His writing is a lot clearer than his talking. He's an old fashioned, tough
newspaperman. See if you can follow what he's saying in response to
questions, in this interview. I hope the book which just came out, is easier
to understand than this is. Each day, I look on Bookshare for it. I've asked
Deborah Murray if she'll scan it, if it doesn't appear.
Miriam
Seymour Hersh: The CIA Is Filled With Criminals
By Elon Green, Columbia Journalism Review
05 June 18
When a reporter has covered 50 years of American foreign policy disasters,
the last great untold story may be his own.
That, more or less, is the premise behind a new memoir by Seymour Hersh, the
investigative journalist who has been revealing secrets and atrocitiesand
often secret atrocitiesto great acclaim since he exposed the My Lai
Massacre in 1969.
Hershs book, economically titled Reporter, is focused on the work. I dont
want anybody reporting about my private life, he once said, and Hersh
abides by his own request. In lieu of the personal, were treated to the
professional: Hershs rise from the City News Bureau of Chicago to the
United Press International to the Associated Press.
His breakthrough, however, was as a freelancer: Hersh, famously, received a
tip about William Calley, a court-martialed Army lieutenant accused of
killing 109 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in a village nicknamed
Pinkville.
Calley was elusive. Hersh drove into Fort Benning and found him under house
arrest. For the resulting dispatches, Hersh was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
in International Reporting in 1970.
Hersh continued to reportmost notably, perhaps, for The New Yorkeron
post-9/11 activities; the Iraq War; Iran; and, contentiously, the killing of
Osama bin Laden.
He is now at work on a book about former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Hersh and I recently met at his office in Washington, DC, where I found his
desk covered in stacks of files. We talked, and kept talking over lunch,
about myriad topics, including protecting sources, self-care, Gina Haspel,
and revealing secrets.
THE OFFICE
Lets talk about why you wrote the memoir in the first place: The book about
Dick Cheney you were contracted to write was put on hold because you
believed, with good reason, that you couldnt protect your sources.
I couldnt do it. I was giving my sources chapterswhich I do, not all the
time, but stuff thats relevant, sensitiveand they thought Cheney would
figure out who was talking. They were worried.
So I had to go see Sonny Mehta [at Knopf], who paid me a lot of money for
that Cheney book. Dont forget, when I got through with The New Yorker, by
the time Obamas elected, I had a record of a lot of good work, so I signed
a contract for a lot of money. I signed a contract in about 11 and I
started working full-timescads of interviewsand I was told within two
months not to put anything in the computer by somebody who was still inside
working for Cheney. And I said, Oh, god. I said, Dont worry about it.
Im not going to connect it to the internet. He says, Youre not listening
to me. I said, No. Fucking. Kidding. The guy said I couldnt protect him.
So I went to see Sonny Mehta. It was a lot of money. And they said, Do this
memoir and well see if we can get you off the schneid. Thats the only
reason I ever did one.
Anyway, keep on going. Lets get a bunch done before we go eat.
Youve got a photo of Henry Kissinger above your computer. He wasnt a
nemesis, necessarily, but
You know, Kissinger used to insist when [The Price of Power] was coming out
that he didnt know me. And one of the things I would always do, even with
an archenemy, I would always call. And he would take the calls. The day
after the book came out, I was supposed to go on Nightline. Was a very big
show back in the 80s. Huge audience. But the night before I was on, [Ted
Koppel] brought up my book. Kissinger was on; the papers that night were all
full of my book. Kissinger said, This is outrageous. Ive never met him. I
dont know him.
And so, here
[Hersh produces a transcript of a taped phone call with
Kissinger] I would call up and ask him about the secret bombing in Cambodia.
He said, Were retroactively off the record. I said, Were talking off
the record? He said, Okay, all right. I said, On background. But that
means I can write it. He knows the difference between off the record and on
background.
And so it turns out he was getting a transcript an hour after I called. He
was getting a transcript after saying it was on background. The
motherfucker! But thats just the way it was. Anyway, keep on going.
Bob Woodward once said his worst source was Kissinger because he never told
the truth. Who was your worst source?
Oh, I wouldnt tell you.
You write that you chased the incredibly vague My Lai tip because you were
convinced your colleagues in the Pentagon press room wouldnt. Why wouldnt
they?
I was worried about The New York Times, if you notice, but I knew the guys
in the Pentagon press room wouldnt do it. It was so hard to report there.
Dont forget, anytime you saw a senior officer, they had to log [your name]
in. If you had a good story, you had to see five or six different people
with bullshit to mask the one guy that told you something important.
So it wasnt a matter of not wanting to tell the story?
I dont know. [Press room colleagues] treated me like some sort of rare,
exotic animal.
I knew from my own experiences that the war was bad and shit. And by the
way, I never thought for one minute that the fact that I learned OJT that
the war sucked made me a lefty. I mean, I was. I am a liberal. But I was
just somebody who knew the war sucked. I learned by just going to lunch with
these guys. They were saying how we have to kill everybody because there are
six lieutenant colonels and only one of you is gonna make colonel, and its
the one that kills the most. So in the last six months of your rotation as a
battalion commander, you just fucking
.You got 2,000 deaths, man. Thats how
bad it was.
I was dead set against the war. It was the right thing to be. Anybody with
any fucking brains was. Half the guys in the military were thinking of
quitting.
We should go. We can get into a restaurant across the street. I can get my
little salad. I dont eat much. Im reading this book [gestures to James
Comeys A Higher Loyalty]. This guy is nuts. Hes definitely strange.
LUNCH
How do you document your interviews? Do you use shorthand? Tape record?
I take notes and I go over them. I have a good memory and use a lot of
shorthand. All those little adjectives and adverbs, Ive got a little dash
for or something. I just write the keywords. My handwriting is bad, which is
good. I understand it and nobody else does. Then I immediately annotate. I
sit down, sometimes in the car if Im on the road. I never tape anything.
Look, if Im seeing a foreign presidenttheyd want to tape and Id want to
tape. But I have it transcribed by somebody else. Too boring.
But taping is good for capturing speech patterns and stuff like that.
When I talk about something secret and I show up with a tape recorder, Im
dead.
The New York Timess reliance on Kissinger wasnt shocking, but it was
grotesque. Max Frankel calling him Henry. How do you think their
friendliness with Kissinger affected coverage?
Horrible. They missed Watergate! He convinced them there was nothing there.
Kissinger was beloved by reporters because he was accessible. Not much has
changed; folks like Paul Ryan and John McCain still get glowing coverage
just because they talk to reporters.
Of course. Thats what its all about. Trump does, too. The secret to Trump,
I think, is he wants to be loved by The New York Times as much as by Fox
News. He talks to them a lot, more than they tell you. He waits
outsideapparently theres a corridor from the press room to the bathroom,
and hes hanging around that corridor. He likes to yap.
Do you think the Timess desire to keep Trump talking makes them pull their
punches?
No, I dont think theyre pulling punches. I think theyre overpunching. I
mean, what are they going to do if they dont indict him? What are they
going to do?
Given the amount of really horrible things youve covered over the years,
you seem very stable emotionally.
I dont socialize with nobodynot with people in government, even my good
sources. I have old friends. Most of them are not in government. I like
tennis and sports. I had rotator cuff surgery recently, so Im about a month
away from getting back. Ill go the gym maybe today or tomorrow.
So its really about having a boundary between work and the rest of your
life
Yeah, theres a big boundary. Do I get depressed? Yes. But everybody should
be, now.
Here, you have to have one of these. See what youre missing. [Hersh puts
some tuna tartare on my plate.]
Thank you. You mentioned three instances of Richard Nixon beating his wife.
Oh, god.
You decided not to report on them or even tell an editor. If you got that
same information today, what would you do?
I was talking to the Nieman fellows [about the beating incidents], after
Nixon was gone. I thought it was off the record. The thing I misjudged is
the anger of the women when I didnt realize [the abuse] was a crime. You
will see, in the book you have, the readers copy, that I changed it.
You know, my wife likes opera, and Ive learned to like a lot of itVerdi,
other stuff. And SiriusXM, which has an opera channel that we listen to in
the car, announced that its no longer going to play any operas conducted by
[James] Levine. And that stuff seems crazy to me. But I assume that, for a
lot of women, it would be right. I dont know. Im still at a strange place
on all this stuff. But at least youll see the change I madethat was a
heartfelt change. Id thought about it.
But I wouldnt start an investigation, even now. I got it from inside the
hospital. I had a problem from the beginning about reporting it, because the
initial source came fromit was the doctor.
So it was mostly about protecting the source? I misunderstood that in the
book.
What I did do, I asked John Ehrlichman about it, and I was curious. Before
he died, he was talking a lot to me. And he knew of other times Nixon did
it. Everybody knew he did it, he said. Oy vey iz mir, as my father would
say. I mean, what the fuck?
But I didnt even want to say that it was a source issue, because that would
get back to the hospital. I shouldve kept my mouth shut. I never, never
thought they were taping [the Nieman remarks].
On the other hand, as Jack Kennedy used to say, Nothing is off the record.
Nothing. The Kennedys were tough.
How did you become acquainted with the chief of CIA Counterintelligence,
James Angleton?
In 72, I got invited to one of those old-fashioned dinners by a senior
Times guy, a very elegant man. After dinner, the women were excused. My wife
said, Never again. Right? And we smoked cigarsit was the first time I
ever met James Angleton. Come on.
Angleton was fascinating. Are there still people like him in the
intelligence agencies?
No. He was smartreally, really smart. I think this Gina [Haspel] is very
smart. I watched her testify. Shes very bright. I know some things about
her. Yeah, she did torture, but everybody knew about that the torture,
including Congress. What I do know, from my friends, is the stuff she files
is really good. Since shes been Acting Director for about three months,
shes done great reporting.
In a memo to Abe Rosenthal in March of 75, while you were reporting on a
Russian submarine, you wrote: Im not going around shooting off my mouth
about ongoing [reconnaissance] operations, but when one of the programs
seems risky and over-priced, and theres a legitimate news peg, it doesnt
make sense not to tell the American people about it.
Then you noted, I was such a purist. Do you feel like youre now less or
more of a purist?
If theres something they were doing that was right, I didnt touch it. But
some of the operations that have been described to me as good turn out to be
crazy, or stuff that seemed right turned out to be shit.
I saw an old senator yesterday, had to go to some fancy party in Georgetown.
Full of spies and Brits. This town doesnt change. It was at a very fancy
club, and there was British spy, a guy from MI6. All sorts of people from
the Agency were there. I cant stand that stuff. I got outta there in an
hour.
The whole source businessI know a bunch of people who are out that could
get anything they wanted if I ask them.
So a source not being in is not necessarily an impediment to good
information?
You have to be careful, but you have to deal with guys that are known to be
good guys on the inside and trusted. Its very ideological, but you can get
information. Theres [an Agency] guy; I was screaming at him once about
fucking up the FBI after 9/11. And he said to me, Sy, you dont get it. The
FBI catches bank robbers and we rob banks. I thought to myself, Fuck!
Thats just exactly right. Theyre criminals, what the CIA does. Its all
criminal activity. If youve ever watch The Americans, its an exaggeration,
but
.I tell my wife, They dont shoot people like that. Take out the
killing and thats what people do. They do this kind of shitstupid stuff.
Lets do a few more and get out of here. I need to go back to my office.
Again and again, your stories expose the deceit of politicians, but they
also expose the reporters who defended them. Ted Koppel, who was critical
about your reporting on Kissinger, later acknowledged that hed been offered
the job of State Department spokesman and struggled with it for about three
or four weeks before turning it down.
Heres what got me about Ted
[Waitress: Any coffees or cappuccinos, gentlemen?]
No, I think just the check and well share it. Well share it. Thats what
we should do. I always do that. You dont want to buy me and I dont want to
buy you.
So anyway, heres what happened: Its very strange about Ted. I like him. I
was in Jerusalem with my wife. I have a friend in Mossad, and he writes me.
He was here undercover and I got to know him.
Israel is strange, man. Anyway, so Im here for a wedding. He called up,
this guy, his name is Dudu. I met him in the early 80s. He came up to me at
a party and said, We ought to talk. He said he was a businessman, lived in
Bethesda. And the thing about him, his oldest sonI coach soccer for kids. I
had two kids early, and God knows, after dinner my wife would say, You take
the 3-year-old, Ill take the 1-year-old. Id say, No, no, no, Ive got to
go to my office because Im saving America. You know what I mean? But I
figured out, by the last kid, Id go to his games and coach soccer for about
10 years. I coached soccer to the point where the boys were about 12. And
after a practice Id say, Lets go. Were going to run three miles now. Get
in shape. And if I walked away and turned around quickly thered be five of
these: [gestures] Fuck you signs. Thats when I gave up.
But anyway, what I learned later is that you cant save the world. So this
guy from Mossad, we became friends. I liked him. There wasnt much I could
do with him. One day I took him, theres a wonderful little German
restaurant here called the Mozart Café. And this was 86, 87
You had started to say something about Ted Koppel, if you want to finish
that thought
I was in Jerusalem and we were at that wonderful hotel in East Jerusalem.
Hard to get into. And he was there, and so we had a great time, this was
about 10 years ago. And then before that, before I knew what he said in
2005, I didnt know about that till I was working on the book. I knew a
little bit about it, I knew hed been close to Kissinger because Kissinger
was on his show all the time.
I was at an off-the-record thing after 9/11, on the First Amendment before
the New York Bar. It was an off-the-record deal. And [Koppel] was on the
platform. And off the record he was awesome about how fucked up things
werehe got it. On the air he wasnt. I know hes bright. Hes a refugee,
you know what I mean? Hes a landsman, in a way. But theres something
muting about the business. I cant stand cable television. Its just so
dumb.
In your memoir, you say, I can write now what I could not [in 1990], which
was that the CIA had impeccable intelligence, conversation on nuclear issues
in real-time, from deep inside the Pakistan nuclear establishment. Why
couldnt you report that?
Because the person who told me was still in. [Now] hes long gone.
Did you run that by him while you were working on the book to make sure it
was okay to disclose?
Hes gone completely crazy. Its been 30 years.
BACK IN THE OFFICE
In a footnote, you mentioned that George Soros asked to meet with you after
one of your 9/11 stories in The New Yorker, and you initially declined. Why?
Because it was a story about intercepts of the Saudis. I knew he would guess
correctly that there was a lot of talk about oil, so I thought his purpose
was not necessarily marginal. I had never met George and I didnt wanna go.
But he then went to Morton Abramowitz, whos a friend of mine, who had been
ambassador to Thailand among other things. And Mort called up and said hes
going to give me $50,000 [for Abramowitz]. Ten people are going to come to
that dinner and [Soros] is gonna to pay $5,000 each to me if you come. So
how could I say no? So I said yes and fuck if they didnt have it; theyre
all brokers.
Stock brokers?
Oil brokers! George is a master, man. I avoid those guys like the plague.
You write that you knew about atrocities during the Iraq War, including
Americans destroying with acid the bodies of detainees who had died during
torture. But you didnt report it because Cheney would have destroyed your
sources. How did you protect your sources during the Bush years?
It was hardby not writing stuff I knew.
It wasnt so much about how you wrote about them, its that you didnt write
about them?
Here, dont speak. [Hersh produces a memo] Youre just going to watch right
there. I just happened to pull this out today. The classification on this is
above the world. Its something about a brief on Gray Fox. Ive never heard
of Gray Fox and youve never heard of Gray Fox, ok? The date of this paper
is [redacted].
Thats a report to the Secretary of Defense about whats going on with
Afghan detainee issues. Thats some low-intensity work there, special ops.
Specific issues about prisoners. What the fuck? I have never been able to
find out what happened to [the prisoners]. I have some bad thoughts, because
we thought everybody that was a tough little kid was Al Qaeda. Ive asked
everybody. Its scary. The capacity to do stupid fucking things in America
is just fucking scary.
I dont publish that stuff. A lot of guys would just go with it. I want to
know why. First of all, I dont know anything about what happened. The
suggestion, obviously, is somehow some people were hurt or put away, but I
dont know that, either. And I was worried about getting the source of all
that exposed. I dont know if that was a memo written to five people or four
or six or seven. And I cant be sure if theres some designator in it. You
know, theyre very sophisticated now in tracing papers.
You describe Mary McGrory as a fearless and moral voice. Who do you see as
such a person today?
Youre talking to somebody who grew up with a New York Times that had Tony
Lewis, Tom Wicker, and Russell Baker writing columns. Now, theres some good
stuff. But theres too many screeds about Trump from the columnists. Tom
Friedman still runs around the world, but I dont see enough reporting being
done by the columnists. Yes, we talk about immigration and shrieking about
the president, but theres nobody writing about what to do and how to solve
it.
If we could return to the Cheney book for a moment: You didnt want to
publish the book because of threats to your sources, and the risk to their
careers?
Prosecution! Obamas prosecuting. Remember the guy that went to jail?
Risens source? I dont know the inside story, but what the hell? Hes
prosecuting people left, right, and center.
I think theres a disproportionate amount of resources focused on the White
House as opposed to Congress. Do you agree with that?
Its catnip, man; the White House is catnip. And Obama was catnip. I gave
Obama a lot of slack. I know he lied about bin Laden; I just know it, I
dont care if its never proven, I dont care if anybody cares. I know he
made a deal with the Pakistanis. I know that he made a deal not to tell and
he told about it. The bottom line is he did order a hit; he did kill him; he
worked closely with the Pakistanis. How could you not?
Were you reluctant to publish the bin Laden story?
I was eager to run it.
Just this week, there was a story in The New York Times about a book by a
former head of the Pakistani intelligence service. He said the same thing.
In the book, he said money was paid, which is also what I understand.
Did you suspect there would be backlash to your story?
Did I suspect thered be backlash? My experience has been, when you have a
major story like thatif you go back and look, the White House controlled
the story for two weeks. Reporters were begging for something different and
exclusive. At one point, one of the big stories was about a dog that was
brought by the SEALs on the trip. The dog was apparently barking in Urdu
[laughs].
Im just saying, when you have a story like that, in which everyone gets
involved in briefingsMcDonough, Brennanthis is obviously about reelection.
Did the backlash and disbelief from non-experts tell us anything about the
importance of the official bin Laden narrative as put forth by the
government and other reporting?
Well, its not a new phenomenon that when theres a crisis, the White House
controls the story. What I find pernicious now about cable television is
that, at any given moment on any given day, the White House can give the
networks the leak and they get right to it. No one verifies it. They just
put out breaking story, breaking news. But I remember there was a lot of
rage at my story, a lot of anger, and a lot of very good reporters said
this cant be true. And I remember thinking to myself, Dont they have
mothers? Hasnt anyone told them that, a year or two later, there might be a
different story coming out?
But Im used to this.
I will return to the Cheney book when those who helped me learn what I did
after 9/11 will not be in peril, you write. When would that be?
Now. One of the problems is, one of those who helped me is now working for
thisworking still inside.
Theres still a deep coreits not paranoia, its not something like a deep
state. But I have to think of a way to incorporate what I have.
[Phone rings, Hersh answers and chats for several minutes.]
Even though hes not in office, Dick Cheney remains a threat to your
sources?
Yeah. Directly.
And yet youre still doing the book.
Oh, my God. Its my meal ticket, man. I mean, we live hand to mouth. I think
its gonna be the next book.
Do younger CIA agents treat you differently than the older generation?
No, I hardly know them. Theres no contact. There used to be a time, believe
it or not, when I would go every year to meet the rising GS-12s of the
National Security Agency. We would talk about the press. These are linguists
and cryptographers. I used to always joke that Im gonna leave
self-addressed stamped envelopes here and stuff like that. But theres no
contact anymore. Theyre too uptight. And maybe theyre right to be. Maybe
the press has changed.
I always thought my business as a reporter was to take a dispute and resolve
it. I mentioned in the introduction about treating things as the tip. The
first story the Times wrote on [Hillary Clintons] emailthat was
off-the-top, flimsy, one or two days after they had it. They had no idea
what a good story it was.
In the book Im writing, I can segue into this stuff; Im writing a lot
about what was going on in the FBI. There was a lot going on that was
counter-Trump, I will tell you that. Im telling you, its the missed story
of all time.
OK, couple more. We gotta go.
Why did a presidential commission investigating the CIA believe you were
working for foreign intelligence?
Howd you find that story?
I, um, just happened to be reading the Miami Herald.
Yeah! Cause Angleton was crazy. I had to be working for foreign
intelligence. Hes nuts. Thats why I went to Colby. But nobodys asked me
about that. Of course they were looking at me. There was a fascination with
me in the CIA. Theres a study called William Colby as Director of Central
Intelligence 1973-1976 by Harold Ford, a historian. It was written in 93,
declassified in 2011. And chapter seven is Hershs Charges Against the
CIA. Theres 12 pages on me.
Two years before I published [the story on CIA operations against the
anti-war movement], in December of 74, they were tracking me that long. All
sorts of intercepts of me. Theyre taping me every time I call Colby at
home! Colby knew all about this criminal activity, and they never told
Justice. So I went to see Larry Silberman, who was the number two man in
Justice. So I go to Silberman, call him up and say, I better tell you
something. The CIAs got this shit going on. So then, the day Im writing
the story, Silberman calls Colby, and hes taped. Taped even Silberman! Ford
wrote that On 21 December, Silberman told Colby that Hersh had phoned to
tell him in advance of Colbys meeting with Silberman on the 19th.
The whole thing is amazing.
So Angleton really thought that you were
Oh, what else could he think? He was such a nut. They were so crazy. He used
to talk to me, and tried to bribe me.
What?
[Angleton] tried to bribe me not to do the domestic spying story. He gave me
a story that I feared was true about something going on in Russia. And I
thought, what the fuck is this? So I called Colby, not knowing they taped
everything. I had his home number. I said, I got a problem, what the fuck
is this?
Colby told me later that was the final straw, and thats why he said he had
to fire [Angleton]because it was an ongoing operation.
Which I didnt write about. I have no idea if its true or not because its
a whole hall of mirrors.
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