| What do I know about
anything?"
Claire Truscott talks to arch-muckraker Seymour Hersh
about journalism, ethics and the Iraq War
Seymour Hersh
is in an impatient mood. He got back from Italy an hour
ago and the story he's been working on for the last month
has come to nothing. So when he agrees to an interview
it's with little grace: "And they want it now? For
May? OK, well let's just do it quickly. Let's just do
it."
The prize-winning journalist turned 68 last month and
remains, as Spectator magazine describes, him: "America's
deadliest investigative reporter." Recently, he wrote
that US Special Forces were in Iran. Most famously, a
year ago he revealed the full extent of torture by US
military personnel at Abu Ghraib.
His first big break came 36 years ago. While freelancing,
Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam
War, when US troops killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.
Hersh knocked on door after door to piece together the
events he chronicled in print. The story won him a Pulitzer
and kick-started a career of investigations, revisited
in several books, including most recently Chain of Command,
in which Hersh traces responsibility for US prisoner abuses
to the highest echelons of the Bush administration.
He is ambivalent about the fame that comes with it: "Right
now, I do a lot of speeches because people want me to
talk, and I've learned to do them because I make a lot
of money and I'm a pain in the arse. I do it because in
another three weeks something else will be in fashion."
But right now he is not in the mood to wax lyrical. 'Oscar
the Grouch' spends the next 25 minutes stone-walling my
questions: "It's just too self-serving of a question,"
he says, while openly mocking others. "Do you confuse
me with some sort of guru? What the fuck do I know about
something?" he says, before proceeding to answer
with such insight you're left wondering where the joke
rests.
Ask Hersh what drives him in his endless pursuit of dirt
and he says: "Are you kidding me? It's a great story!"
His retorts are revealing. Hersh is no ideologue; he is
a muckraker who goes in and gets the story. No guiding
moral force, no Michael Moore-style rants. In fact, it
is ideology he believes has got his government into this
mess. "I joke that we have a Trotskyite president.
He wouldn't know what it means, but Wolfowitz would. Yeah,
of course it's dangerous. Any sort of... fanatic... but
I think they believe it. They're not lies to the people
who say them - I wish they were."
Teasingly suggesting it seems generous to acquit the government
of manipulation, Hersh pounces: "I think you misunderstand
me. When you really believe in something, that it's your
fate in life to change the Middle East and bring democracy
to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, y'know, whether there's
been democracy there or whether they want it... I think
we'd be in much better shape if it was just a bunch of
propaganda and manipulation and lying. That's not generosity,
that's terrifying."
The feeling is mutual: leading neo-conservative Richard
Perle has called Hersh "the closest thing American
journalism has to a terrorist". But it wasn't always
that way. Hersh told the Guardian: "The funny thing
is I always liked Perle... We had a friendship, based
on the fact that he's very smart." Does he think
this kind of access to power helped make the muckraker?
After all, he started out as an Army press officer and
spent a brief time working for Congress. "Ha ha,
you're talking to somebody who wrote home town press releases
and speeches for a man running for the presidency. If
you're thinking those things are 'access to power'...
I've been to Perle's house. Who hasn't?" But change
tack and Hersh tells you: "No no, you're giving up
too easily on this, why do you give up so easily?"
With other fish to fry, the conversation moves to his
trusted sources. Hersh's editors know all of his anonymous
sources, but he has had his fair share of stings. In 1974
he accused the US ambassador to Chile of knowing about
a CIA plot to overthrow president Salvador Allende and
later had to print a retraction. In the mid-1990s he saw
documents alleging that Marilyn Monroe had blackmailed
JFK. By the time it was revealed that they were probably
fake, the hype surrounding his 'scoop' had ensured professional
embarrassment.
It's the nature of the beast for Hersh. "You have
to understand that reporters like information, and we
take it. That's part of the problem we have as journalists."
What does he think of the BBC's promise, post-Hutton report,
to insist on multiple sources? "That's all crazy,
of course it's crazy. I shouldn't say it so flippantly.
That doesn't solve anything. So, if somebody wants to
con you he works twice as hard."
If his tendency to patronise his interviewer seems conceited,
it belies a modesty and a sentimentality for his profession
revealed when asked about his talent. "(Good journalism)
has nothing to do with what I do - it's much more dependent
on external events and values. You have a president who's
off the wall. The fact that two weeks ago in the midst
of all the hoopla, the Poles of all people pulled out
(of Iraq) with no attention paid to them interests me."
He regales the tale of his best article since My Lai,
a 25,000-word piece accusing a US General of killing retreating
troops in Iraq in 1991. "Nobody gave a shit. It was
exhuming a series of atrocities that happened ten years
earlier in a war everybody thought we'd won, and nobody
could have cared less."
On the 'war on terror', Hersh takes the role of wisened
old hack. "I think the idea that you had to go after
Bin Laden with bombs rather than judicial writs is probably
a mistake. Terrorism peaks and comes and goes, history's
shown us that. I would have been much calmer about it.
9/11 was a horrible thing, and I can understand the overreaction.
But it was an overreaction, and the problem is we can't
correct it now."
The overreaction and ideology of the American administration
continues, and Hersh is on its heels. He says there will
be more on Iran. But his recent report also mentioned
several North African states. "I think North Africa's
very interesting, as you raise it. I think we're doing
a lot more there than people know... Intelligence operations
and operational stuff going on." Special Forces?
Covert Ops? "I didn't say that."
And with that final grumble Hersh hangs up. And we are
done.
Seymour Hersh, Concert Hall, Brighton
Dome, May 25, 7.30pm, £6-10. Tel 01273 709709. Chain
of Command (Penguin) is out in paperback from May 26,
priced £7.99.
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Tickets 01273
709709 or www.brighton-festival.org.uk
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copyright The Insight
2005 |
