Seymour Hersh
Sy Hersh on Osama bin Laden raid: “Not one word of it is true”
Legendary journalist unloads on lapdog media in Guardian interview
As reported by The Guardian on Friday, iconic journalist Seymour Hersh tore apart America’s mainstream media before an audience at City University in London, calling for the sacking of 90 percent of editors and claiming that the story of the killing of Osama bin Laden is “one big lie” and that “not one word of it is true.”
The 76-year-old Hersh, who made his name by reporting the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War — and who also revealed torture at Abu Ghraib in the New Yorker in 2004 — leveled a scathing indictment of contemporary American journalism, describing it as a field littered with timid careerists and water-carrying hacks.
“Our job [as journalists] 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,” Hersh said. “That doesn’t happen enough. It costs money, it costs time, it jeopardizes, it 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 any more.”
Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Said That The Government Has ORDERED The Media Not To Cover 9/11
Fire Dog Lake's Jeff Kaye writes today:
The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions ...
Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski - who blew the whistle on the Bush administration's efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - wrote (page 26):
I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.
Former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:
Seymour Hersh's new book to detail "how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government."
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has broken some massive stories in his day, but uncovering secret societies within the highest echelons of America's military would probably be the biggest of his career.
Well, get ready for the media storm: That's essentially what Hersh told an audience in Doha, Qatar recently, according to a report published earlier this week by Foreign Policy.
Speaking at a campus operated by Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Hersh said he was working on a new book that details how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government.
It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced," he continued, according to the published quotes.
Hersh also lamented President Obama's continuance of the Bush administration's worst abuses.
Hersh: Cheney ‘Left A Stay Behind’ In Obama’s Government, Can ‘Still Control Policy Up To A Point’
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/hersh-cheney-behind/
In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, host Terry Gross asked investigative journalist Seymour Hersh if, as he continues to investigate the Bush administration, “more people” were “coming forward” to talk to him now that “the president and vice president are no longer in power.” Hersh replied that though “a lot of people that had told me in the last year of Bush, ‘call me next, next February,’ not many people had talked to him. He implied that they were still scared of Cheney.
“Are you saying that you think Vice President Cheney is still having a chilling effect on people who might otherwise be coming forward,” asked Gross. “I’ll make it worse,” answered Hersh, adding that he believes Cheney “put people back” in government to “stay behind” in order to “tell him what’s going on” and perhaps even “do sabotage”:
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am
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.
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
An Act Of War, Interview: Seymour Hersh, By Sarah Brown
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19803.htm
An Act Of War
Interview: Seymour Hersh
By Sarah Brown
25/04/08 "Al Jazeera " -- - Seymour Hersh, one of the world's best known investigative journalists, has turned his attention to the mysterious and controversial bombing of a Syrian facility by Israel last year.
Al Jazeera spoke to him about the bombing, why he feels the media failed on the story, and what it means for the Middle East.
Q: Why did Israel bomb a target in Syria?
A: Well I don't have the answers to that direct question - one thing that is terribly significant is that the Israel and its chief ally the US have chosen to say nothing officially about this incident and that's what got me interested - whoever heard of a country bombing another one and not talking about it and thinking they had the right somehow not to talk about it?
In 1981 when Israel bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq they were very noisy and public about it. In this case they said nothing publicly, but after a few weeks they began to leak [information].