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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
By Phillip Carter
Seymour Hersh speaking during the annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors in downtown Denver, Colorado, June 3, 2005.
Photo By Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post via Getty Images
When Seymour Hersh is right, he’s really right. His incredible reportingunearthed the My Lai massacre in 1969, causing seismic tremors for the U.S. military that would reverberate for decades. Thirty-five years later, Hersh’s patient detective work uncovered the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, changing not just how U.S. forces treated detainees in the field but also how the U.S. military managed detention operations at Guantánamo Bay. These meticulously researched and reported pieces altered the course of American policy during two major wars, and set a gold standard for what investigative national security journalism can (and should) be.
Unfortunately, Hersh’s latest dispatch in the London Review of Books falls far short of this mark. In a piece published Sunday, Hersh asserts that the official story of how U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden in May 2011 was one, big, bright shining lie, shielded up until now by the hyperclassification surrounding the mission and a desire to protect America’s secret partners in Pakistan. To make these fantastic allegations, Hersh relies on a coterie of Pakistani sources, mostly retired from that country’s military or intelligence agencies, as well as a handful of anonymous U.S. officials or consultants. The shallow sourcing alone makes Hersh’s article suspicious. The convenient overlap between certain Pakistani interests and the truths revealed by Hersh cast doubt on the piece too, especially in the absence of more solid sourcing. Many of the actual details in the piece, such as the reported obliteration of Bin Laden’s corpse by gunfire, shred any remaining credibility the article might have. Little wonder the CIA told the Washington Post the report was “utter nonsense,” and a White House official said it had “too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions” to respond to each one.
According to Hersh, “[t]he most blatant lie” told about the U.S. raid to kill Bin Laden was Pakistan’s reported lack of knowledge about the whole thing. According to the former head of Pakistan’s intelligence service, whom Hersh interviewed on the record, Pakistan’s top leaders supposedly knew of the raid beforehand, and even played a central role in pulling it off.
internal change catalyzed by Hersh’s revelations of the My Lai massacre, which gave rise to the Defense Department’s law of war program. The work of killing in close combat is grim, dirty, serious business, but no professional soldier or special operator I’ve ever encountered has described it as “murder.”
Other allegations stand out as problematic, too. Hersh writes of a special “nondisclosure form drafted by the White House’s legal office [that] promised civil penalties and a lawsuit for anyone who discussed the mission, in public or private.” According to an unnamed former U.S. intelligence official, this was done to silence the SEAL community as to what really happened on the mission. However, there are many more plausible explanations, rooted in the realities of the military and intelligence bureaucracy.
After the raid, the Pentagon moved its files on the raid to the CIA, as Hersh himself reports later in his piece. In doing so, the government likely changed the classification regime for the information relating to the raid, requiring some or all of the SEALs privy to these details to sign a new “Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Statement.” It’s true these agreements contain strict rules regarding public release of classified information, including potential civil penalties (something former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette learned the hard way when he published a book about the raid). But it’s an incredible (and unsupported) leap of logic to say these forms were specially modified by the White House to prevent special operations personnel from telling the real story of Abbottabad. (Regardless, the forms haven’t worked that well, as illustrated by the blockbuster book and movie depicting the raid that were aided by current and former military personnel.)
Hersh also describes the climactic moment of the Abbottabad raid as somewhat less triumphant than any previous account. By the time of the raid, Hersh reports, Bin Laden was “an invalid” and “a cripple.” When Navy SEALs reached Bin Laden’s room on the third floor, Hersh reports they “faced an unarmed elderly civilian” and “obliterated him” with small arms fire that had “torn Bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire.”
Top Comment
All conspiracy theories require the assumption that governmental agencies exhibit a level of competence and secretiveness that is entirely at odds with their demonstrated behavior in other areas. 246 CommentsJoin In
While such a thing is technically possible, it’s extremely unlikely given the precision techniques SEALs typically use to kill targets, and the close quarters of the room where they found Bin Laden. Hersh goes on to dispute the fact that Bin Laden was then buried at sea, suggesting that his body may have been thrown out of the SEALs’ helicopter on the way out of Pakistan, and that the entire burial at sea was concocted as a cover story. This too goes too far, reflecting a more vivid imagination that sees secrets in the shadow of truth, where no reporting or evidence exists.
If the facts were as Hersh reported, they probably would have come out by now, either from one of the Navy SEALs who has already gone public, or another who felt he had the story of a lifetime to share. Conspiracies like the one Hersh describes rarely occur in fact because they are simply too hard for a complex, diverse, dispersed, multilayered organization like the U.S. government to pull off. Hersh should know this, too.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...estigation_of_the_osama_bin_laden.single.html
Seymour Hersh speaking during the annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors in downtown Denver, Colorado, June 3, 2005.
Photo By Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post via Getty Images
When Seymour Hersh is right, he’s really right. His incredible reportingunearthed the My Lai massacre in 1969, causing seismic tremors for the U.S. military that would reverberate for decades. Thirty-five years later, Hersh’s patient detective work uncovered the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, changing not just how U.S. forces treated detainees in the field but also how the U.S. military managed detention operations at Guantánamo Bay. These meticulously researched and reported pieces altered the course of American policy during two major wars, and set a gold standard for what investigative national security journalism can (and should) be.
Unfortunately, Hersh’s latest dispatch in the London Review of Books falls far short of this mark. In a piece published Sunday, Hersh asserts that the official story of how U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden in May 2011 was one, big, bright shining lie, shielded up until now by the hyperclassification surrounding the mission and a desire to protect America’s secret partners in Pakistan. To make these fantastic allegations, Hersh relies on a coterie of Pakistani sources, mostly retired from that country’s military or intelligence agencies, as well as a handful of anonymous U.S. officials or consultants. The shallow sourcing alone makes Hersh’s article suspicious. The convenient overlap between certain Pakistani interests and the truths revealed by Hersh cast doubt on the piece too, especially in the absence of more solid sourcing. Many of the actual details in the piece, such as the reported obliteration of Bin Laden’s corpse by gunfire, shred any remaining credibility the article might have. Little wonder the CIA told the Washington Post the report was “utter nonsense,” and a White House official said it had “too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions” to respond to each one.
According to Hersh, “[t]he most blatant lie” told about the U.S. raid to kill Bin Laden was Pakistan’s reported lack of knowledge about the whole thing. According to the former head of Pakistan’s intelligence service, whom Hersh interviewed on the record, Pakistan’s top leaders supposedly knew of the raid beforehand, and even played a central role in pulling it off.
internal change catalyzed by Hersh’s revelations of the My Lai massacre, which gave rise to the Defense Department’s law of war program. The work of killing in close combat is grim, dirty, serious business, but no professional soldier or special operator I’ve ever encountered has described it as “murder.”
Other allegations stand out as problematic, too. Hersh writes of a special “nondisclosure form drafted by the White House’s legal office [that] promised civil penalties and a lawsuit for anyone who discussed the mission, in public or private.” According to an unnamed former U.S. intelligence official, this was done to silence the SEAL community as to what really happened on the mission. However, there are many more plausible explanations, rooted in the realities of the military and intelligence bureaucracy.
After the raid, the Pentagon moved its files on the raid to the CIA, as Hersh himself reports later in his piece. In doing so, the government likely changed the classification regime for the information relating to the raid, requiring some or all of the SEALs privy to these details to sign a new “Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Statement.” It’s true these agreements contain strict rules regarding public release of classified information, including potential civil penalties (something former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette learned the hard way when he published a book about the raid). But it’s an incredible (and unsupported) leap of logic to say these forms were specially modified by the White House to prevent special operations personnel from telling the real story of Abbottabad. (Regardless, the forms haven’t worked that well, as illustrated by the blockbuster book and movie depicting the raid that were aided by current and former military personnel.)
Hersh also describes the climactic moment of the Abbottabad raid as somewhat less triumphant than any previous account. By the time of the raid, Hersh reports, Bin Laden was “an invalid” and “a cripple.” When Navy SEALs reached Bin Laden’s room on the third floor, Hersh reports they “faced an unarmed elderly civilian” and “obliterated him” with small arms fire that had “torn Bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire.”
Top Comment
All conspiracy theories require the assumption that governmental agencies exhibit a level of competence and secretiveness that is entirely at odds with their demonstrated behavior in other areas. 246 CommentsJoin In
While such a thing is technically possible, it’s extremely unlikely given the precision techniques SEALs typically use to kill targets, and the close quarters of the room where they found Bin Laden. Hersh goes on to dispute the fact that Bin Laden was then buried at sea, suggesting that his body may have been thrown out of the SEALs’ helicopter on the way out of Pakistan, and that the entire burial at sea was concocted as a cover story. This too goes too far, reflecting a more vivid imagination that sees secrets in the shadow of truth, where no reporting or evidence exists.
If the facts were as Hersh reported, they probably would have come out by now, either from one of the Navy SEALs who has already gone public, or another who felt he had the story of a lifetime to share. Conspiracies like the one Hersh describes rarely occur in fact because they are simply too hard for a complex, diverse, dispersed, multilayered organization like the U.S. government to pull off. Hersh should know this, too.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...estigation_of_the_osama_bin_laden.single.html
