On Hersh
By 
I’m awfully skeptical about Seymour Hersh’s account of the Nordstream attack. At the very least, it’s important to acknowledge that simply waving My Lai and saying “Pulitzer Prize!” ought not to incline one towards giving Hersh all of the benefit of all of the doubts.
But Seymour Hersh’s history as a reporter is hardly unchequered.
Hersh’s biography of John F. Kennedy has been harshly criticized for errors of fact and interpretation.
Hersh also narrowly avoided a scandal when papers in his possession relating to the extramarital affairs of John F. Kennedy were assessed to be forgeries shortly before they were to become the core of an ABC documentary on the late President.
In 2015, Hersh published an account of the death of Osama bin Laden that contradicted nearly every official and unofficial account of the raid, proposing that, in fact, the terrorist leader was simply turned over to the United States by the Pakistani government.
Like the latest exposè, Hersh’s account of the Bin Laden raid relied heavily on a very small number of sources, a particularly serious problem because the story directly contradicted mountains of eyewitness testimony regarding the planning for, execution of, and aftermath of the raid.
Hersh’s reporting on the Syrian Civil War has similarly run into a firestorm of criticism. On the one hand, Hersh published an account of infighting between the Pentagon and the Obama administration that was, again, reliant on a single source and that ran against substantial amounts of reporting from other journalists. Hersh has also been harshly criticized for his contrarian assertions regarding the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons.
Given the situation, I am not inclined to give Hersh the benefit of the doubt. Other Ukraine-Russia stuff.
- How technocrats are keeping the Russian economy afloat.
- Of the Western fighters that could be sent to Ukraine, Eurofighter Typhoons probably aren’t the best choice.
- In case you’re wondering about the differences between Leopard 1s and Leopard 2s…
- There are quite a few illegally flagged tankers out there carrying Russian oil…
- Revisiting the 2014 conflict in the Donbas.
- The Drone War is cheap, deadly, and made in China.