The reaction to Seymour Hersh's piece on the death of Osama bin Laden is the latest example of how power-friendly journalists keep two sets of ethical books.
Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
I'll admit my first reaction to Seymour Hersh's piece on the killing of Osama bin Laden was, why are we interested in this exactly? It doesn't start out too well either. The first paragraph claims the raid was "a major factor in [Obama's] re-election." I must have been reading different news in the fall of 2012. I seem to recall it being mentioned a few times but it was hardly a central plank of the campaign. Moments like Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment or the "please proceed, Governor" debate fiasco are individual moments that stand out. As for messaging, it seems like economic issues dominated. By far the most memorable commercial was the "It Was Like Building My Own Coffin" ad. So no, calling it a major factor just seems like empty hype for what follows.
Then the very next sentence, the third of the story, the thing that's supposed to grab you and compel you to read on, is: it was not true that "senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance." That may be front page stuff in Pakistan, or not, who knows, but the ISI being in the loop is not the kind of thing I'll spend much time worrying about.
The narrative didn't exactly propel me forward - there's a lot of inside baseball. A few items are fascinating though. For instance, Hersh claims bin Laden was no longer in command of anything of consequence. If true, that changes the story we've told ourselves about bin Laden's death. As it currently stands, it was something like an act of self defence. Public enemy number one was still in operational control of a vast and implacably hostile terror network, so killing him kept him from murdering any other Americans. The trove of material found in the compound would help prevent additional deaths.
If Hersh's reporting is correct, though, there were considerably less noble intentions at work. It wasn't protecting the citizenry but simple revenge. He killed 3,000 of us, fuck him, we want him dead. I suspect that would still have been accepted, too. I doubt too many of his countrymen would have recoiled if Obama had said something like: "We don't know if he's in control of al Qaida or not, and we don't care. This is retribution for 9/11. While it won't bring back any of the dead, it satisfies a desire for a grim kind of justice."
That is a very different story, though. It may be justifiable, maybe no one would blame us for wanting him dead on those grounds - but it's hardly virtuous. And I don't think many of us would easily give up the tone of righteousness we've used concerning the Global War On Terror.
So even if you have problems with the overall arc of the story, Hersh's piece has some worthwhile bits to chew over. And typically when a big investigative piece drops, the initial reaction is collective shock as it sinks in. Then people start to digest it, poke at it, and look to either discredit or confirm it. But this piece is getting attacked right away, and in very personal terms.
Max Fisher, for example, says "[Hersh's] reports have become less and less credible." Among these "newer and more conspiratorial stories" is one about a military strike on Iran which never happened. Considering that imminent war with Iran is a go-to subject from Atlantic cover stories down to the neocon fever swamps, it seems a bit strange to single out Hersh for his entry in the genre.
When he finally does turn to the piece, Fisher muddies the water. Hersh claims there was no trove of intelligence material taken from the Abbottabad compound, and writes: 1. A Washington Post story purportedly summarizing some of the trove was vague and contradictory. 2. A government-contracted private research group provided translations of some of the material, and it was underwhelming and contradictory. 3. An anonymous retired official insisted the CIA did not contribute to the private research group's effort.
Hersh doesn't say nothing came out of Abbottabad, just nothing with the kind of relevance officials claimed. Here is Fisher's characterization: "The intelligence 'treasure trove' was thus a fabrication, cooked up by the CIA after the raid to back up the American-Pakistani conspiracy" - which strongly implies Hersh reported nothing at all came from the compound. He did, though. He just questioned its relevance, as well as the provenance of some of what was claimed to come from there. That hardly strikes me as tin foil hat territory.
Overall, Fisher writes as someone who presumptively believes the government's story. Contradictions, thin sourcing, overly generous grants of anonymity - these aren't problems for those who pass along the official line from Washington, but for those who question it. I'm not saying Hersh should get a pass. His work absolutely should be scrutinized, and should be challenged on many of the points Fisher highlights. But that approach is used with a curious inconsistency.
It's revealing that Fisher links to a story by another Hersh critic - one that puts the word rendition in scare quotes and notes Hersh is "writing a book on what he called the 'Cheney-Bush years' and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration." Because God forbid anyone detect institutional rot at the heart of our homeland security strategy. Whatever you do, don't question the existing power structure. To succeed in DC you need to play the game, and stories like Hersh's, if nothing else, make it very clear who's on the team and who isn't.