Award winning and controversial journalist Seymour Hersh is at the center of a furor again — this time over his report in the New Yorker saying U.S. commandos are in Iran looking for taboo weapons…and that the U.S. is poised to attack Iran as the next target in the war against terrorism.
The Pentagon has issued a devastatingly sarcastic denial, but if you look at denials as legal documents — for every loophole and nuance — the case could be made that there is no definitive denial that an attack on Iran is going to happen. BUT that’s if you want to look at it that way…
Here’s the crux of the Hersh allegations:
WASHINGTON – U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism.
"It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week’s issue of The New Yorker.
Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan’s help, the magazine said.
"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign."
The aim is to rid America and its allies of a major state sponsor of terrorism, Hersh writes.
"We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official tells Hersh. "This is the last hurrah – we’ve got four years and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom President Bush has asked to stay on in his second term, has been jockeying for more power to conduct covert ops without nagging congressional oversight.
"It’s a global free-fire zone," said one Pentagon adviser.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita issued a reply that takes on specific points in Hersh’s piece. Some of his biting overall comments included these:
The Iranian regime’s apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled “The Coming Wars.�
Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.
Mr. Hersh’s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made…..
By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history� novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present� that he has developed in several recent articles.
Mr. Hersh’s preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his discussion of Defense Department operations.
Finally, the views and policies Mr. Hersh ascribes to Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Feith, and other Department of Defense officials do not reflect their public or private comments or administration policy.
So what are we to make of this?
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Hersh’s recent pieces on the prison abuse scandals in Iraq proved largely correct if you look at what happened since and to whom even indirect blame was attributed.
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Hersh’s past record is mixed. As Doug Petch notes here, Hersh’s book The Dark Side of Camelot was to have had a slew of dramatic revelations based on new documents but they proved to be fake and Hersh defended them up until the end when he cut the section out of his book. His final book then seemed more a collection of gossip about JFK’s sexual escapades and lacked any substantial bite. Some 669 new and used copies of this book are on sale cheap — like, starting at 19 cents — on Amazon.com’s Marketplace.
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Hersh operates using sources most other reporter don’t use. Some analysts have suggested these are contacts within the intelligence community. So his work cannot be dismissed lightly….but it’s a different source network than most working reporters use. What is their motivation…and how accurate are they? No one knows (except Hersch.)
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For the past several years it was clear that the United States was going to have to watch Iran very carefully. It is actually a GIVEN that the U.S. will have to find a way to deal with the growing problem of Iran, which some analysts believe is a major behind-the-scenes international terrorism instigator. (Some of the books in the aftermath of 911 quoted intelligence officials with their suspicions about Iran in the overall scheme of international terrorism efforts).
So Hersh should not be totally dismissed as someone who makes things up. He is using sources. The question is the CREDIBILITY of his sources and the ACCURACY of his sources — questions that have been asked before about his work.
He is one of these "NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!!!!!!!!" journalists, not quite a print media version of that shameless sensationalist Geraldo Riviera, but still someone’s whose work should be read with a nice, big, fat chunk of salt. It COULD be correct — but you need a little more proof that it isn’t blown out of proportion first.
As my editors at various papers would have put it, "be a little careful because he seems a little wild." Which does not mean his info is all wrong (we don’t know) or accurate (we don’t know). But you can’t automatically take it a face value.
However, within the context of the war on terrorism it does NOT seem a stretch to believe that contingency plans exist to try and take out any perceived Iran threats. Fact: governments for years have had all kinds of contingency plans on foreign policy.
It also isn’t difficult to believe U.S. forces are covertly on the ground in Iran — although much less covert now given Hersh’s piece.
And it isn’t difficult to believe Hersh will have more to report on this and other related subjects this year. Will he prove to be right? We’ll see. But don’t bet your house on it either way. Yet.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.