'I feel like I did in the Vietnam days - I hate to pay taxes just so they
can go and bomb more people' Seymour Hersh
Reporter whose scoops give the Bush administration sleepless nights
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian Friday April 14, 2006
A generation ago aspiring journalists looked up to the Watergate team of
Woodward and Bernstein as their idols. But times have changed. One half of
the Washington Post duo, Carl Bernstein, has moved into academia, while Bob
Woodward has grown rich and part of the Washington establishment.
His books on the Bush administration have leant heavily on interviews
granted by the president and his top aides. Far from shaking the
administration, they were advertised as recommended reading by the Bush
re-election campaign.
The only investigative journalist from that era who is still giving the
administration sleepless nights is Seymour Hersh, whose scoops in the New
Yorker have become a centrepiece in the debate over the US "global war on
terror".
This week's extraordinary report alleging that George Bush had not only made
up his mind to topple the Iranian government, but was also toying with the
idea of doing it with a tactical nuclear weapon, was a telling example of
his influence. If any other journalist had produced the story, it would
almost certainly have been laughed off. Because Hersh wrote it, it was
front-page news around the world, notwithstanding Mr Bush's insistence it
was all "wild speculation". The White House stopped short of denying the
story, saying only that the Pentagon was conducting "normal military
contingency planning".
The problem for the president is that the man known in Washington as Sy has
become an institution with more credibility than the administrations that
come and go in this fickle city.
Hidden away in an anonymous office block, he works out of two shabby rooms.
The wall behind him is covered with black skid marks inflicted by his
penchant for leaning back in his chair and putting his running shoes on his
desk while on the telephone.
The other Washington reporters for the New Yorker recently set up shop just
around the corner in a pleasant and orderly suite of offices, but Hersh has
not joined them - "because I am not (always) pleasant nor orderly" he
pointed out. One of his colleagues tersely agrees: "Sy does not play well
with others."
Political journalism in Washington is generally restrained. Hersh is not
like that. He is excitable, fast-talking and uses "fucking" more than any
other adjective, with a hard-edged accent honed on Chicago's South Side.
Hersh has been publishing scoops since long before Watergate, breaking the
story of the US massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1969 while he
was a freelancer. He won the Pulitzer prize for that and his office wall is
densely covered with other awards.
In more than 30 years in the business, Hersh has had a few slips. He
initially fell for a set of forgeries purporting to show Marilyn Monroe had
blackmailed President John Kennedy, but the fraud was uncovered before his
1998 book on the Kennedy White House, The Dark Side of Camelot, was
published.
He has just passed his 69th birthday, but still has a fire in his belly for
new stories. "Get out of the way of the fu*king story," is his over-arching
philosophy. His desk is covered with manila files and yellow legal pads.
Somewhere in the mess are his tax returns which he was yesterday scrambling
to finish by the deadline. "I feel like I did in the Vietnam days - I hate
to pay taxes just so they can go and bomb more people."
He says he never puts notes that would identify his sources on to his
computer. He does talk to them by phone, at least to arrange meetings.
"They'd be crazy to wiretap me," Hersh said, explaining that some of his
informants in the intelligence world would find out. He says he does not
have Deep Throat-like encounters in underground car parks, but rather goes
to see his government contacts at their homes late at night or first thing
in the morning.
Before his stories are published, his sources are called by New Yorker
factcheckers to verify every detail. "I can't deal with people who can't
talk to the factcheckers," he said. "My people will explain to the
factcheckers things they think I already know or understand, so they explain
things much better, and come out with details I hadn't even thought of."
Finally, Hersh sets out on late-night drives, dropping drafts of his stories
through the letterboxes of his sources to give them a chance to confirm he
has interpreted their information correctly and that he is not going to
publish anything that will put the US at risk.
"I don't want to reveal operational details. I'm an American, after all."
Often, he says, he ends up publishing "one-hundredth of what I know". He
picks up a file from a stack on his desk and opens it to reveal a thick wad
of confidential memos. Each one could have made a splash in a British daily.
One is between two senior British official in the run-up to the Iraq war. It
talks of the US determination to oust Saddam and the differences within the
administration. For a better understanding of the situation the memo
recommends reading one source in particular: Seymour Hersh.
The CV
Born April 8 1937, Chicago
Education Hyde Park high school, Chicago; University of Chicago, BA 1958
Family Married Elizabeth Klein, 1964. Two sons, one daughter
Career highlights 1959 Chicago city news bureau; 1966 AP Pentagon
correspondent; 1969, broke My Lai story as a freelancer; 1972-79 New York
Times; 1979 onwards: book writing, contributions to Atlantic Monthly, New
Yorker
Books 1970 My Lai 4; 1991 The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and
American Foreign Policy; 1997 The Dark Side of Camelot; 2004 Chain of
Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
Awards include 1970 Pulitzer prize; 2004 National Magazine Award
RESEARCH AND INFORMATION NETWORK (RAIN)
Director : Abie Dawjee
P O Box 26119, Isipingo Beach, Durban, South Africa 4115.
tel: 0027 31 9029174. fax: 0027 31 9024523.
mobile: 082 352 352 6 e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
***
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0416-26.htm
Published on Sunday, April 16, 2006 by The Nation
In Pursuit of Justice, In Search of Peace
by John Nichols
The Nazarene whose resurrection is celebrated Sunday preached a gospel
of justice and peace. His sincere followers recognize him as a man of
action, who chased the money changers from the temple. But they recall, as
well, that he rejected the violence of emperors and their militaries and he
abhorred harm done to innocents.
Some years ago, in an effort to promote moral values, Christians of a
particular persuasion began wearing wristbands imprinted with "WWJD?" -- the
acronym for the question, "What Would Jesus Do?"
After George W. Bush -- who once identified the prophet as his
favorite philosopher -- initiated a preemptive attack on Iraq, killing tens
of thousands of civilians, critics of the president and his war offered a
variation on wristband slogan. They printed bumper stickers that asked: "Who
Would Jesus Bomb?"
The absurdity of the notion that the Nazarene would sympathize in any
way with the violent invasion and occupation of Iraq was not lost on one of
the greatest Christian spokesmen of our time, the Rev. William Sloane
Coffin. The longtime chaplain of Yale University and pastor of New York
City's Riverside Church, who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in
the early days of the civil rights movement and came to national prominence
as one of the most outspoken moral critics of the war in Vietnam, died last
week at the age of 81.
Active to the end, Coffin explained in one of his last interviews
that, "There are two major biblical imperatives: pursue justice and seek
peace." Honoring those imperatives, he campaigned consistently and loudly -
even as his own health failed -- for the quick withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Iraq.
As a World War II veteran and a passionate patriot who described his
arguments with U.S. foreign policies as "a lovers' quarrel," Coffin
counseled his fellow citizens that, "What we shouldn't do is to believe
President Bush when he says that to honor those who have died, more
Americans must die. That's using examples of his failures to promote still
greater failures."
The preacher who argued that, "War is a coward's escape from the
problems of peace," believed that many of his fellow pastors were too tepid
in their condemnation of the Bush administration and its Iraq imbroglio,
explaining last fall that, "Local clergy must brave the accusation of
meddling in politics, a charge first made no doubt by the Pharaoh against
Moses. When war has a bloodstained face none of us have the right to avert
our gaze. And it's not the sincerity of the Administration, but its
passionate conviction of the war's rightness that needs to be questioned.
Self-righteousness is the bane of human relations, of them all -- personal
and international. And the search for peace is Biblically mandated. If
religious people don't search hard, and only say 'Peace is desirable,' then
secular authorities are free to decide 'War is necessary.'"
Coffin complained in the early years of the Bush interregnum that the
United States was in a spiritual recession. But before his passing, Coffin
witnessed encouraging signs that the recession was coming to a close.
Almost three dozen mainstream Christian denominations signed a
February letter that signaled a more aggressive antiwar stance, in which
U.S. religious leaders admitted that, "We have failed to raise a prophetic
voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path
of preemptive war." That acknowledgement marks the opening of a more
aggressive campaign on the party of the churches to raise a prophetic voice
that, echoing William Sloane Coffin Jr. and the Nazarene he followed, calls
for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. This is the truth that
Coffin counseled must be spoken; just as the Pharaoh of ancient times had to
be challenges, so must the pharaoh of our contemporary passage.
John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered
progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more
than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison,
Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the
Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan.
© 2006 The Nation
***
Dear Portside Editors - Thanks for posting UFPJ's
appeal to sign the Don't Attack Iraq petition conceived
by Cindy Sheehan and hosted by AfterDowningStreet.org.
But you did not give a link to the online petition. You
gave a link to the UFPJ website, which does not link to
the petition from its homepage. Please repost this,
with the link to the petition (I have inserted it
below). Over 15,000 people have signed it in a matter
of several days. Cindy Sheehan and others will take
the petition with its multitude of signatures to the
White House.
Best wishes, Charlie Jenks Traprock Peace Center (an
early supporter of the petition effort)
and the link is...
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/iran
================
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