Hacker News Reader

Comment by htwaterx | Hacker News Reader

While interesting, the author appears to be nitpicking. It does not really refute Hersh's story, because these minor inconsistencies appear in any news article, including the NYT.

It is irrelevant whether Hersh gets all details right, the important thing is whether his source is correct on the big picture or not.

It seems to me that the veracity of Hersh's claims cannot be decided by textual analysis, but rather by another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story. But who will finance that? Who would dare that?

View on HN

The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical: 1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved 2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had to make it obvious it was them. But very very very secret operation indeed.

This is just an idiot's idea of a secret military operation.

These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed:

- Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been.

- Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder.

- Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just an analogous group.

Hersh eliminates the intelligence value by obfuscating exactly who did what and how, but provides lay readers (to whom the specific details don't matter) a story that conveys a general sense of how the mission was achieved.

Oh yeah, it's so important to not expose the vessel!

Grasping for straws, uh?

Yeah, I’m suspecting a merchant vessel that frequently docks in Russia.

At the end of the day it is much more important what people believe than what is true, and people's reactions to specific instances of "nitpicking" varies according to their pre-existing beliefs.

For example "nitpicking" is enthusiastically praised during the investigation of physical matters (ie: science), but it is commonly denigrated (if not outright condemned, even by genuinely smart people) when used during the investigation of metaphysical matters, and this mystery is a combination of both (but is mostly metaphysical to my way of thinking).

It's not nitpicking. It's an attempt to evaluate

>whether his source is correct on the big picture or not

(which cannot be verified), based on the details that can be verified.

>another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story.

What would be one concrete specific claim that you'd try to dig into?

>Who would dare that?

The question of "why would someone want to bother" is still open for debate, and until that's settled, there's little use bringing in conspiratorial woo questions.

Asserting that

“[Jens Steltonberg] was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since.”

when he was actually born in 1959 is not a small thing. It’s simply making things up.

It's almost definitely an error, but I don't think it significantly reduces the chances that Hersh's source is telling the truth. This feels like a detail that Hersh (incorrectly) added to the story, rather than something the source claimed. The charitable interpretation is that the aging Hersh confused Stoltenberg with his father, a Norwegian politician who was indeed involved with Vietnam. It's not a good look if Hersh is conflating different people from different generations, but it doesn't really reflect on the accuracy of his source one way or the other.

Maybe, maybe not

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34744778

I would call it completely unrealistic (asuming we have entered John le Carre territory); Stoltenberg is of a political family in Norway; and I am sure it he was politically active from an early age. While Saigon fell in 1975, the various Vietnam movements countinue as organisations providing support for and cultural exchange with the newly unified (and heavily sanctioned) Vietnam.

Your refutation to this is he was born in 1959? That refutes what part?

Was he politically involved during the Vietnam War, atound Vietnam issues? Yes. Enough so that the Times wrote an article about that specific nine years ago https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-vietnam-protester-to-h... .

So what else in his age makes it not a small thing? That he cooperated with the American intelligence community back then? If he was some random teenager I guess it would be no random thing. However, his father was defense minister of this NATO country. Him spying on the student peace movement and relating details to his father and whoever his father had dealings with is the accusation. He certainly did a complete about face on the US military - or did he? Maybe this was his inclination from the beginning.

Incidentally NATO had a massive intelligence operation against the Norwegian student anti-NATO movement which was in the papers a few years ago.

I'm sure you had no clue the papers talked about his importance as a supposed anti-Vietnam activist years ago. I'm sure you had no idea his father was defense Minister of a NATO country. You're attempting to "discredit" the article by seeing a date, knowing none of these details, and deciding it discredits the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com