"No phrase has been bandied about more than “conspiracy theory” in describing Hersh’s reporting. Critics argue that he’s accusing “hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years.” How could that be possible?"
The mass surveillance by NSA, GCHQ and the rest of the "Five Eyes" intelligence organizations involved thousands of people in several countries and was covered up for a long time, perpetuating the hoax that "the NSA only spies on foreign nationals". Then Snowden came along. Governments are pretty good at covering up their secrets.
While the scope was not known, Trailblazer, Thin Thread and Turbulence were known about, and whistleblown about fairly shortly after their inception.
The difference between when Binney & Drake etc blew the whistle and when Snowden did is the time that had passed since 9/11.
Binney started making noise in 2002, when the public mood was "If it catches bad guys, it's all good"
Drake began making noise at the same time, and first went to the media in 2005, when the Iraq & Afghanistan wars, and the hunt for Bin Laden were still relatively well supported.
Snowden went public much later, and with much more detail, but if the first 2 (and the others who blew the whistle at the same time) had gotten media attention, the program may not have spread as far as it had by the time Snowden came along.
Governments are fairly terrible at covering up secrets, the question is whether the media or the public want to pay attention.
The difference between when Binney & Drake blew the whistle and Snowden doing the same is that Snowden brought evidence. Binney & Drake were easily dismissed and buried by the media and the government because it was mostly their word against the government's word.
The public general distrusts any claim that the government might not be the constitution-following, freedom-creating ideal they were taught in school. Usually, accusations of corruption in a government agency are dismissed as "conspiracy theories" even when overwhelming evidence is available, due to a faith that "it can't happen here"[1]. You see similar faith in how the public usually accepts the police at their word, even in ridiculous circumstances as we've seen with some of the recent high-profile police-brutality/murder incidents.
Combine this paranoia style[2] of distrust with the usual spy-agency secrecy and no evidence the public could see - Binney & Drake never had a chance.
It was a lot harder to ignore and dismiss the accusations when the Guardian started publishing the powerpoint slides that were stamped "TOP SECRET//SI//ORCON//NOFORN".
You realize the irony of linking to that article, with the following quote:
> Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that had been dubbed the "family jewels".
Seymour Hersh was instrumental in bringing the CIA spying revelations to the public view then.
It is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a democracy," that "no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. --Daniel Ellsberg - Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Not any more. Now it just means that the public is involved in the selection of the ruling class, but the degree of this involvement is largely symbolic - see the US case with only 2 viable choices and the widespread gerrymandering.
That sounds good and all, but something a lot of people forget is you don't need to elect a third party for them to make a difference. Third party votes represent a block of voters ripe for cherry picking if one of the two major parties is willing to take a stand on issues that are important to third party voters.
Kings and "Nobility" were a ruling class, but we wouldn't accept them anymore. Elected (or not) "representatives" and a bunch of central bankers are another, but they're just fine.
You can't rule out conspiracy theories automatically, because conspiracies do happen.
Conspiracy theories are right, some of the time.
edit: In fact, it's good if we have a paranoid part of the populace that constantly looks for conspiracies. Makes it more likely we'll find the real ones. Kind of like how science works!
Few people will give up their career and risk prosecution or perhaps go into exile simply to reveal the truth. Snowden is an exception. If the truth does come out, but without documentation, it will be impossible to distinguish from a conspiracy theory.
With a big project like that during wartime it would probably be fairly easy to cover up. Tons of money is being expended, you just cook the books a little bit and spread that $20bil over a bunch of other huge expenses.
"Millions of people on the planet believe in Santa Claus, proving that it's very easy to create cover ups involving crowds across multiple continents".
the intercept has reported[0] that all of the major points reported by hersh were first reported in 2011 by rj hillhouse, and the two stories seem to have different sources. hillhouse seems upset about not being given credit and accuses hersh of 'plagiarism', though that doesn't have any bearing on the truth of the matter. the fact that hersh reported details which hillhouse has stated she was aware of but explicitly chose not to disclose (that the seals dumped parts of bin laden's body out over the hindu kush on the chopper ride home) seems to prove that he was doing original reporting to me. the real tragedy is that we've already cemented the national mythology of torture producing the intelligence necessary to locate bin laden, thanks to zero dark thirty and the cia lying to cover its ass.
A few parts of the story seem to be reasonable. There was widespread speculation that the ISI knew Bin Laden's location, even right after Bin Laden was killed. The story about the Pakistani general defecting seems to have been reported by others and seems reasonably plausible.
Some other portions of Hersh's story just don't seem plausible to me (the Vox piece made a number of these points and more, but personally I think these are the strongest). If Bin Laden was under ISI control, I don't understand why the Pakistanis would have wanted the US to send in SEALs to kill him in Abottabad when they could have just put him on a helicopter and had the SEALs kill him in Afghanistan. That would have avoided all sorts of embarrassment to the Pakistani military and intelligence services. The fact that the US penetrated Pakistani air defenses was very embarrassing to the Pakistani military, as was the fact that Bin Laden was living practically down the street from a Pakistani military academy - not to mention that it seems strange that the Pakistanis and Americans would have chosen to undertake all the risks of discovery of sending helicopters in to a peaceful town when the ISI, which was supposedly guarding Bin Laden, could have just quietly taken him to a remote area.
The business about SEALs dumping parts of his body out of a helicopter also seems strange - given how politically charged the mission was I would imagine that they would have been incredibly disciplined and professional. And Hersh's explanation for the breach in US/Pakistani relations following the mission just seems convoluted and implausible. It seems very plausible to me that the US went in and killed Bin Laden without Pakistani knowledge, and that the mission caused the breach. Hersh's explanation just seems like he's building up a whole convoluted series of explanations to justify his theory.
as far as why the pakistanis didn't just hand him over: hersh reports that they were receiving a great deal of saudi money to keep them from letting the americans know about him, presumably because they didn't want them to get him to talk about his ties to high-ranking saudis. the pakistanis conditionally permitted the raid, as long as it was explicitly a kill mission, which would stay in line with the saudi terms. again, the original plan was to kill him and take the body and announce a week later that he was killed in a drone strike on the afpak border, but that was scuttled when the helicopter crashed.
as for the unprofessionalism of dumping parts of the corpse of the most hated man in american history, perhaps you hold higher estimation of the moral restraint of a team of men who kill for a living than i do
Maybe the SEALs wouldn't have been able to restrain themselves, but in my experience, when people know that very high-up people in their chain of command are watching their actions carefully, they generally make sure that it looks like everything they're doing is by the book. These guys knew that everyone up to the President was watching, and that what they did would be not just reported, but studied.
I don't really buy the idea that they would have used a drone strike as a cover story. Surely they would have realized that sending helicopters into a populated town would attract local attention - and that's exactly what happened - a guy saw the helicopters and reported it on Twitter. Even if they wanted the Americans to kill him in Pakistan, if they had Bin Laden under guard and were cooperating with the Americans they could have just driven the SEALs to the house, had them kill bin Laden quietly, and then driven away without attracting attention. Or they could have moved Bin Laden to someplace remote and had the Americans do it there.
And the business with the Saudis knowing about Bin Laden also seems strange. Essentially what Hersh is saying is that two American allies would have had to have known Bin Laden's location for years without the US discovering it. I can imagine the Pakistanis keeping it a secret (at least for as long as they did) but the Pakistanis coordinating with another government and receiving payments from that government without the US finding out? Not to mention the fact that there wasn't a disruption in the relationship with Saudi Arabia comparable to the disruption in the relationship with Pakistan.
The official story (at least with the modifications I described above) just seems a lot simpler and more plausible.
>I can imagine the Pakistanis keeping it a secret (at least for as long as they did) but the Pakistanis coordinating with another government and receiving payments from that government without the US finding out?
I'd suspect the US probably knew the compound location for awhile as the US/Sauds/ISI have been pretty cozy over the years. One funny bit of trivia is that the long-time CIA operative that headed the first investigation into 9/11 had been to Pakistan a couple months before 9/11 and had breakfast with the head of the ISI in Washington on the day of 9/11.
> Not to mention the fact that there wasn't a disruption in the relationship with Saudi Arabia comparable to the disruption in the relationship with Pakistan.
That's simple: US needs Saudi cooperation wrt oil prices. Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC states always can either dump a shitload of oil on the market to crash prices at no real cost for them (but huge cost losses for Western oil companies, esp. fracking - we're seeing this right now) or decide to artificially limit or stop their oil production, again at no cost for them but another oil crisis in the Western societies.
He may be the most hated man in America History but I think the moral thing to do would have been to capture him and bring him to trial, but that apparently didn't enter into consideration.
I'm assuming you mean KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). I think it could be strategically valuable to be able to parade pictures of your former enemy looking like this: http://usofarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Khalid-Sheikh-... . It would have been awesome if we could have done the same with Bin Laden.
I don't know how my fingers wrote "H" for Mohammed, but yes, of course. :-)
I'm not sure I agree that it's strategically valuable - in an asymmetrical engagement, it seems like this just provokes sympathy and stokes recruitment.
Treating him (both of them, in fact) with dignity, respect, and an honest public trial including an accounting of their crimes might help, though.
And then there's the possibility that Osama was long dead before the raid (which former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto stated a month before she was killed).
UBL's connections to the house of saud are a matter of public record. And I don't know why people are assuming that dropping the body in the ocean wouldn't be part of the original plan.
> UBL's connections to the house of saud are a matter of public record.
But not a matter of judicial(judiciary?) record. That's what matters here, not what the public says or think, but hard evidences and testimonies directly exploitable by a judge in order to indict whoever was giving money or supporting AlQaida.
A majority of the terrorists during the 9/11 attacks WERE saudis.
Imagine 20 Spaniards launch an attack in US killing 3000 people yet because the (Spanish)guy that allegedly financed the attack lives in Austria USA doesn't bother investigating in Spain but launches an attack on Austria... Even worse, a few members of this guys family were in US for a business meeting but were allowed to fly back to Spain the day of the attack while every other civil plain was grounded... That's basically what happened with the BinLaden family on 9/11...
the Bi Laden family have many connections with the Sauidi royal family, but Ossama Bin Laden was completely ideologically opposed to the current Saudi government and Al Qaeda advocates overthrowing it. The relationship is not simple. There are some powerful Saudis who covertly support Al Qaeda and some of them have government connections, but to say that Ossama Bin Kaden had connections to the Saudi Royal Family is so vague and missleading that it just obscures the whole situation.
so there are lots of family links in Saudi - hell I used to work for an Arab engineering company who did a lot of work in The Middle east. I bet the head of my department or many of the other partners have met members of Bin Laden's Family
The ISI is probably not all monolithic, many probably knew over the years, some wanted him protected and someone probably sold him out. A raid gives everyone plausible deniability.
I would bet the raid force wasn't on a helicopter, that was just for evac.
fully agree here.. and yes, why would you land a black hawk for a raid? that gives the target far too much ready time. you come in silent, you evac on the bird.
I would think the reason for doing it in Abottabad would be the plausibility of the whole scenario. ANything else, the contracdictions would have been enormous.
Lets imagine OBL was eliminated in Afghanistan, how do you explain his presence there, where did he get his food, medical supplies for all those years.
With the US presence in Afghanistan you can at best argue for a few sneakthroughs that supported OBL.
So I would say US picked the best case scenario based on circumstance.
It doesn't make Hersh right (I don't know if he is or not), but I do know that a common response to outsiders who challenge insiders is to attack their character. It's a way of creating FUD and of deterring others.
I thought Hersh made a great point when he was on On the Media last week. If he's even partly right it means that the main media got the story very wrong and didn't do any real research into verifying the administration claims.
So either the media has to admit that they, as a whole, massively screwed up the story (not unlike the WMD stuff) or they can just attack Hersh and not seem to lose any credibility.
In other words, it's in their best interest he's wrong even if he's right. It was a very good interview.
Today, no sane person takes what she reads/watches in the media on face value. Journalism as a profession has lost much of it's respect and credibility in my lifetime. Most news papers, TV/radio stations and online properties have some agenda or the other and they act according to that, openly and shamelessly, truth be damned (liberal, conservative, religious, left, right...whatever).
But even for them, attacking a very distinguished journalist's character, instead of analyzing his work on it's merit is new low.
Actually i see a lot of people who believe their chosen media with all the agenda that involves. You can call them not sane, but they're out there. Whether it's fox or something more or less extremist than that, they just don't want to analyse on their own.
They may be uneducated or gullible or lacking the will to question preprocessed information... But likely sane.
>I thought Hersh made a great point when he was on On the Media last week. If he's even partly right it means that the main media got the story very wrong and didn't do any real research into verifying the administration claims.
I don't think this is entirely fair, if he's referring to media coverage in the years before his piece. Only a small number of intelligence and military officials across the world know the truth about the operation. Any US, or likely even Pakistani, officials interviewed by the media would likely have corroborated the Obama administraiton's original story. Without a high-level leaker, there isn't a lot the media could have done.
It's a different story for how the media handles things in the face of Hersh's expose, though.
It's been a week since I listen to the piece but I remember him making some good points. I seem to remember him pointing out that the compound was heavily guarded, but no one shot at the choppers. There's also something about repelling down the ropes from the choppers instead of taking it by land.
Sorry my memory is failing me. The basic point is he did make it seem like they were threads the media could've pulled at to at least give the administration story a bit more of a skeptical eye.
Gary Webb was the first thing that came to my mind as well. I don't have a cite for it but my recollection is that the government worked closely with rival papers to discredit both the story and Webb personally.
Good article - I agree that Seymour Hersh is being treated unfairly by the corporate news media. Remember that almost all of the news sources in the USA are owned by just a few corporations. It is my opinion that they actually care less about truth (or even profit) than pushing an agenda supporting the elite class.
> Remember that almost all of the news sources in the USA are owned by just a few corporations.
Is this still true, with the explosion of Internet-based news publications? Also consider that, on the Internet, "in the USA" doesn't matter nearly as much. Americans can as easily read the Guardian, for example, as the Wall Street Journal.
> Is this still true, with the explosion of Internet-based news publications?
How many internet-based news sites are actually doing reporting, investigation, sourcing, etc.? Versus merely repeating stories from upstream new sites with or without additional opinion and/or analysis added on?
How many corporate media outlets are actually doing reporting, investigation, sourcing, etc., versus merely repeating stories from upstream PR firms, anonymous official sources, or talking heads?
The USA news sources are owned by multinational corporations. Murdoch owns large news publicationa in both US and UK. The elite capital in most Western countries have a common agenda
A little off topic, but I like to get my news from Google News. If there is a story I am interested in I try to read the same story from two or three random countries. This might filter out some noise/bias.
I also like Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
Almost all of my friends however seem to have a favorite TV news show. The liberal ones like MSNBC and the conservative ones like Fox News. So, I think a lot of people do watch TV news.
In 2013 the authors of Dollaracracy spoke at Google and they really laid into TV news, especially local news that just do not cover important topics.
Really? That's a pity. Amy has serious cred in my book. The front half of the show is probably the most information dense international news out there.
With the first dying and the second moving to non-news on the internet, the third is where it has to go. Sponsored articles, that's probably the more ethical part of the industry.
Blah, most of the mainstream news pieces are simply regurgitation of press releases anyway (whitehouse or otherwise). Investigative journalism is dead because it was a cost center. Good interviewing is dead because interviewers are scared to death that they won't get guests if they are seen as combative (aka ask hard questions). Even Charlie Rose seems to be tossing nothing but softballs for more than a decade. I stopped watching a few years ago because he stopped asking the questions that needed to be asked.
The perfect example of how broken the western media is can be seen on their treatment of the WMD in iraq claim, for which the US went to war, spent Billions and killed tens if not hundreds of thousands. When the question of WMD in Iraq comes up, its all about the CIA's intelligence failures. But if you go rewatch the Colin Powell speech in front of the UN, its a joke. I remember watching it with a coworker, and we couldn't believe that the best evidence of WMD in iraq was artist renderings of hearsay. Yet, the media took it all like it was ironclad with pictures of the actual weapons, chemical analysis of what they contained, and first person witnesses. Not a single first or second tier news organization called it for what it was, BS.
EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say is that if all the traditional news outlets disappear its not really any loss at this point. The loss has already happened, the news is just a hollow shell of its former self. Which is why twitter provides a replacement. If all you do is repeat press releases, then what matters is who gets it out first. Thoughtful analysis, filtering the BS, fact checking, etc were the value add. But its gone, so the news isn't worth paying for. Those things were gone long before the internet started killing the zombies of the media.
Both the Government's "Seal Team Six - Fuck yeah!" version and Hersh's more pedestrian "ISI insider sold him down the river & it was a hit job" version have exactly the same corroboration - ZERO, NONE.
We have no body, no evidence of burial, no (faked or otherwise) pictures of the actual raid, etc.
Obama admin. feels happy to make up one version of events & now via Hersh we have another. We may never know the truth but I find Hersh's version a bit more plausible. Why?
1) So the Pakistani's who are always nervous of India trying to sneak into its airspace missed the choppers in AND out (even if they came in via the Afgan route)?
2) The ISI is the most capable aider & abettor of Terrorism in the world - they HAD to have known the Osama was in Abottabad (and more likely house-arrested him there).
The US govt. would have us believe that Osama was living the backyard of a Pakistani Military academy unnoticed & unknown to the ISI? This is an inconceivable lie.
3) There was a mysterious courier that lead to Osama thru the Hard work and Torturing of the CIA OR an ISI insider betrayed the location for money : which is more plausible?
Torture rarely yields credible intel & the possibility of the CIA stumbling onto some courier fortuitously & following him around meticulously is too many coincidences for me. OTOH a greedy ISI insider is not hard to believe.
> The US govt. would have us believe that Osama was living the backyard of a Pakistani Military academy unnoticed & unknown to the ISI? This is an inconceivable lie.
Over half a mile away is not living in "the backyard" of the academy. There are hundreds of buildings within a half mile of the academy. They aren't even connected directly by major streets. The bin Laden compound was a couple of side streets off the main road in that part of the city.
Unless Pakistan keeps track of who is living in private residences to a much greater extent than we do in the US, there is no reason to expect that they knew he was there solely based on the location.
Robert Baer's take on this (a former CIA case officer, Time.com's intelligence columnist) is:
"Abbottabad, I'll say it again, you cannot hide a foreigner in Abbottabad, for any length of time, without coming to the attention of the intelligence bureau first of all, which is Pakistani intelligence, and then ISI. [ISI is not a rogue element]. If in fact he was a prisoner there, [then] he was in fact a prisoner of the Pakistani Government, not ISI. So they knew he was there, certainly. Can you go, what was it, 7 years and hide in Abbottabad and [have them] not know?
Anybody who's lived in Pakistan will tell you that every day there's sort of a knock on the door, it's the police, they talk to the chokidar about the foreigners, what are they doing, you know and the rest of it. You simply don't set up a compound as you would in, I don't know, the desert in Nevada and not have people notice. Impossible, totally impossible."
I feel like the truth is somehwere in between. The Pakistani civilian government has a tenuous grasp on power. The military and ISI can do whatever they want. The government has been cooperating with US drone strikes while also publicly denouncing them. I can totally believe that 1) the ISI was harboring Bin Laden without the approval of the PM 2) the government facilitated the raid on the condition of no one knowing about it 3) Obama is willing to lie about it to protect his relationship with Pakistan cuz nukes.
>Most journalists would never dream of confronting CIA officials with the same aggressiveness they now direct at Hersh—even though, less than six months ago, the Senate released a 500-page report documenting in meticulous detail the dozens of times the CIA blatantly lied to the public, the press, and Congress about torture over the past decade.
>Hersh’s assertion, which has by now been at least partially confirmed by multiple news organizations, that bin Laden was found thanks to a “walk-in” tip—rather than by tracking his courier as the government has claimed—should be a major scandal. For years, the CIA has said it found bin Laden thanks to information about his personal courier—information that was obtained by means of torture.
An agenda to promote the ethical validity of torture.
Yeah, Hersh's story can definitely be considered to be a red herring answer to the government's lies, so the fact remains that even if Hersh's version isn't true to the last detail, Bush still evaded military service, so to speak.
Yeah, I got that on Firefox too. There was something going on in the background that interfered and after 5-10 seconds it stopped doing so for me and then acted normally. Some ill behaved script on the page I think.
"... two dozen Delta Force commandos entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys and killed the leader, a man known as Abu Sayyaf"
"Islamic State fighters who defended their building and Abu Sayyaf tried to use women and children as shields, but that the Delta Force commandos "used very precise fire" and "separated the women and children."
"The U.S. government did not coordinate with the Syrian regime, nor did we advise them in advance of this operation," said Bernadette Meehan, the National Security Council spokeswoman."
"The objective was the building, a multistory building," the official said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
"They said the American forces were able to seize laptop computers, cellphones and other materials from the site, which may prove useful in intelligence assessments."
Considering the utter absurdity of the government's story, I find it hard to imagine any rational person could have ever believed it for a second. Considering Hersh's reputation, the criticism against him is unfounded. That raises a lot of questions. Like how to deal with an "ally" who would hide this information from us for years causing our wars to drag on longer and many more people to die. It's a disservice that the media is not covering this, but unsurprising considering the initial coverage and lack of skepticism to the initial literally incredible events they reported when bin Laden was killed in 2011. Stupidity is great, but it's not as great as malice and I find it impossible to believe that the reporters originally reporting the story in 2011 didn't know it was a lie. I also find it impossible to believe anyone is still defending that story now. Instead of real coverage of the issues, however, we just get the media talking about itself like this article. I'm glad articles like this exist, but it's indicative of the self-pleasuring role that media has taken in our society and the duty towards the people it has shirked.
I find it hard to believe any rationale person would believe ANYTHING the government has to say. I'm not sure if it has always been this way but now-a-days, and even with as bad as the media is, it's perfectly clear that the government will lie about anything it feels like. It's not just fiction and movies, we KNOW this from recently recorded history. Further, we don't even know if the "whitehouse" is blatantly lying or if they are being lied to by the intelligence organizations because we also know now that they will lie about ANYTHING to other parts of the government including the executive. So any time people start immediately pointing fingers at the POTUS and "whitehouse" I can see what their agenda is. It's so messed up there is no telling where the lies are originating from. Maybe the CIA/NSA should change their missions statement to "provide the truth". Whatever else they are aren't they supposed to be "intelligence" organizations? What good are they if they provide bad information?!
It's far less accurate and no longer reflective of the title of the post.
Frankly, in a conversation about the media's disgraceful reaction, you probably shouldn't change the title to support the same political agenda as the dominant narrative.
I reverted the title back after reading your comment, but on reflection, I think the edit is correct, so I'm going to put it back. I don't feel strongly about it, though, so if you all do, we'll restore the "disgrace" bit.
Generally we want HN titles to say what an article is about, not tell people what to think about it. This article is about media reaction to Hersh's story. For HN purposes it doesn't need to say more than that. The presence of the article near the top of HN already says a great deal.
Moderation decisions on HN aren't driven by political agendas (at least not that I know of). It should be clear from the fact that this article is currently #3 that we don't have a problem with critiques of dominant narratives, as long as they're substantive. I'd say this article clears that bar easily.
I have to disagree. The article is an unambiguous criticism of the media reaction to Hersh's article.
In the context of the media trying to control the narrative regarding Hersh's story, editing the title here really appears to be more narrative control.
While I can appreciate not wanting to tell HN readers what to think, this piece is an editorial and a criticism and deserves to be treated as such.
That said, thank you for your transparency and taking the time to respond.
No question it's a critique. IMO a devastating one. But I don't see why we should edit the front page differently? The standard for titles is that they be accurate and neutral. (Edit: it's the "neutral" bit that matters here.) HN moderation is about readers being smart enough to figure things out for themselves.
Most of the big revelations seem to come from individuals who were or are senior members of the Pakistani security services, and the key takeaways (Pakistan knew where bin Laden was the whole time; Pakistan's air defenses were deactivated during the raid, otherwise they would have shot down the American helicopter; Pakistan played America in order to extract more military aid) all underscore the idea that the Pakistani security services are comprised of wily, street-smart seasoned operators who should not be fucked with.
So the large media organisations - who tend to rely on government cooperation to produce most of their content - have done exactly the same thing that they did every other time. That's barely even news.
Does anybody have a proposal for how this situation might be changed?
Real investigative journalism is expensive. To check your facts and avoid being led astray by cranks or disinformationists (professional cranks) requires something akin to a private intelligence agency.
As long as nobody pays for news, there is zero incentive for anyone to invest that kind of money.
You get what you pay for. Pay nothing for news and get nothing but reprints of press releases.
>First of all, denigrating a legendary reporter who has broken more major stories than almost anyone alive as a “conspiracy theorist” because his story contained a few details a little too implausible for some people’s taste is beyond insulting.
Besides this being a blatant appeal to authority can you blame people for thinking he is drifting into conspiracy theorist territory when he has claimed that US Special Forces have been infiltrated by Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta?
He didn't claim that they had been "infiltrated". He simply claimed a few high ranking generals were members.
The narrative he was trying to create was that the military literally considers our presence in the Middle East as a crusade, in the historical sense. And frankly, I don't think this is too far off.
George Bush used "crusade/holy war" rhetoric both publicly and (reportedly) in private. Religious indoctrination in the army is rampant. Eric Prince of Blackwater has been accused by former employees of trying to start a Crusade.
So what's your counter narrative? The higher-ups in JSOC and the military are all reasonable secular humanists?
The Pope is a member of the Jesuit order. This doesn't mean that the Jesuits have "infiltrated Catholicism", it just means the Pope is a Jesuit. If you think that Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta are "shadowy conspiracy groups", you need to stop reading Dan Brown books, and start embracing the fact that other people have different ideologies.
As far as your "appeal to authority" is concerned, yes, that's exactly what it is. That's how journalism works. Anonymous sources get quoted all the time for pro-military stories. Deal with it. Would you have criticized Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for using "anonymous sources"? Part of good investigative journalism is relying on the reputation of established journalists. And while you're right that this is an appeal to authority, your argument is nothing more than an ad hominem designed to discredit the narrative Hersh has created.
> He simply claimed a few high ranking generals were members.
He also claimed that JSOC was passing around "crusade coins" as part of their religious "crusade".
I don't know how he got 'crusade coins' from something completely benign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin) but that's the kind of "journalism" we've been receiving from Hersh in the past few years.
Besides which, if your interpretation of Hersh's comments were true then they simply wouldn't be news at all. "Some members of a typically-conservative organization are also members of a separate typically-conservative organization" is hardly worth a mention at all.
On the other hand the implied story "Opus Dei secretly in control of (or heavily influencing) America's special operations arm" would be news, Sy Hersh-winning-a-Pulitzer kind of news... if it were true.
The comment you replied to wasn't claiming anything sinister about Opus Dei, that honor goes to Hersh himself.
The claim is that top ranking officials believe they are waging a traditionalist "Holy War" against Islam.
I don't know if your obsession with Catholic or military trinkets is simple misinterpretation or deliberate obfuscation. Hersh never made the claim which you put "in quotes". And it's disingenuous to claim he did.
If top generals believe they are fighting a Crusade, that's newsworthy.
If you want to address that narrative, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. But as it stands, the strawman you're arguing against has no basis in Hersh's words or viewpoint.
> I don't know if your obsession with Catholic or military trinkets is simple misinterpretation or deliberate obfuscation. Hersh never made the claim which you put "in quotes". And it's disingenuous to claim he did.
“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.”
I'll note that when I mentioned Hersh's alarm about 'crusade coins' (I'm sorry I missed the 'r'), you said that not only was it my obsession, but that it could have been a deliberate obfuscation attempt on my part, along with being disingenuous.
Disingenuous to claim something that's actually true! What a world!
> If top generals believe they are fighting a Crusade, that's newsworthy.
Religious people will often perceive the world they live in through the perspective of their religion. When top generals start taking the nation into harm's way for their own pet religious principles then by all means, sound the alarm. Until then, as long as they're doing the 'right' thing by the country to the best of their professional (as opposed to religious) judgment and don't try to force their religion on subordinates (as the Air Force Academy has been actually accused of doing) then I don't give a shit what God they pray to or how they make that relationship work.
> strawman
Please, by all means, go talk to Seymour about his own words, which are apparently a figment of my spotty imagination.
Might they make specific challenge coins for specific operations within whatever we're calling the 'war on terror' nowadays? Absolutely, and some of those coins might even be vaguely offensive.
But unless these coins were actually evidence of some sort of JSOC conspiracy to loop in Pope Benedict on U.S. counter-terror operations then why were they worth the attention of the Great Man who popularized My Lai and Abu Ghraib?
I'll leave open for now the question of why a group of people who certainly know better would procure hard physical evidence of their nefarious misdeeds instead of executing the professional conspiracy that any snake-eater should be able to handle if they really wanted to. Since this is Seymour's world now we needn't concern ourselves with trying to find contrary evidence that would disprove Hersh's assertions, and then demonstrating why that evidence isn't actually problematic. Why, Seymour has told us this must be true, and that's all we need to know.
You've written 450 words now without ever addressing the actual claim made by Hersh, which is that major military figures believe they are waging a crusade.
> "Opus Dei secretly in control of (or heavily influencing) America's special operations arm"
This is the claim I was referring to. And it is a strawman.
That wold be Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a former commissioned officer in the Navy SEALs. The book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army"[0] paints a pretty solid picture of his Crusade mindset.
“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.”
My understanding of that statement is that he meant that they were deeply religious and were members op Opus Dei, not that there's a secretive organization that's controlling USSOCOM.
Please stop propagating things you read in that horrible VOX article.
I don't think this is even a controversial statement. Gen William Boykin was the former head of Delta Force and has been pretty unequivocal that the US is at war with Islam.
This isn't really an appeal to authority. The claim "has broken more major stories than almost anyone alive" is suggesting that the probability of the current story being true is higher, given the unusually large number of successful stories previously published by the reporter.
The claim isn't that we should listen to the reporter because he is some sort of expert or that is he occupies a position of authority. Any problem with inferring the probability of a new event from a record of past events would would be an error in the inductive inference. (i.e. the black swan problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Inductive_catego... )
I thought the appeal to authority was in the form of "x is likely right because y is a known person", not "y has a track record of being right in similar cases and has experience in digging out details". That's just acknowledging experience. He doesn't even say "he's right", just "don't dismiss him without paying attention".
Why is the idea that an organization, affiliated with one of the most powerful religious institutions in the world, would want to infiltrate a powerful miliary org intrinsically implausible?
The best solution to all the questions posed by sceptics about the Abbottabad raid is contained in the book Osama's Angel. Why the Pakistani doctor was hung out to dry by the CIA. Why a burial at sea was chosen to disguise the truth. Why the DNA identification was unreliable and lastly and most importantly, why did the US administration send men to fetch the man when a missile from a drone would have killed bin laden and done everything a burial at sea did, without risking American lives.
Why was no attempt made to capture the single most valuable source of information available?
Why was a helicopter filled with SEAL Team 6 soldiers shot down shortly after the raid and why is the usually most secretive American combat unit publicly squabbling over who shot bin Laden?
The story is much more convoluted than Seymour Hersh believes.
That's one of the problems with this story. Most everyone was glad for the hunt just to be over, a lot of people wouldn't want to question it even if they thought it wasn't entirely aboveboard. Easier to say "it's finally done" and move on. The fact it took that long was embarrassing enough.
> As a simple example, which Hersh himself stated in this fascinating On The Media interview, how many people knew about the Bush administration’s manipulation of intelligence before the Iraq war? Hundreds? Over a thousand?
Uh. Everyone? Everyone knew that. Everyone on the planet knew that. What are you talking about?
> How many knew about the NSA’s mass phone metadata program aimed at Americans until Edward Snowden revealed it? A thousand? Ten thousand?
The program that was revealed in 2006, 7 years before Snowden?
Hersh's story is not well sourced, contradictory, and mostly wrong. From a simple verification perspective, it is difficult to keep track of how many anonymous sources he has, and which has made which claim. However, the chance that they are well placed enough to know all of the details they claim to is highly unlikely, especially with the compartmentalization of information. While ad hominem attacks are certainly not the correct approach, he has stated the information he heard from his sources with an excess of confidence, assuming that they have no agenda. He then places it in a narrative which
I only have direct experience with slices of the information about the events in the story, but it directly contradicts the narrative.
The question is not what you think about Seymour Hersh, the question is what you think about the motives of his supposed sources, and what that might indicate about their veracity.
> Yet most of this criticism, over the thousands of words written about Hersh’s piece in the last week, has amounted to “That doesn’t make sense to me,” or “That’s not what government officials told me before,” or “How are we to believe his anonymous sources?”
Your post pretty much echoes the hit pieces this article is complaining about, and adds nothing new to the discussion.
No, he is making different points. Similarly, this is where I stopped reading the article:
> Barrels of ink have been spilled ripping apart Hersh’s character, while barely any follow-up reporting has been done to corroborate or refute his claims
The original poster's point isn't "this doesn't make sense to me." It's that the facts do not comport with reality.
One of the things that those who defend this kind of reporting love to trot out is the idea that any criticism is fallacious, and is "ad hominem."
Of course, there is plenty of ad hominem response out there, but cherry-picking these responses as representative, rather than engaging with substantive refutation, and then claiming that there is no such refutation is argument in bad faith.
In fact, there is a name for that particular kind of argument: a straw man.
1. The article is not well-sourced.
a. There are many anonymous sources, which is generally a bad practice; SH consequently may over-represent confidence in his material.
b. It is difficult to track how many anonymous sources there are.
c. It is unlikely that these sources would have access to the information that they claim.
2. The article has internal contradictions.
I'm sure that we can flesh these out more if you would like, but none of these are ad hominem.
Wrapping "exclusively anonymous sources are bad" as a criticism in with "Sy Hersh is an unreliable jerk" is also an argument in bad faith. The two are not equivalent, and the former is a sincere issue with this piece. Including it in with the latter has the effect of encouraging dismissal of both just because the latter is obviously fallacial.
1. It's a pity you stopped reading the article, because addressing the criticism of anonymous sources is about 1/3 of it.
2. A discussion of specific internal contradictions in the article would be interesting and valuable, unlike the original post. [Might make sense to make a new post for it, so it doesn't get buried though].
As to the "facts not comporting with reality", should I assume you have abandoned that claim? That would also be an interesting discussion.
This is the whole point of the CJR article - that the media response so far has been largely fact-free.
No...it's not the criticism of anonymous sources, it's the lack of consideration given to the possibility that the anonymous source is lying. If you bring out an anonymous source that is making these kind of assertions, you need more than a claim that it's a retired intel officer to achieve credibility.
I think it is important to consider the motivation of anonymous sources. This new story, which seeks to elevate the role of the ISI, or perhaps just diminish the role of others, appears to have sources with interesting motivations. In particular, Hersh's description of the primary source for this information does not indicate that they would have had access to all of the information described (both the intel process and the raid details, as well as individual negotiation points in the coverup). The amount of love for the ISI in the description almost suggests that he was put up to it by the Pakistanis. For example:
The suggestion that an ISI liaison traveling on the helicopter with the Americans "guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters" is ludicrous. SEALs typically don't need someone to lead them up a staircase.
"Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired." This is to support the story that ISI was keeping UBL under house arrest there, and had left him to his own devices, so there were no weapons there. However, outside observers directly after the event showed that the place showed evidence of fighting on all floors.
"Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis"
The overthrow of the Saudi govt was one of UBL's objectives. This is nonsense. Given the level of infiltration of the ISI, the idea that they could have kept bin Laden prisoner for six years, without a leak from their side even now, needs a lot more explanation. If that many people in Pakistan knew, we would have known, and we would not have had to rely on a walk-in.
Overall, the sense here is that someone wants to make Pakistan look better. The ISI does work with the US when needs align, but this doesn't make sense.
Hersh clearly misrepresents Sec. Gates comments at one point. He says that Gates wanted to delay the announcement of the raid per agreement with Pakistan so that we could lie about it being a drone attack. He then quotes Gates saying that we didn't want release "operational details". Gates says nothing about a delay. This is not supporting evidence at all. In addition, the anonymous source had previously claimed that a drone attack would not work, as there would be no way to verify the identity. So the whole supposed agreement about a fake drone attack is contradictory with the rest of the piece.
I am not sure that everything the anonymous source said is false, but the one fact that I do have hands on experience with contradicts another element of the story. As such, I know the anonymous source is wrong on that item.
So what's my motivation? It just annoys me to see smart people believe something like this...
The point is, this is not a criticism of Hersh per se, except in that he gives this one anonymous source too much credit. It's a story of non-existent coverup; a story that tells us there was supposed to be big coverup wherein Obama would tell us that bin Laden was killed in a drone strike a week after the fact, but a helicopter crashed and we had to make the Pakistanis look incompetent.
Thanks for the detailed response, I upvoted this one.
> appears to have sources with interesting motivations
The veracity of sources issue has been discussed to death in the very article this post responds to. I agree it is a crucial factor, but we're forced to wait for the truth to out. There are journalists who have already responded that they have some corroborating evidence:
> SEALs typically don't need someone to lead them up a staircase.
This detail, even if incorrect or spun by ISI, doesn't seem like a story killer.
> However, outside observers directly after the event showed that the place showed evidence of fighting on all floors.
Agree that there are several conflicting reports (both from the White House on different days, the SEALs themselves, and now Hersh) on the operational details of the mission.
Some accounts claim that the SEALs needed to breach their way in after the crash.
What you are saying would impact the credibility of the story if true. I haven't been able to find any past references for that. Are you able to point me to an archive.org link please?
Note however that the operational details don't necessarily reflect on the political details.
> Hersh clearly misrepresents Sec. Gates comments at one point...
I agree the context of the quote is confusing and perhaps misleading. It seems the source is making one set of claims, but Gates is saying something else in his memoir (‘Why doesn’t everybody just shut the fuck up?’).
The source's claims are: 1) Gates was the only one actively protesting the announcements, 2) Gates objected to the idea of claiming that information was obtained by torture 3) Gates insisted that the agreements with Pakistan had to be honoured.
While you're correct that the quote from Gates does not back up the source's claim, it does not actually contradict it either.
Re: the drone attack wiping out evidence, the discussion is internal in October, they're discussing what to actually do, versus what to tell the public. The context is quite different, but I agree it's worth paying attention to.
> I do have hands on experience with contradicts another element of the story
Naturally I'm curious, but I understand if you are unable to provide any detail.
> The point is, this is not a criticism of Hersh per se, except in that he gives this one anonymous source too much credit.
I believe he claims two other US sources with corroborating information, "longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command.".
> It just annoys me to see smart people believe something like this...
I certainly don't know that the story is true, but there are a lot of problems with the official explanation. The obvious one is the White House claim that the SEALs managed to fly helicopters 90 minutes over a contested border - bear in mind someone in the neighbourhood tweeted to ask what was up with the helicopter noise and "huge window shaking bang"[1] - and spend 40 minutes shooting up a compound and blowing stuff up without any of the local military doing anything. From what I have read, there were two army bases within a couple of miles of there.
"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."
I thought the issue was it was based on the use of anonymous sources which might be hard for any journo to "disprove his assertions with additional reporting".
Wait, they actually stated that they couldn't have found Osama without torture? I don't follow US politics that close, so I must have missed it. Isn't it incredibly stupid by itself? Did people actually need confirmation that torture doesn't work?
I think it started with the first actor President.
I should re-read _America_, 1988, Jean Baudrillard.
"You have the same difficulty today distinguishing between a process and its simulation, for example between a flight and a flight simulation. America, too, has entered this era of undecidability: is it still really powerful or merely simulating power?"
"Can Reagan be considered the symbol of present-day American society - a society which, having once possessed the original features of power, is now perhaps at the face-lift stage?
Give your emptiness and indifference to others, light up your face with the zero degree of joy and pleasure, smile, smile, smile. . . Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. And it works."
The simulation, the movie, is greater than the dispossessed actuality, whatever that may be. A movie is visceral, gut thinking, truth. Why fight it, as long as there is a chicken in every pot.
What are you trying to argue? Using the phrase "conspiracy theorist" literally is not super helpful - it has a specific meaning in the popular lexicon and media. Just because it's pedantically correct doesn't mean it wasn't used as a personal attack to imply that Mr. Hersh is insane.
If we're going to criticize his theory(and I don't believe it at all), the media should avoid personally attacking him. He's earned some respect as a journalist, it's not like he's on the level of Alex Jones, to be dismissed automatically.
It's sad that in all those conspiracy nuts, there might be some legitimate info that will never be heard. Sometimes I even wonder if conspiracy theorists are not just there to drown investigators in nonsensical noise.
Anyway, what would the conspiracy be about ? Getting Obama elected for a second term ? Or if OBL is not dead, announce him dead to make him get out of his hideout ?
One thing is true, being a conspiracy theorist today is not easy. /r/conspiratard seems to be a stranger place that /r/conspiracy although maybe it aims at keeping the mentally weak away from this stuff. I hate getting involved in things.
So the beneficiary is the CIA and the benefit itself is that they still get to torture people? That doesn't seem like a very big benefit.
edit: I should make it clear that I think Hersh's story is interesting and I really wish other journalists would focus more on the story than on trying to assassinate his character.
I just don't know if permission to torture is a high enough prize to justify a cover up, especially since they could easily just torture people anyway and scrub the evidence if they're willing to resort to subterfuge.
Diane Fienstein accused them of committing crimes in order to suppress the torture report.[0] A little lying about how Osama was killed seems pretty innocuous next to that, doesn't it?
Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. See the Jessica Lynch story for a good example of this.
> Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin.
That definitely makes more sense to me than trying to keep torture in the toolbox. Looks much better as an all-American raid than a canned hunt where the Pakistanis already had him.
Even with the Feinstein thing, it seems more like any cover up was more about public perception than anything else.
I agree. It's the problem when the other side asks the questions and edits the responses down.
Hersh was clearly annoyed that the interviewer wanted to talk about why the article did not appear in the New Yorker. The interviewer's agenda seemed clear: if the New Yorker did not see fit to print it, then I can safely ignore it. (People really do think like this, of course.)
Why would a writer respect such an agenda? So Hersh lets him have it.
Then, the interviewer appears to back off that angle ("Can I tell you why?"), and gave a different reason: He said he's interested in the publication venue because that would indicate a bias in the American press. Hersh says that's interesting.
At the very end, the interviewer seems like he's trying to catch Hersh up in some kind of logical error regarding the venue question ("I feel like you are telling me two different things.") And then it's over.
There's just nothing there. The interviewer asks questions, with a transparent agenda, that a grouchy reporter has heard before. They are kind of second-order to the actual story (i.e., venue). Hersh gets annoyed and hangs up.
As mentioned in this article, Slate published 5 stories critizing Hersh within 36 hours of its publishing. It would be unusual for an organization with such an agenda to make Hersh look balanced in an interview.
I'd say it's the interviewer who comes off as a disrespectful idiot in the article and Hersh even calls him out on it. When you're questioning the validity of using anonymous sources ... as a reporter too ...
Hersh is a tired 78-year-old sitting on an exploding story. Someone is trying to talk about the context, from an org that is already figured to be coming from a bad angle. He's got 100 other things to do that will stick to the core of his publicity run on the story. If the content of the story can have land with the impact it could/should then it serves to entwine Hersh's legacy for getting the story other don't and getting the stories that matter. He goes into the pantheon for finding truth. As that type of journalist, it's the grail.
Who cares what the color of the journalistic bike shed is?
The mass surveillance by NSA, GCHQ and the rest of the "Five Eyes" intelligence organizations involved thousands of people in several countries and was covered up for a long time, perpetuating the hoax that "the NSA only spies on foreign nationals". Then Snowden came along. Governments are pretty good at covering up their secrets.