Before You Get Excited About That Sy Hersh “Executive Assassination Ring” Story

11:04 pm EST March 11th, 2009 | Media | 4 Comments

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At a ‘Great Conversations’ event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an ‘executive assassination ring.’

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

Hersh’s stuff, particularly for The New Yorker, is great stuff. But that’s because its usually gone through the New Yorker’s fact checking process. When it’s Hersh talking, like above, things get far dicier:

Since the Abu Ghraib story broke eleven months ago, The New Yorker’s national-security correspondent, Seymour Hersh, has followed it up with a series of spectacular scoops. Videotape of young boys being raped at Abu Ghraib. Evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be a “composite figure” and a propaganda creation of either Iraq’s Baathist insurgency or the U.S. government. The active involvement of Karl Rove and the president in “prisoner-interrogation issues.” The mysterious disappearance of $1 billion, in cash, in Iraq. A threat by the administration to a TV network to cut off access to briefings in retaliation for asking Laura Bush “a very tough question about abortion.” The Iraqi insurgency’s access to short-range FROG missiles that “can do grievous damage to American troops.” The murder, by an American platoon, of 36 Iraqi guards.

Not one of these exclusives appeared in the pages of The New Yorker, however. Instead, Hersh delivered them in speeches on college campuses and in front of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and on public-radio shows like “Democracy Now!” In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation.

…

Then there’s Sy. He’s the public speaker, the pundit. On the podium, Sy is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. “I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”

And in bending the truth, Hersh is, paradoxically enough, remarkably candid. When he supplies unconfirmed accounts of military assaults on Iraqi civilians, or changes certain important details from an episode inside Abu Ghraib (thus rendering the story unverifiable), Hersh argues that he’s protecting the identities of sources who could face grave repercussions for talking. “I defend that totally,” Hersh says of the factual fudges he serves up in speeches and lectures. “I find that totally not inconsistent with anything I do professionally. I’m just communicating another reality that I know, that for a lot of reasons having to do with, basically, someone else’s ass, I’m not writing about it.”

So, take this “revelation” with a silo of salt.

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4 Responses to “Before You Get Excited About That Sy Hersh “Executive Assassination Ring” Story”

  1. Cheney’s Assassins says:
    March 12, 2009 at 8:13 am

    [...] New Atlanticist post, “Cheney’s Assassination Ring,” I explain why I agree with Oliver Willis that we should “take this ‘revelation’ with a silo of salt” but why I [...]

  2. soullite says:
    March 12, 2009 at 11:32 am

    The fact that the things Hersh talked about were included in the Taguba didn’t even make you think that maybe, just maybe, the NYT was covering the asses of the establishment again?

    Hell, I’m sure you think those soldiers were really just ‘having sex’ with the prisoners too…

  3. Oliver Willis says:
    March 12, 2009 at 11:34 am

    If the things Hersh said happened, why didn’t he report them? He didn’t, probably because they didn’t happen.

  4. pholio says:
    March 12, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    probably because New yorkers editor and management do not want to anger administration officials?