Seymour Hersh on spies, state secrets, and the stories he doesn’t tell | Hacker News Reader

Seymour Hersh on spies, state secrets, and the stories he doesn’t tell

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96 pointsdaddy_drank92 comments

Seymour Hersh's reputation has declined precipitously in the years since he was rightly hailed as a hero for breaking the Abu Ghraib story. He was pummeled for publishing, in the LRB, an all-but-refuted story claiming that the entire story about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden was a lie (he relied on the secondhand story of a retired, anonymous defense department employee for his sourcing; his home publication, The New Yorker, refused to run it).

He's promoted a number of other stories that, to put it gently, an unusual quotient of support-among- journalists over impact-if-true. Among them, he believes that USSOCOM is run by a secret cabal of Opus Dei Catholics, and that the Syrian chemical attacks aren't just false, but actually a false flag operation run by Turkey. He believes that the US actively supports Islamist terrorists in Iran and in Lebanon, and that the US trained Iranian terrorists (the anti-regime MEK) on US soil.

This isn't a new wrinkle in Hersh's career. Early on, he made outlandish claims about the Kennedy administration, including that the Chicago Outfit fixed the result of the Presidential election.

Two tricky things about Hersh are first, and most obviously, that he occasionally breaks a story of immense national importance, and secondly, that he tends to orient his reporting in directions that are both largely valid and under-reported. Kennedy was almost surely one of our more crooked presidents. The Bush administration probably did play some kind of footsie with the MEK. But that doesn't make any particular story he reports actually true; in journalism, you can't just end up in the broad vicinity of right.

Note that the former head of Pakistani intelligence, Asad Durrani, whose country housed Bin Laden when Seal Team Six did the dispatch - has the same story that Hersh does.

None of these things seem particularly unbelievable. Having researched a number of National Security issues intensely (eg Syria) this all fairly believable. That's just his "lowlights". His publication record thus far has been nothing short of impressive. And, really, you can't imbue anybody with too much faith that they only report absolute objective truths. I don't think even Hersh would recommend that. Certainly this interview he suggests that he doesn't report on a lot of stuff because he isn't sure if it's CIA smoke and mirrors.

Compare this to cable television, which gets the narrative wrong almost constantly, and dumbs everything down so that it lacks substance.

Asad Durrani is Hersh's one named source.

An incredibly good source, isn't it? That on top of the consistent details provided by his unnamed sources, and the corroboration that's surfaced since.

The director of ISI in 1992, retired for decades (plural) at the time the story ran? No, not an especially good source. Also, he appears to have changed his story since Hersh reported it.

Years ago I had the privilege of driving Hersh around when he came to speak at my college, so of course I'm inclined to like him. But yes, his process as a journalist -- to rely so heavily on anonymous sources -- makes his work hard to follow. His reasoning is that this type of sourcing is the only way to get the most important secrets. But plenty of important work has been done without such secrecy. It's debatable that Hersh is the one who broke Abu Ghraib considering 60 Minutes II published a week before [0] Hersh. And the AP broke the story months before, [1] although the story seems to have gotten little traction because, at that time, the military hadn't yet initiated a major investigation [1].

This isn't to say that Hersh's New Yorker story didn't have a profound impact. But it was a story not only corroborated by other news sources, but by plenty of official documentation. The investigations of Hersh's that get the most criticism do not have such supplementary evidence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...

[1] http://legacy.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/world/iraq/20031...

What's disquieting is how well you can imagine the M.O. he deploys working. People remember the big stories you get right. Unless you go really, really big --- like claiming that Obama falsified the UBL killing --- nobody remembers the random stuff you took flyers on.

Do you have any details on the OBL thing? Other reporting seems to corroborate Hersh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/magazine/the-detail-in-se...

That piece goes out of its way to concur with just one detail of Hersh's story. And both the official story and the NYT reporter's story can be true at the same time: there could have been a Pakistani military source to US intelligence and a parallel operation to establish UBL's location without relying on (and thus compromising) that same source. Hersh had a lot more to say about UBL's killing than just that.

The article says much more than that:

> Two years later, when I was researching my book, I learned from a high-level member of the Pakistani intelligence service that the ISI had been hiding Bin Laden and ran a desk specifically to handle him as an intelligence asset. After the book came out, I learned more: that it was indeed a Pakistani Army brigadier — all the senior officers of the ISI are in the military — who told the C.I.A. where Bin Laden was hiding, and that Bin Laden was living there with the knowledge and protection of the ISI.

> The local police told me that they received the calls and could have been at the compound within minutes, but army commanders ordered them to stand down and leave the response to the military. Yet despite being barracked nearby, members of the Pakistani Army appear to have arrived only after the SEALs — who spent 40 minutes on the ground without encountering any soldiers — left.

Hersh's key claims were that the Pakistani intelligence was hiding OBL, eventually they (or at least one of them) let the US in on the fact, and that the US essentially went on a cakewalk to kill him, all of which are corroborated by other reporting. What are the major details that have been debunked?

No, that's not Hersh's key claim. Hersh's key claim is that UBL was captured by Pakistan in 2006(!) and ransomed to the US in exchange for increased aid and influence in Afghanistan --- that the UBL story we all heard was an elaborate ruse to cover up a quid pro quo conspiracy that involved not just Pakistan but Saudi Arabia.

In fact, after UBL was killed, we cut aid to Pakistan, and increased our military presence in Afghanistan.

Again: it's not a crazy argument to suggest people in Pakistan may have had intelligence about UBL's location (after all, we got intelligence about UBL, and we suck at this) and that someone who was read in ratted UBL out for the reward money. But that's not all Hersh reported! This is the problem with a lot of Hersh-style reporting: it sometimes starts from a plausible kernel and extrapolates wildly.

> an elaborate ruse

News started to leak out that bin Laden had been killed in Abbotabad not long after it happened. As no one disputes, one of the helicopters crashed.

The disputed premise is either the Pakistani high command ok'd the raid (Hersh) or they did not (you - official line). That is the premise. The "elaborate ruse to cover up a quid pro quo conspiracy" is a no-brainer after that. If the high command did OK the raid and there was no ruse, it would basically be saying the Pakistani military does not protect Pakistanis from the invasion of foreign armies, that it is more or less a US puppet. Something a sizable portion of Pakistan, not unsympathetic to bin Laden, thought already.

And why wouldn't they support bin Laden - the US stood along side them supporting bin Laden's jihad to oust the secular government of Afghanistan in the 1980s. They have just remained the same, it's the US that shifted its policies (putting Army bases in Saudi Arabia, getting into conflict with bin Laden and other Arabian elements).

Either the high command ok'd the raid or they did not. It is natural for the ruse and conspiracy to follow. I am sure it was one of the "ransom" demands made so that the raid could happen.

>Hersh's key claim is that UBL was captured by Pakistan in 2006(!) and ransomed to the US in exchange for increased aid and influence in Afghanistan

There have been several leaks as suggesting Pakistan knew of his whereabouts as early as 2009. And Hersh says they did it as the US was threatening to cut off aid, anything about "influence in Afghanistan" was about the reason they kept Bin Laden.

Aid did not see the sudden stop, and stayed about the same level as most preceding years, save one one outlying year.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/PAK

If you have time, it would be great if you could add some citations for what you are writing. The lack of them doesn't make the comments wrong or useless, but this is a discussion about the veracity of someone's claims.

> What are the major details that have been debunked?

I posted this link in an earlier comment, but to my knowledge, Hersh's major claims have neither been debunked nor proven:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-reall...

Other reporting has corroborated some of Hersh's reporting, but not all of it. In the article you've posted, for instance:

> I cannot confirm Hersh’s bolder claims — for example, that two of Pakistan’s top generals, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former army chief, and Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director of the ISI, had advance knowledge of the raid. But I would not necessarily dismiss the claims immediately.

Here's a roundup from the Columbia Journalism Review that criticizes the mainstream press for being so dismissive of Hersh's story:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/seymour_hersh_osama_bin_laden.p...

Here's a less pro-Hersh roundup by the NYMag, on the topic of whether Hersh's account should be trusted:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/how-solid-is-th...

But AFAIK, the main claims haven't been "proven" or disproven. Though I think most people agree that the initial accounts, including the August 2011 New Yorker story [0] (which was not by Hersh) and "Zero Dark Thirty", have had worthwhile questions raised about their veracity.

If you want a deep dive on the topic, this October 2015 NYT story is one of the longer that I've read. Not sure what's changed since then: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-reall...

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/getting-bin-la...

> Zero Dark Thirty

That was entertainment - historical fiction - not documentary.

The filmmakers had substantial cooperation with the CIA and military, which means that this narrative is likely what the government wants people to believe:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-reall...

> The opening credits announced that the film was based on ‘‘firsthand accounts of actual events.’’ And, as a trove of documents made public via the Freedom of Information Act amply demonstrated, the C.I.A. eagerly cooperated with the filmmakers, arranging for the writer and director to meet with numerous analysts and officers who were identified as being involved in the hunt for bin Laden. The director, Kathryn Bigelow, has described the film as ‘‘the first rough cut of history.’’

I'm not arguing that it is the truth, but it is, like it or not, likely the most popular and well-known narrative, partly because it was billed as being informed by official sources.

I thought the Chicago thing, or some version of it, was widely accepted. I could be wrong, of course. Generally, I think you have it right: Hersh is a maddening mixture of hero reporter and someone who can be very reckless with the facts.

Shenanigans of some sort in Chicago are widely accepted. That Kennedy conspired with Sam Giancarlo of the Chicago Outfit to fix the election in multiple states is not.

Considering that we're talking about politicians from Chicago and Massachusetts I'd say that something shady went down unless it can be proven otherwise. That said, fixing elections in multiple states implies a level of competence that, considering the parties involved, pushes into the realm of science fiction so I'd be inclined to say they didn't fix the election.

> He was pummeled for publishing, in the LRB, an all-but-refuted story claiming that the entire story about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden was a lie (he relied on the secondhand story of a retired, anonymous defense department employee for his sourcing; his home publication, The New Yorker, refused to run it).

The New Yorker refused to run his bin Laden story? The My Lai story was published in the St. Louis Dispatch, only 30 papers picked it up initially. Only the Washington Post published about Watergate for months (with a few exceptions). Abu Ghraib was barely reported until the pictures came out. That the commissar at the New Yorker would not affix his signature means little to me.

The official story was, and in your mind presumably still is (though it seems to be in tatters now) that Osama bin Laden sat in a compound in Abbotabad, to the complete ignorance of all high Pakistani officials, including those living less than a mile away at the Pakistan Military Academy. Tariq Ali called this risible in the days after the raid, as did some of the Pakistani press. It's a completely ludicrous story. Later investigation by Pakistani journalists, Hersh and others uncovered even more. The official story was known to be ridiculous when it was announced. You are correct that he was pummeled for publishing the story and about the New Yorker though. I am not sure what has been refuted, other than the US government sticking by its original story. I guess it all comes down to whether one believes IF Stone's old journalistic maxim "Governments lie". People seem more interested in ad hominem attacks on Hersh, appeals to authority etc. as opposed to looking into whether the bin Laden raid story was true. Because the idea that no one in high position with connections to the Pakistani Military Academy had no notion bin Laden was there is laughable.

Hey, without digging into any of the rest of your argument, which I'm not especially interested in, but just because this one part of the argument is bugging me:

Abbotabad is famously Pakistan's version of West Point, and we're meant to be shocked that UBL could be in a house just two miles from Pakistan's West Point.

Pull up a map of West Point, NY. Trace a circle 2 miles around it. Is this an especially difficult area to hide in? Is Philipstown, NY carefully patrolled by military intelligence? It doesn't look like it is, but I'm unfamiliar with the area.

If the area around USMA were a dense jungle with an extensive tunnel network, and UbL had been found there instead of in Pakistan, it certainly would have been a remarkable event. One suspects it might even have been mentioned by the late-night comedy impresarios...

I don't understand what this has to do with my question. Abbotabad is a large-ish city about as far from Islamabad, the largest city in Pakistan, as West Point is from Manhattan. It's not a "dense jungle with an extensive tunnel network" (there are no dense jungles in Pakistan or Afghanistan).

I exaggerated in the (dashed) hopes of inspiring some reflection. Even in this goofy fantasy in which no USA military or intelligence asset could have been expected to know who was living in the house down the street from their most cherished institution, because jungle, it would still have been amazing to find UbL living in that house.

You missed my subtext. If you look at the map for West Point, I think you'll find that there is absolutely no way the US military knows everyone who lives within a couple miles of the US Military Academy.

A more apt comparison would be the Guantanomo Bay military base.

You can't compare upstate New York with military objects in third-world nuclear-armed countries.

Explain how the reduced capabilities of Pakistan make it harder for UBL to hide just an hour outside their largest city.

Going to gently push back on a number of these, for a number of reasons, but the first of which is, address the article; you tend to jump in any thread that has to do with him and repeat the same, unsourced attacks, some of which are to put it bluntly absolute bullshit. For the record, I too believe that his work has been a mixed bag, particularly on Syria lately, but the idea that he's unhinged spouting nonsense is absurd and frankly quite useful to a number of people/institutions. For example; https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-mi... This is a long, long piece that came out a little less than a year before the 2016 election. In it Hersh through in an interview with M Flynn illuminates what has now come to be seen as more or less unvarnished truth; that Michael Flynn was and remains batshit crazy and was absolutely working against the intents of the Obama administration, and doing so behind their back with Russia and Israel. You can criticize the tone he takes in the piece (I do) but the piece itself was mercilessly criticized by people who less than a year later would be shouting from their perches at CNN and Vox exactly what the piece discusses( Looking at you Max Fischer). Its a perfect example of the way that a narrative about Hersh, "he's a bit of loony, his reporting has declined" completely obscured his work and actually contributed to the erasure of his reporting to the detriment of the country. Imagine for a moment, if he had been taken seriously, if Flynn had been investigated, openly and by a broad swath of the press and the things that he had been doing had been highlighted and discussed as extensively as, say the absurd Clinton email scandal. I want to point out here, again, I disagree with Hersh on a number of things, I voted for Sanders in the primary and found Clinton distasteful at the least, but the reporting on Trump and specifically on people like Flynn was shallow and weak and waited until he had won. As to his supposed opinion on Opus Dei, these were off the cuff remarks in a foreign country that were not recorded and have been reported on second and third hand. Not to mention that the idea that religious fanatics of all types of christianity are highly, highly, highly over represented at the highest reaches of the american military system is not conspiracy theory, its a fact. Jeff Sharlet, Mikey Weinstein, and a number of others have been covering this literally for decades in a serious, judicious way, but because Hersh is Hersh, and speaks in a brash way, it easy to sneer and pretend he's some unhinged conspiracy theorist.

I could go on (the story on OBL was bad but the admin also did lie, Chicago absolutely was fixed, and so was Texas in the 1960 election, no less a conspiracy theorist as Robert Caro in the second volume of his 3 vol bio of LBJ goes into precisely how Texas was fixed), but this comment is already long enough.

Unlike Seymour Hersh's anonymous sources, the claims you're making here are easy to check and your argument is trivially refuted:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:tptacek%20hersh&sort=by...

That's every comment I've written on this site about Hersh.

You'll notice there's not much there, and that what I have to say about him is not uniformly negative.

glad you took the time to cherry pick that one thing and completely ignore, say, the Opus Dei comment, which is egregious nonsense that you have actually repeated here. Or even, g-d forbid, read the linked article and confront that.

Strange that it was the unbidden personal attack that leapt out at me about your comment, and not the carefully reasoned argument that followed. I'll try harder next time.

Its a little annoying watching you repeat these things and not only that but to take time to jump into any thread that critically discusses the military/security agencies and dismiss all criticism with the most absurd reasoning and then pretend that you've been attacked so as to avoid having to reckon with what it is your actually doing. For example, quite recently on a thread about the Cuba Embassy TBI incident. Unlike other people on here I don't think this makes you some automatic spy/asset/plant but having had to deal directly with security state as I personally have, and as my family has literally for generations, you get annoyed at people attacking good journalism because it conflicts with you ideology.

Here's a bylined piece in Foreign Policy quoting Hersh directly. I assume you just weren't aware of it, when you claimed that what I wrote about his Opus Dei (CORRECTION! Knights of Malta! HUGE difference.) conspiracy theory was all second- and third-hand. I had to do serious research --- I literally spelled out Hersh's name and then typed "Opus Dei" after it into the Google search bar --- to find it.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/18/seymour-hersh-unleashed/

Thanks, truly, for letting me off the hook as "some automatic spy/asset/plant". That definitely doesn't at all come across as the personal attack it clearly, obviously is.

Here's the full quote on the would be "Opus Dei" comment from the piece, cut and pasted:

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.” “They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”

Thats it. Thats all. "Many of them", "not an atypical attitude". Your quote, that started this sub thread was this: "Among them, he believes that USSOCOM is run by a secret cabal of Opus Dei Catholics". Little bit of a difference here. In fact I'll go out on a limb and say a rather large difference. Again, Jeff Sharlet, Mike Weinstein, there are a number of others who have done the serious, necessary investigative reporting on this and if anything its even more frightening then the comments from the Doha speech Hersh gave (which for the record were also uncontroversial at the time he gave them to anyone who has followed military reporting). I might take a moment to point out I was in ROTC in college, my family has served for generations. You can take my criticism any way you want, but calling out your crit of Hersh, for the sloppiness and exageration it is, is not a personal attack. As for the comment about spy/plant/whatever, I've been on this site long enough to know that was a bit of thing some years back and was trying to go out of my way to note that I don't think that about you, that I think many people make these arguments/judgments from places of sincerity, but that that doesn't make them correct.

EDIT: I'm going to assume that Thomas has no interest in seriously reckoning with what I'm trying to say and simply add, anyone who happens on this comment subthread, take the time to read the unfortunately long LRB piece linked in my original comment, its important. Its kind of amazing (and sad) that this discussion devolved into this back and forth because that piece, the response to that piece in the American press (by people exactly Blake Hounshell btw) and the subsequent way things worked out in regard to Mike Flynn, Trump, Obama, the election, and the now Russia Investigation could all themselves be wrapped up into their own long form piece on political and media culture and the consequences of dismissing people like Hersh. Here it is again for the interested: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-mi...

You've left quite a bit out of your quote, haven't you? That's OK: I provided a link, people can read it for themselves, rather than reading our competing interpretations of it. I'm pretty comfortable about what the actual story there says about my argument.

Thank you for acknowledging that first-hand sources for this actually exist, and aren't "egregious nonsense" that were "off the cuff remarks in a foreign country that were not recorded and have been reported on second and third hand".

Perhaps you and I have reached the limit of how much we can productively discuss this particular topic, now.

Actually, I did miss some of that quote, not "quite a bit", but some. Here it is: “That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.” He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.” Which, again, kinda makes my point for me; "pervades a large percentage". Not "theres a cabal of catholics running JSOC" More importantly, none of this is constroversial, at all. Which was your original point. Jerry Boykin, Erik Prince, McRaven, McCrystal, all of these people and many others are, by general consensus, right wing christians and most of them are far, far right wing theocrats. Jerry Boykin in particular has been a fixture of the theocratic speaking circuit for years and was quoted in the middle of Obamas administration as saying that "he's been asked to raise up an army to take out Obama". Again, ad naueseum, Jeff Sharlet, Mike Weinstein in particular. You can play wiki lawyer all you want about the quote but the substance of it was utterly uncontroversial to anyone who didn't depend on access to the pentagon and congress for their livelihood. If you want to back out of the discussion now because I've made you look bad, so be it.

The remark about "second and third hand" was a point about their being, to my knowledge, no transcripts or video, it was poorly phrased.

Finally maybe leave off the pseudo-moral posturing about being "attacked", given I went out of my way to qualify what I said, and, in a subsequent comment, clarified the "spy" remark and did so precisely because thats charge is a serious one and I had seen you be smeared with it, thanks for literally attacking me.

The full content of Hersh's remarks are linked to in the first sentence of the previously linked commentary:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/22/transcript-the-obamabush...

tptacek's summary is accurate; Hersh did not just claim that "many" people in the military were in this cabal, Hersh claimed that "a large percentage" of JSOC and SOCOM were involved or supported this religious cabal, including Admiral McRaven, who commanded SOCCOM from 2011 to 2014.

> That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Special Operations Command, the Joint Special Operations Command and Stanley McChrystal, the one who got in trouble because of the article in Rolling Stone, and his follow-on, a Navy admiral named McRaven, Bill McRaven — all are members or at least supporters of Knights of Malta. McRaven attended, so I understand, the recent annual convention of the Knights of Malta they had in Cyprus a few months back in November. They’re all believers — many of them are members of Opus Dei.

You and tptacek are putting words like "cabal" in his mouth.

The mainstream press beyond Hersh has reported on Christian fundamentalism at leadership levels at the USAFA during Bush's presidency. Also former undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence General Boykin's actions and statements.

There are also stories Bush told Chirac about Gig and Magog, and biblical prophecy during the war in Iraq. How true that is I do not know.

I see this type of talk on cable TV late at night where I live. I can imagine what radio and TV in Oklahoma or Mississippi is playing. I am not surprised this has gotten into the water. Nor do I find it odd Hersh would mention this in an interview or speech, it must seem strange to a rational secular person like himself.

The military fundamentalist news was not Hersh specific and was reported more widely.

"cabal" is defined as "a secret political clique or faction."

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. You're accusing me that I'm overselling what Hersh said. And then you basically say, well, other people have reported this stuff too.

Post links to what you say. And frankly I don't care about various reports "about leadership levels at the USAFA". I'm not arguing whether or not there are fundamentalists in the military. The original discussion were assertions that Hersh made that have been questioned. Hersh made assertions about two people specifically -- McChrystal and McRaven, of being secret members/supporters of religious groups. AFAIK, he still may be right, even though McChrystal, at least, has outright denied it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...

That link reminds me of when Bush said "This crusade - this war on terrorism - is going to take a while". If Bush described the war on terror as a crusade, I don't see how out there Hersh is when he says some officers see the war on terror as a crusade.

Also General Boykin is listed as the Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Malta on their web page ( http://www.theknightshospitallers.org/grand-chancellor.html ). The old crusader order. Boykin gave a speech in a church in October 2003 that seemed to cast the war as a holy war between Christianity and Islam.

This sentiment exists for some in the military and Hersh mentions it in speeches and interviews.

Again, I don't know what your line of argument here is. I'm not denying that there exist devout Christians in the U.S. military, including its leadership. But I believe the point tptacek was trying to make was that since Abu Ghraib, Hersh has been accused of imprecise, unsubstantiated reporting and assertions. What does General Boykin -- who retired in 2007 -- have to do with McRaven and McChrystal? If Hersh wanted to talk about Christians in the military, yes, I agree, Gen. Boykin sounds like a more obvious example. But that's not the interesting claim that Hersh made.

I didn't use the word "cabal". I used "conspiracy". "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins." Those are his words. I don't think I'm reaching too far.

(The funny thing is, I think he's talking about challenge coins --- that is, I think he's another civilian confronted by the lunacy that is challenge coin culture and believing that it must be some crazy thing that just a few people in the government are doing because they're out of their skulls, and not a weird thing that everyone in the federal government does because they are all collectively out of their skulls. You saw the same thing with claims about Trump minting his own special currency --- and Obama before that.)

>"I didn't use the word "cabal". I used "conspiracy"."

You didn't?

>"Among them, he believes that USSOCOM is run by a secret cabal of Opus Dei Catholics"

There's a big difference between the "Christian fundamentalism" of Bush and Boykin and Hersh's Knights of Malta line: Bush and Boykin are Protestants, and the Knights of Malta is a Catholic order. (So is Opus Dei.)

this is seriously some very thinly sliced semantics, all of which is sidestepping the thing I have now repeated in 5 different comments; that Hersh was right to point out the incredible level of anti-muslim bigotry, of a very specific religious character that dominated (and probably still dominates) the upper levels of the special forces. Its amazing that ya'll are going this deep on something that is so widely documented. Chris Kyles autobiography spoke to some of this. Mike Weinstein, whose name I've now typed, what, four, five times, has a foundation specifically documenting and challenging religious intolerance and specifically christian supremacy/theocracy in the military and he has his hands full 24/7. https://truthout.org/articles/us-army-special-forces-officia...

  Not once has Thomas or now you, addressed this.  Jeremy Scahill has covered this in both reported pieces, interviews and at least one book.

Here's some more: https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/3/29/christian-take... https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2014/09/09/one-army-under-... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08... http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/For_God_... I could go on, citing any number of people from all across the political spectrum. And for the record, no, I think tptaceks summary was not accurate, either in content or in context. Freely throwing around that Hersh thinks the specops brass is run by a cabal is not the same as what he actually said, none, I repeat none of which was actually a reported piece he himself had published. It was a throw away comment in a speech. Full stop. Which, again, is outside of internet slap fights and access journalism types like Blake Hounshell, utterly uncontroversial. I could post links like the above literally all night and not reach the bottom of reporting on the slowly theocratiztion of the upper reaches of the American military.

As I've replied to someone else downthread, I don't believe I made the argument that the U.S. military did not have Christians. What does this have to do with what Hersh claimed? Yes, it was just a speech. But he didn't preface his assertions as being just gossip. I don't agree that we should completely ignore what a journalist says in public. Hersh has been criticized for making questionable claims in speeches:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/

He's seen (rightly) as an authority, and he's speaking in a venue where the topic is non-fiction. People have a right to question those assertions and ask for evidence, which he is free to provide or to walk back.

1) Its not about "there being christians" in the military, thats a total straw man. Its about the most lethal branch of the service being dominated by those who see their conduct as the prosecution of a religious war. How is this difficult? 2) I never said that "we should ignore what a journalist says in public" I was contrasting a few comments that are pretty uncontroversial to anyone with domain knowledge to a deeply reported piece and treating those comments as if they were in any way determinative of his worldview, or that to quote tptacek "he's suffered a precipitous decline" because he notes the dominance of a radical theocratic bent among JSOC.

How have ya'll spent more than half a dozen comments now with out reckoning with any of the pieces I've linked? Seriously. I've linked a number of pieces now backing up what Hersh has said. Aren't you a journalist? Even a professor of journalism?

First, you're misrepresenting my argument. Hersh's decline isn't due to his supposed JSOC Catholic conspiracy; it's due largely to the UBL story.

Second, you're sugarcoating Hersh's argument about JSOC/USSOCOM. If all Hersh had said was that there were an unusual and disquieting number of fundamentalist Christians in the high ranks of SOCOM, few people would bat an eyelash. But he didn't say that. He said that USSOCOM was run by a secret conspiracy of Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta. He is, if not 100%, then at least 96.3% into Umberto Eco territory here.

Check back in another 5-10 years (maybe after his Cheney book is published?) and we'll see if he hasn't made it all the way to 23 Skidoo.

No, he didn't, and you're misrepresenting what he said and also completely ignoring everything I've linked. I'm not really sure what to make of that at this point. Is it intentional? I feel that after maybe 10 comments of you completely side stepping all of the other links I've posted its fair to wonder if you're genuinely just trolling, rules be damned. Where's the "secret conspiracy" part? And for someone who believes this, as you say he does, why is it only three comments in a speech in Doha? Why is it not a piece that he worked up and published? Because he's referring to a well understood phenomena thats been covered by others and also because he was talking about this in the context of anti-muslim bigotry. Do you have an answer for that? Seriously Thomas, do you have an answer for "this was a few comments in the context of the incredible level of prejudice on display from military and political leaders in the heat of the beginning of the War on Terror"? I don't think you do, because it would undermine your narrative. Also, the idea that Barton Gellman brought down Cheney with a book is .... strange. Love to see a cite on that one.

You write that you knew about atrocities during the Iraq War, including Americans destroying with acid the bodies of detainees who had died during torture. But you didn’t report it because Cheney would have destroyed your sources.

Wow! That is information I have never heard before.

I wouldn't take it for granted that he's telling the truth on that. He has been riding on My Lai credibility for so long, but some of his recent stuff such as his piece on how the OBL assassination went down is completely wack.

> is completely wack.

Truth is stranger than fiction and a journalist only lives by their credibility. He wouldn't publish it if he didnt think it was solid.

There are reputable journalists of statute besides Seymour Hersh, and I think you'll have a hard time finding one that believes Hersh's claims about UBL. That people on message boards find him convincing doesn't tell us much; there were people on HN who believed PizzaGate.

Also had a harm time finding a scientist at NASA willling to support the foam strike hypothesis. Semmelweis showed hard evidence of the efficacy of hygiene in saving lives, but was an absolute pariah, literally driven into a mental hospital by his critics. There was a Nobel given to a physician for the lobotomy procedure.

Point is if you just trust the methodology of using groupthink to determine righteousness you will get some things wrong. And it gets really bad once we venture away from scientific fields. You can see in history people's psyches sometimes coalescing around acceptableness of some pretty horrendous ideas like inquisitions, holocausts, abu ghraibs, etc.

This seems like an argument that comes pretty close to saying we should disregard all expertise and stature, except for your preferred sources.

You are being offered the chance to claim the titles of NSA and NASA shill here.

What you said by mentioning the groupthink status quo is something worth mentioning, but it hardly settles the matter.

I was trying to say that dismissing credibility solely because most disagree is just not a good argument.

We wouldn't have gotten very far if the scientific method included: "test your hypothesis by asking the most reputable people what they think."

It should just be an indication of what is likely to be correct.

"I was told within two months not to put anything in the computer by somebody who was still inside working for Cheney. And I said, “Oh, god.” I said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to connect it to the internet.” He says, “You’re not listening to me.” I said, “No. Fucking. Kidding.” The guy said I couldn’t protect him."

What?

This interview is not well written.

No it explains why Putin's top staff has gone back to using typewriters.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts...

Course if NSA can decode speech from just the vibrations of a window how much longer will it take for them to know which key you just pressed on a typewriter?

https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/4/5968243/mit-turns-recorded...

I though that tech was actually quite older, like that it was born just after masers got well powered and mobile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser#Uses

Oh, I get the meaning. The writing is gibberish though.

Matt Taibbi had a well written piece on Seymour Hersh in the Rolling Stones. [1]

The world is a worse place if values are shown to be hollow and lacking substance. There will always be some real politik but between surveillance, dubious wars and neoliberalism the democracy project is in tatters.

Jingoists will defend everything but there is a great responsibility on the the general public to hold their governments to account. If not there will be no credibility and no moral high ground from which to operate, and that's a serious loss that cannot be regained. It's already significantly diminished.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/seymour-hersh...

Another interesting story broken by Hersh: Vietnam's My Lai Massacre. Video interview at https://investigatingpower.org/vietnam-war/

Great interview, really excited for the book.

> In the book I’m writing, I can segue into this stuff; I’m writing a lot about what was going on in the FBI. There was a lot going on that was counter-Trump, I will tell you that. I’m telling you, it’s the missed story of all time.

Any idea (or even guess) about what he's talking about here?

He would have to be referring to anti-Trump people within the FBI (not necessarily the entire FBI working together).

I don't really know what else it would mean.

It doesn't need to mean anything really. It's just the writer's way of marketing to Trump supporters.

Notice alignment of both form (Trump-style breathless personal attestations and hyperbole) and content (Deep-state activity against Trump).

As much as he was terrible for the country, I find it hard to believe Dick Cheney would have sources whacked.

But getting imprisoned, certainly https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/30/cia-whistleblo...

Kiriakou was not imprisoned for ratting out Dick Cheney and his status as a "whistleblower" is contestable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796162

Whatever Cheney's threats might have been, they didn't prevent Barton Gellman from savaging Cheney with _Angler_, which he wrote during the Bush administration. Cheney is today a marginal figure, possibly in no small part due to Gellman's reporting.

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on things like Operation Northwoods? [1] Operation Northwoods was a plan for US intelligence agencies to engage in terrorist activity against Americans, and then blame it on Cuba as a means of justifying war. It was formulated by our intelligence agencies and approved by the joint chiefs of staff. Literally the only reason this did not happen is because one person, JFK, chose not to sign off on it. Or perhaps what the FBI did to MLK? After spying on him and discovering his 'sexual deviancy' they posed as a black supporter and tried to blackmail and shame him into suicide. [2]

We don't tend to learn about these things until decades after they happen since they're heavily classified. And I imagine if Operation Northwoods went ahead, it's the sort of action that might have ended up with no paper trail at all. And so we can look back and say 'oh that was 50 years ago, we're so very different now.' Yet of course, after our secrets are revealed beyond doubt 50 years from now people will almost certainly be aghast at the things we are doing, yet will consider themselves beyond such a point since after all 'that was 50 years ago, we're so very different now.'

And to be clear here I am in no way implying anything one way or the other about Cheney. This is a more general question that I'm quite curious about. What I am stating is that our government, which is made up of individuals, has an extremely rich history of Machiavellian behavior, even when such behavior is extremely unethical. To think that the individuals within government are somehow all, independently, reasonably good people is not really logical. Though I suppose JFK, at least, we can be sure was probably a good person.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

[2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr...

Neither of those things happened. Think about it. How many journalists or whistleblowers in the US actually ever die under remotely suspicious circumstances? The US government couldn't even muster the will to actually try to get James Risen to divulge his source even after they won their case in the SC to do so.

These are literally declassified government documents. Both of these things did very much happen.

It's the interesting thing about politics today. The media, which tends to be extremely cooperate with establishment politics, has left us with an electorate who is mostly unaware of anything except for a narrow range of convenient topics.

Plans were written, they didn't happen. We had a plan to invade Canada too.

The efforts to try to see the death of MLK enacted did happen!

The "plan to invade Canada" was a hypothetical concept about what to do should the British Empire have declared war on America in the early 20th century. They would likely have used Canada as a staging point for invasion.

Operation Northwoods by contrast was an active mission that was formulated, planned, and we were looking to imminently carry out as it made it's way all the way through the chain of command. It was literally one signature from being executed. If we had a different president than JFK the US intelligence agencies would have engaged in terrorist killings of US civilians and we'd likely have never heard about this, instead perhaps having a somber national holiday to remember the great losses the day that 'Cuban forces' attacked America.

Good old Hersh has been in war crime denial business lately. In particular denying Khan Sheikhoun chemical massacre, which was attributed to Assad by UN JIT/OPCW.

I suspect I'll get downvoted for this by people who believe our media, but I think with some critical thinking it's possible to at least realize the possibility that the UN JIT/OPCW may be influenced to the point of bias by the US and its allies.

Many smart people around me have asked, what would have been Assad's motivation to bring down the wrath of the US on himself at a point when he's winning the war? What is the US doing in Syria without an invitation by the Syrian government, supposedly "fighting terrorists" but against the government? Why does the US have the right to constantly invade other governments it doesn't like because "they're not legitimate"?

Assuming the US was the size of Connecticut and had no nuclear weapons, it would be easy for a power like China to take the domestic unrest after the Bush, Trump, or any of several other elections to claim that the US has become a dictatorship and they need to occupy large parts of our territory to ensure freedom. Then assume that somehow that tiny US manages to start winning against the China-supported "insurgents". Then suddenly, out of nowhere, with the war turning in favor of the US, the US uses some chemical weapons on civilians and brings down international condemnation on itself. Who wouldn't be skeptical?

But our government has done a great job of making every other country in the world and its government seem suspicious, so it's easy for many of us to think it's perfectly reasonable that Assad is a crazy person who doesn't want to live past next week, and so is perfectly happy to use unnecessary chemical weapons in a war he's already winning, with a major global power backing him.

Some of the people who were even in the video showing the "chemical attack" have said that they were not attacked with chemical weapons. Those witnesses have been dismissed as "Russian propaganda". See for yourself, the "Russian propaganda" and a US-friendly media source denouncing the Russian propaganda.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-27/russia-presents-allege...

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/428514-douma-civilians-chemical-hoa...

By the way, there are plenty of people in the US who have criticized this overall US strategy for a long time.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Military-Humanism-Lessons-Kosovo/...

But I suppose people on both sides of this debate will think that the other side is just believing the "obviously wrong" propaganda of the other side.

This type of thing is always presented as 'if you don't believe us, you must believe the evil doers!'. Anyone with half a brain will not believe our side and the other side.

Thinking in terms of "our side" and "other side" is part of the problem I think. I may pay taxes to one of the involved parties, but that's not a rational reason to root for that side like it was my preferred sports team. It's "my" side only in a very abstract and indirect sense, through some sort of democratic system and accident of geography, but I shouldn't let either of those bias my analysis.

> I suspect I'll get downvoted for this by people who believe our media, but I think with some critical thinking it's possible to at least realize the possibility that the UN JIT/OPCW may be influenced to the point of bias by the US and its allies.

The OPCW has 120 member states, some are at war with each other. That makes it for pretty broad conspiracy. The report is public and you can skim through for any inconsistencies you find. It doesn't sound like you did before dismissing it.

http://undocs.org/S/2017/904

> Many smart people around me have asked, what would have been Assad's motivation to bring down the wrath of the US on himself at a point when he's winning the war?

Sure, next time you can tell this to smart people around you: obviously chemical weapons are used to kill his enemies and terrorize opposing population, with little to no downside over the years. We hear "he's winning the war" for the last 5 years, the conflict is still ongoing. Given that his military is not in its top fighting shape to put mildly, it's natural for the dictator to use what he can.

> Some of the people who were even in the video showing the "chemical attack" have said that they were not attacked with chemical weapons.

You are talking about one of recent Ghouta chlorine attack rather than 2017 Khan Sheikhoun Sarin attack. An understandable mistake, since regime deployed chemical weapons in scores of incidents since 2013.

Yes, in the former some of the survivors were apprehended by the regime and used to spin Assad's point.

"what would have been Assad's motivation to bring down the wrath of the US on himself "

What wrath?

Without insinuating anything about your post, your opinions or your beliefs, I have the following hopefully partially objective points to note about your post for fellow readers of hackernews.

You raise suspicions that the OPCW and JIT are biased or influenced by the US and its allies. But offer nothing more than a convoluted, hearsay, appeal to authority to back it up. "Smart people around me also think that <something>". That <something> is a frequent talking point of 'the other side' (ie. not the US and its allies). 'Why use chemical weapons if you're winning and you know the US would crack down': because you didn't know, you've been using them since the start and noticed no significant reaction from the west[0], and because there's more to war than just 'winning'[1]. The instances in which chemical weapon use was suspected were instances where a high attrition for both sides was likely: entrenched enemy combatants in civilian areas. Even if you 'win' there by conventional means, you're likely to have sustained losses that can quite conveniently be avoided if you can just gas your enemies out of their basements.

Having cast and fortified your suspicion on the supposedly true, neutral, authority on the subject, but not actually pointing to any concrete points of contention, but keeping it mostly vague using hindsight rationalizations (as if everyone has perfect knowledge of what the other side would do?), you then shift your focus to an implausible scenario that seems calculated to produce a large amount of moral outrage. "What if <contemporary rival of USA> were to invade the USA and then <suddenly[0]> use chemical weapons while casting blame on the USA?".

Of course, we have already established that it is perfectly rational to use chemical weapons when you can get away with it: it's effective, it didn't cause much ruckus until now and, looking at what was actually achieved: you've definitely come out on top[2].

Not to say that the USA is always blameless, but this false-flag-poison-gas operation just doesn't cut it. We all know the US doesn't need much to start assassinating people with drones.

[0]: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Ch... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/09/douma-inhabita...

> I suspect I'll get downvoted for this [...]

Why do you start your post with an appeal to pity?

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