Notes on Seymour Hersh's book "Reporter"

An American soldier stoking a fire of burning houses during the My Lai massacre on March 16th, 1968 (Ronald S. Haeberle/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty)

by Gaius Publius

Seymour Hersh recently released a book on his life as a reporter, called appropriately, Reporter. It's gotten praise from many quarters, including from novelist and former intelligence officer John Le Carré: "This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over."

Journalist Matt Taibbi has apparently taken le Carré's words to heart, read it (no surprise) and written an interesting commentary on it for Rolling Stone. I'm drawing the observations below from Taibbi's observations.

On Intelligence Agencies "Going Rogue"

Taibbi recounts a story from Reporter about a time when Hersh, who makes his living discovering information that intelligence agencies don't want people to know, was handed a "treasure trove" of secret information the CIA did want him to know.

Taibbi writes:

Late in his new memoir, Reporter, muckraking legend Seymour Hersh recounts an episode from a story he wrote for the New Yorker in 1999, about the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

Bill Clinton was believed to be preparing a pardon for Pollard. This infuriated the rank and file of the intelligence community, who now wanted the press to know just what Pollard had stolen and why letting him free would be, in their eyes, an outrage.

"Soon after I began asking questions," Hersh writes, "I was invited by a senior intelligence official to come have a chat at CIA headquarters. I had done interviews there before, but always at my insistence."

He went to the CIA meeting. There, officials dumped a treasure trove of intelligence on his desk and explained that this material – much of which had to do with how we collected information about the Soviets – had been sold by Pollard to Israel.

On its face, the story was sensational. But Hersh was uncomfortable. "I was very ambivalent about being in the unfamiliar position of carrying water for the American intelligence community," he wrote. "I, who had worked so hard in my career to learn the secrets, had been handed the secrets."

From this Taibbi takes this lesson: "This offhand line explains a lot about what has made Hersh completely embody what it means to be a reporter. The great test is being able to get information powerful people don't want you to have. A journalist who is handed something, even a very sensational something, should feel nervous, sick, ambivalent."

From the same story I take an additional lesson: The CIA, through an active, serving, "senior official," attempted to use an unauthorized intelligence leak of massive proportions to undermine and potentially sabotage the decision of an elected, sitting president, nominally the official's boss via the chain of command, all this in 1999, decades before Donald Trump.

Should Pollard have been pardoned by Clinton? Likely not. Pressure on Clinton from Israel and the Jewish-American community was intense, but he eventually decided against a pardon, and a look at the facts shows he made the right decision. Pollard had done quite a lot of damage, was unrepentant, and acted for gain as well as in the interests of Israel. So justice was done.

Yet the method attempted by the CIA to influence this decision included not just normal chain-of-command influence (going into the president's office and arguing the case), but backdoor leaks to the press (Hersh) calculated to make a pardon politically impossible. In other words, to box in a presidential decision, the agency decided to "go rogue" — use its access to classified intelligence material to force the president it serves to make a decision it preferred.

This is first cousin to blackmail by the keeper of the nation's secrets via a third party (Hersh), and it would actually have been blackmail had someone from the agency gone to Clinton ahead of time and told him of the plan. Which they may well have done.

Keep this intelligence community behavior in mind as you consider (a) how that community operates with respect to U.S. politics; and (b) how it may be helping to get rid of another elected, sitting president, one that few in the Beltway political establishment want to see continue in office.

To be clear: Should Trump be removed as president? I'm a strong yes on that, though you may disagree. How should he be removed? The answer to that sets precedent, doesn't it?

We've had presidents murdered out of office, most recently in 1963, in suspicious circumstances as a matter of fact. To my knowledge we haven't yet had one blackmailed out of office, though that clock has obviously not run out.

On CIA Assassination

Taibbi also brings up the history of political assassination carried out by the CIA: "Hersh was also among the first to describe a burgeoning American assassination program that to this day is poorly understood."

Within weeks of 9/11, for instance, Hersh quoted a "C.I.A. man" claiming the U.S. needed to "defy the American rule of law… We need to do this – knock them down one by one." He later reported on the existence of a "target list" and cited an order comparing the new tactics to El Salvadoran execution squads, reporting that much of this was going on without Congress being told.

That quote, about defying American rule of law, can be found in this New Yorker analysis of Hersh's writing about the executive assassination program in the post 9/11 years, "Close Read: What Did Seymour Hersh Say About Assassination?" published in 2009. It's quite revealing.

For even more about executive assassination, I strongly recommend reading this Hersh account of what really happened to Osama bin Laden — "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" — published in the London Review of Books.

A taste:

'They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,' the retired official [one of Hersh's sources] said. Go straight there. Osama [by now an invalid] was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.' Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. 'Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence?'

The whole thing, including Obama's shameful, self-serving sabotage of the agreed-upon plan, will fascinate you.

How to Be a Reporter

Taibbi ultimately reflects on the journalism business:

The job in many quarters has devolved into feeding captive audiences a steady stream of revelations framed to fit their preconceived ideas about the world, in order to keep them coming back. From Fox to MSNBC, the slant of programming has become more predictable, because audiences hate surprises and dislike being challenged. ...

Hersh's career is a tribute to the pursuit of the "unpredictable result." We used to value reporters who were willing to alienate editors and readers alike, if that's the way the truth cut. Now, as often as not, we just change the channel. This has been bad for both reporters and readers, who are losing the will to seek out and face the unpredictable truth.

I found myself speculating a little as I read those paragraphs. Matt Taibbi is already one of our most valuable journalists. Still, could this signal a change in his own career, or is this just an comment about someone else's career from his own desk at Rolling Stone? Taibbi's admiration is certainly obvious, as is his criticism of his peers.

Either way, Seymour Hersh has committed journalism of the most dangerous kind, putting him several steps ahead of what is now delivered to us as reporting. It would be nice to find a few more like him among the current crop.

GP
  

Democrats Would Love Cheney To Just Keep Talking-- Republicans Ask Him To STFU

Eric Cantor has trouble remaining anonymous even with all the great makeup

On Sunday night President Obama said he "fundamentally" disagrees with Dick Cheney and "the movement" he heads. He pointed out that Cheney has been a recruiting poster boy for terrorist recruitment worldwide, something that real does make America less safe. Watch:



I doubt many Republican congressmen see it exactly the same way Obama does, but they would very much like him to disappear back into some undisclosed location and not pop his head out again... ever. Without growing a little mustache and donning a swastika it would be difficult to get further right than Knoxville, Tennessee extremist Jimmy Duncan, not someone who ever disagreed with Cheney... on anything but yesterday Duncan was one of several Republican congressmen who loudly broadcast an invitation to Cheney to stay away.

“He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public... But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

GOP Whip Eric Cantor is even further to the right than Duncan-- and unwilling to use his name while commenting on Cheney-- but he's even more insistent that Cheney keep a low profile, for the sake of the party. Cantor, requesting anonymity, "said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause and pointed out that his approval ratings were even lower than Bush’s during the last Congress. He implied that Cheney is a hothead who "didn’t think through the political implications of going after Obama. He did "House Republicans no favors... I could never understand him anyway.” I wonder how they'll feel about the nation being reminded of all the Bush's Regime's catastrophic foreign policy errors. That comes tonight when Condoleezza Rice appears on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Democrats probably aren't as eager for Cheney to vanish. He's so thoroughly loathed and his opinions so completely not respected that a Cheney sighting is always a big turn-off to mainstream voters. The new issue of The Nation makes it clear that Cheney still wants to stick around and fight, especially now that his executive assassination squad has been exposed and may eventually lead to criminal charges.

Bush may actually be embarrassed, or scared, about the mess that was made of international affairs, the economy and our system of constitutional governance during his eight years in the White House.

Cheney isn't.

There will be no apologies from the former vice president.

And there will be no withdrawal from the political frontlines by the man who spun out of the Nixon White House to become Gerald Ford's chief of staff, parlayed that role into a seat in Congress where he served as Ronald Reagan's House floor leader, exploited personal and political ties to position himself as George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense and then effectively nominated himself to be George W. Bush's vice president.

Cheney, whose ambition has always exceeded his knowledge and skill, is determined to defend the political misdeeds, policy machinations and power grabs that-- thanks to George W. Bush's ignorance about the most basic workings of the White House-- briefly made him the most powerful man in the world.

...Should we mind that Cheney intends to stay in the fray?

Not at all.

Cheney should be welcomed to the microphones.

Indeed, his determination to remain in the limelight should make it easier to invite him to explain a few things-- under oath.

Where to begin?

How about with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh's allegation that the Bush-Cheney White House operated an "executive assassination ring" that reported directly to Cheney's office?

...An elite assassination squad run out of the vice president's office?

That certainly sounds like an interesting point at which to begin an official inquiry.

And since the vice president is so willing to talk about his time in office-- as evidenced by his recent media appearances-- why not invite him up to Capitol Hill to engage in it?

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has a suggestion that might get the ball rolling.

Kucinich has asked New York Congressman Edolphus Towns, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to begin an immediate investigation into Hersh's allegations.

Alas, Towns is the worst kind of do-nothing hack anyone who didn't want any serious investigations would ask for-- which is precisely why he was placed in his new position, after Henry Waxman-- the polar opposite-- moved on. Towns may bury it, but you can read Kucinich's letter here.

Bush, on the other hand, is laying low-- and for good reason: "Job losses in the hundreds of thousands every month, almost weekly bank failures, and 401(k)s at half their value from a year and a half ago. The media treat the question as a mystery that can be solved through scrutiny of the Obama administration's actions starting on January 20, 2009-- an approach that is absurd on its face. The media's erasure of the Bush administration and its policies in their coverage of the economy has been so pervasive that they have given round-the-clock attention to the AIG bonus scandal for days on end with virtually no mention of the fact that it was the Bush administration that last fall approved billions of dollars in aid to AIG without requiring the company to nullify its bonus contracts."

"Justice" Is A Pretty Subjective Thing-- Especially For The Rich And Powerful, Like Madoff, Cheney And The Banksters

Muntadhar al-Zeidi was sentenced to three years in jail for tossing his shoes at George Bush, although he didn't hit him with either. He did hit a sweet spot in the consciousness of the people of the world who view him as an heroic figure standing up for us all against the incarnation of absolute evil. Two nights ago Seymour Hersh publicly exposed a covert CIA "executive assassination ring" that reported directly, if unconstitutionally, to Dick Cheney. There is virtually no chance that Cheney will ever face any kind of justice for murder or for subverting the Constitution.

And today we find out that Bernie Madoff has backed out of his plea bargain in an attempt to cover up for his criminal relatives. He is willing to spend the rest of his life in prison-- for stealing $64.8 $170 billion in the biggest ponzi scheme ever-- but wanted his co-conspirators to walk away scott free. According to Bloomberg.com this morning he "didn’t agree to a plea deal with prosecutors because of their demand that he admit to a conspiracy, a charge that would require him to say he worked with others." He did plead guilty to 11 charges this morning in court.

Madoff’s decision not to negotiate a deal means the government won’t have his help in determining whether his employees assisted in the fraud, the people said. Madoff, 70, will plead guilty today to all 11 counts he faces without any promise of leniency or anything else in return. He could receive 150 years in prison at sentencing on charges including fraud, perjury and money laundering.

The conspirators who so far look to walk away without charges-- but with plenty of loot-- are his wife, Ruth, his two sons, Mark and Andrew, and his brother Peter, the chief compliance officer at Madoff's criminal enterprise. All of them say they didn't know nothing about any fraud at the company. And Madoff will do soft time in a low-security prison. He stole almost 65 billion dollars and wrecked countless lives and helped destabilize the country's economy. But soft time is what our elites get in the absolute worst case scenario-- and their crooked families still get to enjoy the fruits of their criminal activities. Interesting interpretation of justice. (And, of course, the corporate media is already trying to drum up sympathy for poor Bernie.) The judge finally revoked his bail and he was taken off to prison. Sentencing will be in mid-June.

Another couple of scam-artists, California Republicans Anthony Vassallo and Kenneth Kenitzer, loved the freedom from financial regulation the Bush Regime afforded them that they donated generously to the RNC and NRCC and to their favorite candidate, Mitt Romney... all the while conducting a ponzi scheme much like Madoff's only smaller. They only ripped off $40 million dollars. I wonder if Romney will return the money they gave him. The SEC filed a lawsuit against them and their firm, Equity Investment Management and Trading Inc., yesterday.

In Greece, one of the European countries hardest hit by the bankster-manipulated Depression, some people have given up on the chances of justice ever catching up with the elite criminal class and have decided to go after Citibank on their own-- in a more direct way. Revolutionary Struggle is bombing Citibank offices. "In the statement, the militant group argued the American bank is part of a 'criminal network of international capital' responsible for the financial crisis." Barney Frank's committee, House Financial Services, is going about the pursuit of justice in a more traditional way. The committee will be holding a hearing next week "to ask key justice officials and regulators what they need to prosecute wrongdoers in the financial crisis." Fortunately, Alan Grayson (D-FL), who was elected by Orlando voters in November to put a stop to financial shenanigans, is on that committee... and outspoken. This evening he told us that "The Bush Administration enforced the law only against people whom it didn't like. As a result, massive fraud went unpunished, to the point where law-abiding people felt like saps. The 'Change We Need' simply is the sense that when someone breaks the law, then he or she will be punished. If people don't have that sense, then we'll soon start to resemble a third-world country."