meant that he was as immoral the men who took his and his brother’s lives.

“I just didn’t have the guts to put in writing what I came to believe, as you do, was an inevitable conclusion,” Hersh wrote of the death of a president, which he also called “terrible.”

Hersh appears to have taken Alioto’s letter to be an endorsement of Kennedy’s assassination as a form of payback for plotting against Castro, which Alioto said he didn’t intend.

“I was not trying to say that the assassinations of the Kennedys were a form of justice,” Alioto, 58, wrote in a letter this year. (He shared the 1998 document after seeing this reporter’s criticism of Hersh in the magazine Commentary.) “I didn’t regard his book as ‘essentially accurate.’” To stress his purely conjectural intentions, Alioto told Hersh that, on the subject of any moral equivalence between JFK, RFK and their assassins, “I ask the question purely out of curiosity.”

Hersh made his view clear: “You’re right in believing, if that’s what your letter suggested, that there might have been some justice — one reviewer wrote ‘rough justice’ -- in John F. Kennedy’s terrible death by assassination, a means he had sought to end Fidel Castro’s life.” ...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=19009

Of course now through recently released documents we know that both JFK and RFK were out of the loop as far as CIA plans to assassinate Castro are concerned. That, and Hersh's apparent ignorance about Oswald and Sirhan, not withstanding it's still pretty shocking to read Seymour's brazen stance on this.

So how do you reconcile that Seymour Hersh with the seemingly 'good' Seymour Hersh?

Seymour Hersh alleges JOSC supporters Knights of Malta

Hersh on Obama Being "Dominated" by the U.S. Military

Seymour Hersh and the men who want him committed

Hersh Bomb: Americans Trained MEK Terrorists
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby jlaw172364 » Fri Apr 13, 2012 12:34 pm

Anyone who takes on the military-industrial-crime complex runs the risk of being lied to, misinformed, killed, blacklisted, fucked with, robbed, etc.

So I always try to allow a little latitude.

When Hersh predicted war with Iran, it may be because someone fed him a line of bull-shit to ruin his credibility. Or maybe his source believed there would be war, but THEY were fed a line of bullshit. Or maybe there were war plans, but they were shelved until a later date. This stuff happens ALL the time.
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby MinM » Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:24 pm

The guy that helped sell the mythology of Watergate is looking to debunk part of the OBL myth...
Image @disinfo: Fmr NYT Journalist Seymour Hersh Blasts Bin Laden Fairytale, Calls for Corporate Media… http://goo.gl/fb/sv02g

http://disinfo.com/2013/10/fmr-nyt-jour ... rmation%29
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby elfismiles » Sat Oct 05, 2013 7:45 pm


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTYatR8iaWs

MinM » 05 Oct 2013 18:24 wrote:The guy that helped sell the mythology of Watergate is looking to debunk part of the OBL myth...
Image @disinfo: Fmr NYT Journalist Seymour Hersh Blasts Bin Laden Fairytale, Calls for Corporate Media… http://goo.gl/fb/sv02g

http://disinfo.com/2013/10/fmr-nyt-jour ... rmation%29
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby BrandonD » Sat Oct 05, 2013 8:19 pm

23 » Wed May 12, 2010 1:26 pm wrote:
Nordic wrote:Why would anyone criticize Sy Hersch, unless they were a tool?


Most things that we do aren't done fully consciously.

One example of that is the looking for chinks in someone's armor of courage. To make it easier for us to live with the absence of courage in ours.

Self-perception, more often than not, drives how we perceive others.


Totally agree, once again something said in RI that has been thought many times by myself but never actually stated!

That's the truth behind the fashionable cynicism of our age. If we convince ourselves that no one else possesses authentic courage or empathy or faith, then it makes the shame of our own weaknesses - the abandonment of our own ideals - easier to ignore.
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." -Charles Fort
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby American Dream » Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:07 pm

http://louisproyect.org/2013/12/18/seym ... d-sources/

Seymour Hersh and his unnamed sources

Image

Ever since Seymour Hersh’s “Whose Sarin” article appeared in the London Review of Books, there’s something that’s been nagging at me that I couldn’t put my finger on. This afternoon it all became clear to me. Instead of describing it, I think a couple of examples should suffice:

A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening.

Seymour Hersh, Whose Sarin?


Hussein’s staying power is remarkable. In the months after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States learned of several attempts on his life that he thwarted. “We had knowledge of at least one,” said a former senior official from the first Bush administration. After U.S. and coalition forces defeated and drove Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in March 1991, inflicting one of the largest and most visible military humiliations of the post-Vietnam period, the former official said, “We thought some colonel or brigadier general would march in and shoot him.”

Bob Woodward, The Washington Post, June 16, 2002

Now stop and ask yourself when was the last time that someone like Glenn Greenwald cited a “former senior official”? Or when Alexander Cockburn was alive, can you remember him ever citing some unnamed source either currently or formerly ensconced in the CIA or the State Department?

The simple fact of the matter is that their reputations preceded them. Nobody in the CIA would ever spend 5 minutes “spilling the beans” to a Glenn Greenwald or an Alexander Cockburn. The use of unnamed sources at the highest echelons of the “deep state” is characteristic of bourgeois journalism. The only reason we give someone like Seymour Hersh a free pass on an article larded in just about every paragraph with oh-so-impressive unnamed sources is because he broke the My Lai story 44 years ago. He went on to write some other important investigative pieces in the 1990s but for the past 20 years or so, his reporting has mostly followed the same trajectory as Woodward’s but from the left side of the ledger rather than the center-right.

For many people unfamiliar with the ups and downs of the bourgeois journalism racket, it might come as a surprise to learn that his peers do not view him as walking on water. In December 2001 Michael Massing wrote an article for the Nation Magazine lamenting the tendency of reporters to rally around the “war on terror”. Guess who was included?

Another, more serious example of the press’s credulity has been its coverage of the US intelligence services. In light of the failures to predict the September 11 attacks, the press has almost unanimously concluded that the United States needs to beef up its spying abroad and to “unleash” the CIA to fight terrorism. In a piece for The New Yorker, for instance, Seymour Hersh, relying heavily on sources within the US intelligence community, lambasted the CIA for turning away from the rough-and-tumble methods it used during the cold war. “Look,” one agent told Hersh, “we recruited assholes. I handled bad guys. But we don’t recruit people from the Little Sisters of the Poor–they don’t know anything.”


As it turns out, the article is not behind a paywall. You can read it at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/1 ... 008fa_FACT. This will give you a flavor for the reliance on “unnamed sources” that virtually turn Hersh into a stenographer for the CIA:

In interviews over the past two weeks, a number of intelligence officials have raised questions about Osama bin Laden’s capabilities. “This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he’s running this operation?” one C.I.A. official asked. “It’s so huge. He couldn’t have done it alone.” A senior military officer told me that because of the visas and other documentation needed to infiltrate team members into the United States a major foreign intelligence service might also have been involved. “To get somebody to fly an airplane—to kill himself,” the official added, further suggests that “somebody paid his family a hell of a lot of money.”


Frankly, if I had asked someone who keeps up on current events whether Bob Woodward or Seymour Hersh wrote this, they’d be hard pressed to come up with the right answer.

But the words in the article that should warn lefties about taking Hersh at his word are the ones below, exactly the sort of propaganda that has led to extraordinary renditions, waterboarding, drone attacks and all the rest. Maybe Hersh didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s no excuse.

One hard question is what lengths the C.I.A. should go to. In an interview, two former operations officers cited the tactics used in the late nineteen-eighties by the Jordanian security service, in its successful effort to bring down Abu Nidal, the Palestinian who led what was at the time “the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence,” according to the State Department. Abu Nidal’s group was best known for its role in two bloody gun and grenade attacks on check-in desks for El Al, the Israeli airline, at the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985. At his peak, Abu Nidal threatened the life of King Hussein of Jordan—whom he called “the pygmy king”—and the King responded, according to the former intelligence officers, by telling his state security service, “Go get them.”

The Jordanians did not move directly against suspected Abu Nidal followers but seized close family members instead—mothers and brothers. The Abu Nidal suspect would be approached, given a telephone, and told to call his mother, who would say, according to one C.I.A. man, “Son, they’ll take care of me if you don’t do what they ask.” (To his knowledge, the official carefully added, all the suspects agreed to talk before any family members were actually harmed.) By the early nineteen-nineties, the group was crippled by internal dissent and was no longer a significant terrorist organization. (Abu Nidal, now in his sixties and in poor health, is believed to be living quietly in Egypt.) “Jordan is the one nation that totally succeeded in penetrating a group,” the official added. “You have to get their families under control.”

Such tactics defy the American rule of law, of course, and the C.I.A.’s procedures, but, when it comes to Osama bin Laden and his accomplices, the official insisted, there is no alternative. “We need to do this—knock them down one by one,” he said. “Are we serious about getting rid of the problem—instead of sitting around making diversity quilts?”


Can you imagine Glenn Greenwald or Alexander Cockburn ever getting unnamed CIA officials to talk to them about the benefits of coercing family members to help snare their children? What else would be useful in “getting rid of the problem”? Waterboarding? Sleep deprivation? If that’s investigative journalism, then I’ll have no part of it.
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby elephant » Thu Dec 19, 2013 2:03 am

I get what your saying, but I don't find your argument against Hersh compelling and it feels like you're cherry picking from a very long career.

I admit, however, there's much I don't know, and perhaps time will prove you right.

But look, these references to Greenwald sound silly. You can't really be saying that any journalist with integrity operates the same way, can you?

Put aside the question for a moment whether Sy Hersh should be read or ignored. I'm glad that there may be skillful journalists who know how to cultivate sources high in the intelligent community. Perhaps that does make them more vulnerable to disinformation, but without such contacts, certain crucial stories may never emerge.
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Re: What is up with Sy Hersh?

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:28 am

elephant » Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:03 am wrote:I get what your saying, but I don't find your argument against Hersh compelling and it feels like you're cherry picking from a very long career.

I admit, however, there's much I don't know, and perhaps time will prove you right.

But look, these references to Greenwald sound silly. You can't really be saying that any journalist with integrity operates the same way, can you?

Put aside the question for a moment whether Sy Hersh should be read or ignored. I'm glad that there may be skillful journalists who know how to cultivate sources high in the intelligent community. Perhaps that does make them more vulnerable to disinformation, but without such contacts, certain crucial stories may never emerge.


I should clarify that the article immediately above your post is not my writing.

The thoughts are of the author, Louis Proyect, and his alone. I haven't fully decided what I think of Hersh but I will say that cultivating high level and anonymous sources in the military/intel world is a tricky business and some journalists who work there may be dirty, some may be getting played and some may be using these sources to break important stories. And/or any combination of the above...
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