{"id":112491,"date":"2018-06-11T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=112491"},"modified":"2018-06-04T11:17:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T10:17:30","slug":"seymour-hershs-new-memoir-is-a-fascinating-flabbergasting-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/06\/seymour-hershs-new-memoir-is-a-fascinating-flabbergasting-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Hersh\u2019s New Memoir Is a Fascinating, Flabbergasting Masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Seymour M. Hersh sits in the furniture-less office of Dispatch News Service in Washington, May 4, 1970, after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Hersh disclosed the alleged massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.<\/p><\/div>\n

2 Jun 2018 – <\/em>At the beginning of Seymour Hersh\u2019s new memoir, \u201cReporter,\u201d he tells a story from his first job in journalism, at the City News Bureau of Chicago.<\/p>\n

City News stationed a reporter at Chicago\u2019s police headquarters 24 hours a day to cover whatever incidents were radioed in. Hersh, then in his early 20s, was responsible for the late shift. One night, he writes, this happened:<\/p>\n

Two cops called in to report that a robbery suspect had been shot trying to avoid arrest. The cops who had done the shooting were driving in to make a report. \u2026 I raced down to the basement parking lot in the hope of getting some firsthand quotes before calling in the story. The driver \u2013 white, beefy, and very Irish, like far too many Chicago cops then \u2013 obviously did not see me as he parked the car. As he climbed out, a fellow cop, who clearly had heard the same radio report I had, shouted something like, \u201cSo the guy tried to run on you?\u201d The driver said, \u201cNaw, I told the nigger to beat it and then I plugged him.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What happened then? Did Hersh, who would go on to uncover the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and become one of the greatest investigative journalists in U.S. history, sprint\u00a0to his publication and demand that it run this explosive scoop?<\/p>\n

No. Hersh spoke to his editor, who told him to do nothing, since it would be his word against the police. He didn\u2019t try to interview the responsible cop or his partner, or dig much further. Instead, he gave up on it and soon headed off to do his required service in the Army, \u201cfull of despair at my weakness and the weakness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage<\/a>\u00a0of a massive slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the Persian Gulf War. America\u2019s indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, \u201ca reminder of the Vietnam War\u2019s MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it\u2019s a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime.\u201d It was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: \u201cI had learned a domestic version of that rule decades earlier\u201d in Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cReporter\u201d demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.<\/li>\n
  2. The powerful lie constantly about their predations.<\/li>\n
  3. The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"<\/a>

    Image: Courtesy of Knopf<\/p><\/div>\n

    \u201cReporter\u201d provides detailed explications of how Hersh has used\u00a0these lessons, making it\u00a0one of the most compelling and significant books ever written about American journalism. Almost every page will tell you something you\u2019ve never heard before about life on earth. Sometimes it\u2019s Hersh elaborating on what he\u2019s already published; sometimes it\u2019s new stories he felt he couldn\u2019t write about when he first learned of them; and sometimes it\u2019s the world\u2019s most intriguing, peculiar gossip.<\/p>\n

    Below are some examples. If you think it\u2019s unfair to Hersh to reveal all his secrets in a review, don\u2019t worry \u2014 this is not even 1\/100\u00a0<\/sup>of what his book contains.<\/p>\n

    In the first category \u2014 Hersh going into more detail about his previous stories \u2014 is his explanation of how he got the goods for his first book<\/a>, about America\u2019s secret offensive biological and chemical weapons programs. He started by carefully reading an article in Science magazine that listed the dozens of army bases doing relevant research. He then got copies of the newspapers from each base \u2014 because he knew from his time in the military that they would all have articles naming colonels and generals who were retiring \u2014 and methodically approached all the former top officers to see who would talk.<\/p>\n

    Hersh\u2019s work publicized one particularly terrifying incident, when Dugway Proving Ground in Utah did an aerial test of VX nerve agent in 1968 that accidentally killed\u00a0more than 6,000 sheep belonging to local ranchers. This, in turn, had helped generate pressure that led to President Richard Nixon ordering a unilateral halt of U.S. production of chemical weapons. (While Hersh doesn\u2019t mention this, we also have him to thank for the Stephen King novel, \u201cThe Stand,\u201d which begins with a superflu developed by the government escaping from a military lab. King has said<\/a>\u00a0his book was inspired by media coverage of the Dugway disaster.)<\/p>\n

    There\u2019s also\u00a0Hersh\u2019s account\u00a0about what happened in 1976 when he was investigating Sidney Korshak, a powerful Mafia lawyer, for the New York Times. One night Hersh got an alarming call at home from a California district attorney who told him that Korshak\u2019s people had obtained all of Hersh\u2019s travel and phone records, placing\u00a0his sources in real peril. A quiet internal investigation by the Times later\u00a0found that a clerk in the Times treasury office had a family connection to the Chicago mob.<\/p>\n

    In the category of stories Hersh did not report at the time is a disturbing account from a few weeks after Nixon resigned in 1974 and returned to California. Hersh writes that he had received a tip that Nixon had beaten his wife Pat so badly that she had to be treated at a local emergency room. Then John Ehrlichman, who\u2019d been one of Nixon\u2019s top aides, told Hersh that he knew of other incidents when Nixon had abused her. But Hersh did not report it, or even mention it to his editors, because he believed it would only qualify as news if he could demonstrate that Nixon\u2019s behavior had affected government policy. Hersh\u00a0later spoke about the story in public in 1998. Women in the audience, he writes, immediately informed him\u00a0of\u00a0just how illegitimate and dangerous this standard was.<\/p>\n

    Then there\u2019s the world\u2019s oddest\u00a0gossip. In 1968, Jerry Brown and Eugene McCarthy, whose presidential campaign Hersh was working on, told him they\u2019d never smoked pot and had Hersh rustle up some joints for them. CIA operatives told Hersh that they didn\u2019t like collaborating with people from the National Security Agency because they\u2019re all \u201cdweebs with protectors in their pockets who are always looking down at their brown shoes.\u201d George Soros made a large donation to a nonprofit run by a friend of Hersh in order to entice Hersh to dinner to discuss Saudi Arabia and oil futures. When Hersh met with then-Syrian defense minister Mustafa Tlass at his Damascus home, Tlass wanted to show off his collection of pornography, largely focused\u00a0on Gina Lollobrigida.<\/p>\n

    Most notably, there\u2019s a tale about Lyndon B. Johnson on page 201 that everyone deserves to encounter without spoilers. Even Donald Trump has never expressed his contempt for the media with such, let\u2019s say, vivacity. Journalists will come away from it extremely grateful that all Trump does is tweet.<\/p>\n

    Along the way<\/u>, Hersh also provides a primer\u00a0on the creation of investigative journalism.<\/p>\n

    To start with, he writes, it\u2019s important to understand many important stories are always hiding \u201cin the open.\u201d This certainly applies to the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese at My Lai, which occurred on March 16, 1968. Hersh first received a vague tip about it on October 22, 1969. After poring through microfilm, he found that the New York Times had, in a sense, already \u201ccovered\u201d it \u2014 by reprinting a tiny AP story buried inside the paper about the court martial of one of the perpetrators.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>

    The brief AP article on the court martial of Lt. William Calley, published on page 14 of the New York Times on Sept. 7, 1969. Image: The New York Times; Screenshot: The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

    Next, Hersh says, \u201cthe core lesson of being a journalist\u201d is \u201cread before you write.\u201d His stories in \u201cReporter\u201d demonstrate how assiduous a reader he\u2019s always been of other reporters, looking for details that suggest other angles that should be explored. He also expresses deep frustration that other news organizations largely fail to do the same for him,\u00a0to build on his work.<\/p>\n

    Then look for sources, from the top to the bottom of any organization you\u2019re covering. Despite Hersh\u2019s reputation as a wild man devoted to tearing down American institutions, he actually emphasizes how many honest people can be found inside them if you go looking. At least in the past, he writes, Congress was \u201coverflowing with members and staff with integrity and courage.\u201d He has extensive contacts in the military whom he deeply admires. He says of senior intelligence officials that \u201cthere are many good ones who deserved my respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Finally, take your time. \u201cBeing first,\u201d he writes, \u201cis not nearly as important as being right.\u201d He doesn\u2019t just\u00a0cite the famous journalistic adage, \u201cIf your mother says she loves you, check it out,\u201d but\u00a0describes how it was coined by one of his first editors at City News in Chicago.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s a lot<\/u> for one book. But it\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n

    The most startling story in \u201cReporter\u201d may be one that is never explicitly told: that America was once a place where someone like Hersh could come from nowhere to terrify everyone at the pinnacle of national power.<\/p>\n

    Hersh is not the child of journalists \u2014 his father owned a dry-cleaning store and died when Hersh was 18. Nor was he an Ivy League academic standout. Because of his father\u2019s illness, Hersh\u00a0barely made it out of high school and enrolled in a two-year junior college with no admission requirements. He didn\u2019t even want to be a reporter \u2014 his first choice was to go work for Xerox, but they weren\u2019t interested. In fact, he got his start in journalism largely\u00a0by accident, in a series of events involving a late-night poker game and a gigantic helping of happenstance. Yet his name has been discussed with fear in corporate CEO suites, at CIA headquarters, and in the\u00a0Oval Office.<\/p>\n

    The country where this could happen now seems to be passing into memory. But that\u2019s all the more reason to read every page of Hersh\u2019s thrilling book and consider whether we should try to become that country again. For his part, he understands how lucky he\u2019s been to be\u00a0exactly the right person at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. \u201cI\u2019ve spent most of my career writing stories that challenge the official narrative,\u201d he writes in the last paragraph, \u201cand have been rewarded mightily and suffered only slightly for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Jon Schwarz<\/a> – jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/em>Seymour M. Hersh has been a contributor to <\/em>The New Yorker since 1993. He is a regular at <\/em>London Review of Books and is writing an alternative history of the war on terror. His journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles \u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    2 Jun 2018 – \u201cReporter\u201d is one of the most compelling, thrilling, and significant books ever written about American journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}