zimv20
Jun 27, 2004, 01:16 PM
link (http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-040623hersh,1,5261144.story?coll=chi-homepagenews2-utl)
i found this to be a good, informative article. i didn't even know mr. hersh is from chicago. from the article, here's a short list of his accomplishments:
From these streets sprang a groundbreaking journalist who has revealed some of America's darkest official secrets.
Hersh's 1969 disclosure of the My Lai massacre has been called pivotal in turning the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War. He detailed President Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia, CIA spying on American dissidents and the hidden nuclear arms programs of Israel and Pakistan.
Today, Hersh is widely credited with breaking the news that Iraqi war prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib, although a few of the iconic photographs were aired on CBS' "60 Minutes II" on April 28, two days before his detailed account was posted by The New Yorker magazine. The scandal has roiled the Bush administration and refigured world opinion about the U.S.
"I can't think of a single reporter who has brought more important stories to light," said Bill Kovach, founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Hersh's editor at The New York Times during the 1970s.
"Sy exposed some of the most despicable behavior on the part of public officials," Kovach said. "He's made Americans aware when our leaders don't measure up to the values expressed in all the songs we sing and pledges we make."
[...]
Written in the face of libel threats and official denial, Hersh's New Yorker stories since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks won a National Magazine last month. The New Yorker pieces helped expose the administration's false claim that Iraq got nuclear materials from Niger, broke news about the illicit nuclear weapons dealing of A.Q. Khan, the architect of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and traced sensitive NSA eavesdrops suggesting corruption among Saudi leaders.
His May New Yorker story "Chain of Command" alleged that Defense Secretay Rumsfeld personally authorized a secret program of harsh prisoner interrogation in Afghanistan that laid the foundation for the Abu Ghraib horrors. Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita called that story "outlandish, conspiratorial" and "journalistic malpractice."
learned this bit of history between him and some current administration officials:
In 1975 when Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were top aides to President Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld floated a proposal to have the FBI search Hersh's home to halt his reporting on a submarine espionage program, papers from the Gerald R. Ford Library show.
and what does mr. hersh say about what's going on these days?
"We're living in dark times," he says, gently rubbing his gray-thatched temples. He inhabits a reality we can barely glimpse, crosscut by the chatter of encrypted satellite signals. For national security officials, leaking to Hersh is "generally better than writing a memo to the president," remarks his friend and competitor --Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.
In recent months, The New Yorker editor David Remnick says, Hersh "seems to begin every phone call with the line, `It's worse than you think.'"
The secrets don't show on his face, but when Hersh lets down his guard even a little, the inner life of the inside man seems to leak into the air around him. He is haunted by the as-yet-unpublished photographs of Iraq prison abuses. "You haven't begun to see evil until you've seen some of these pictures that haven't come out," he says.
There are still prisons the public doesn't know about, he says. Secret prisons. "I would guess -- I don't have it pure -- but we're basically in the disappearing business," he tells his U. of C. audience.
Hersh is worried that America doesn't have good intelligence within the Iraqi insurgency. "We don't know what's going to happen next," he says. "We have no endgame." And the nation's reputation is shattered among middle-class Muslims "who want to do business and send their kids to school here."
"The fragility of our government is terrifying," he tells his U. of C. audience. A handful of neoconservatives took control of the levers of government "without a peep from the bureaucracy, the Congress, the press," he says. "It was so easy. They did it so smoothly. What is it about us that made us so vulnerable to these people?"
emphasis mine
i found this to be a good, informative article. i didn't even know mr. hersh is from chicago. from the article, here's a short list of his accomplishments:
From these streets sprang a groundbreaking journalist who has revealed some of America's darkest official secrets.
Hersh's 1969 disclosure of the My Lai massacre has been called pivotal in turning the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War. He detailed President Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia, CIA spying on American dissidents and the hidden nuclear arms programs of Israel and Pakistan.
Today, Hersh is widely credited with breaking the news that Iraqi war prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib, although a few of the iconic photographs were aired on CBS' "60 Minutes II" on April 28, two days before his detailed account was posted by The New Yorker magazine. The scandal has roiled the Bush administration and refigured world opinion about the U.S.
"I can't think of a single reporter who has brought more important stories to light," said Bill Kovach, founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Hersh's editor at The New York Times during the 1970s.
"Sy exposed some of the most despicable behavior on the part of public officials," Kovach said. "He's made Americans aware when our leaders don't measure up to the values expressed in all the songs we sing and pledges we make."
[...]
Written in the face of libel threats and official denial, Hersh's New Yorker stories since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks won a National Magazine last month. The New Yorker pieces helped expose the administration's false claim that Iraq got nuclear materials from Niger, broke news about the illicit nuclear weapons dealing of A.Q. Khan, the architect of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and traced sensitive NSA eavesdrops suggesting corruption among Saudi leaders.
His May New Yorker story "Chain of Command" alleged that Defense Secretay Rumsfeld personally authorized a secret program of harsh prisoner interrogation in Afghanistan that laid the foundation for the Abu Ghraib horrors. Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita called that story "outlandish, conspiratorial" and "journalistic malpractice."
learned this bit of history between him and some current administration officials:
In 1975 when Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were top aides to President Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld floated a proposal to have the FBI search Hersh's home to halt his reporting on a submarine espionage program, papers from the Gerald R. Ford Library show.
and what does mr. hersh say about what's going on these days?
"We're living in dark times," he says, gently rubbing his gray-thatched temples. He inhabits a reality we can barely glimpse, crosscut by the chatter of encrypted satellite signals. For national security officials, leaking to Hersh is "generally better than writing a memo to the president," remarks his friend and competitor --Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.
In recent months, The New Yorker editor David Remnick says, Hersh "seems to begin every phone call with the line, `It's worse than you think.'"
The secrets don't show on his face, but when Hersh lets down his guard even a little, the inner life of the inside man seems to leak into the air around him. He is haunted by the as-yet-unpublished photographs of Iraq prison abuses. "You haven't begun to see evil until you've seen some of these pictures that haven't come out," he says.
There are still prisons the public doesn't know about, he says. Secret prisons. "I would guess -- I don't have it pure -- but we're basically in the disappearing business," he tells his U. of C. audience.
Hersh is worried that America doesn't have good intelligence within the Iraqi insurgency. "We don't know what's going to happen next," he says. "We have no endgame." And the nation's reputation is shattered among middle-class Muslims "who want to do business and send their kids to school here."
"The fragility of our government is terrifying," he tells his U. of C. audience. A handful of neoconservatives took control of the levers of government "without a peep from the bureaucracy, the Congress, the press," he says. "It was so easy. They did it so smoothly. What is it about us that made us so vulnerable to these people?"
emphasis mine
