Seymour Hersh is one of America's greatest investigative journalists. He'll always be remembered as the writer who exposed the My Lai massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in 1968. But his work has continued ever since. For me, his book on the secret Israeli nuclear programme, The Samson Option (1991) has been particularly important but his work has covered multiple issues and crises.
Hersh has now published an article on the destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline, joining Russia and Germany, last September. We've been told that this action was perpetrated by Russian saboteurs. Hersh is arguing differently. His story has a significant weakness - its dependence on one source. But the flak he has taken in just days since its publication suggests that he has touched a nerve, and penetrated some of the propaganda murk which swirls around the apparent moral and political clarity with which the Ukraine war is discussed.
Here is an interview with Hersh, with hyperlinks to his article, published by Sidecar, the New Left Review blog. It makes interesting reading.
Conor
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
An interview with Seymour Hersh.
15 FEBRUARY 2023
An interview with Seymour Hersh.
first! :)
ReplyDeletesorry coz, but hersh's piece has a swiss cheese-like level of holes.
the single source is an omniscient being, being in the room with everyone concerned. he/she stipulates that a ship was involved that was decommissioned years ago. etc.
one of the greatest journos of the past half century should have known the piece wasn't ready for primetime. i think because he came of age exposing state lying, at a profound level he's looking for another big score, and he got to a place where he was willing to cut corners.
hersh might be right, but he certainly hasn't proven anything, nor even met some minimal standards for casting suspicion.
the defense that "But the flak he has taken in just days since its publication suggests that he has touched a nerve" doesn't cut it at all. people say true things that touch a nerve, and they say false things that touch a nerve.
i think there's some motivated reasoning going on on his part, and also on the part of sections of the left.
of course the US lies all the time and globally is the most egregious imperial power. and of course the west's lying that NATO would never encroach is real. and of course the bullshit that as ukraine goes, so go we grates.
so the track record of lying, brutality and hypocrisy understandably pushes some people into opposing what the US is doing. but what kind of gets pushed aside is that putin is also a genuinely filthy actor, and that even without NATO encroachment, there's every chance he'd be doing what he's doing anyway. remember, his speech upon launching the war was overwhelmingly about greater russia yadda yadda, not NATO.