4 ms·
Unfortunately, Sy Hersh has built a reputation for both breaking big stories but also getting big claims wrong. Personally, I find his description of his primar
by HillRat 11y ago
Unfortunately, Sy Hersh has built a reputation for both breaking big stories but also getting big claims wrong. Personally, I find his description of his primary source a bit worrying: "(a retired senior intelligence official) ... (knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad) ... (privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid), and (to the various after-action reports)."
That's four assertions about his source, and none of them indicate that the source had any official role in the lead up to or the execution of the mission -- or, indeed, that he was even active in the IC at the time. That, plus the source's use of Vietnam-era terminology, suggests he could have started his career in the 1960s or very early 1970s, and thus could be at least five and as much as 10-15 years retired from the IC (assuming he had a full career at the Agency), and relying on contacts still active in the community for his information. The only statement that indicates the source had access to primary-source docs regards the SEALs' AARs, and even then it's impossible to be certain that Hersh's phrasing actually means that.
In this, Hersh is starting to remind me of many conservative writers who relied on similar source of often dubious quality -- Michael Ledeen's close connections with SISMI (now AISE) being one example, or the network of former CIA officers who whiled away the post-Stansfield Turner years running private intelligence shops and flowing questionable allegations to the National Review.
If Hersh is right -- and "right" in this case, given the explosive nature of his allegations, doesn't even mean in the ballpark, just playing the same game -- then this story is huge, the sort of thing that would forever color Obama's place in history and would probably bring Hillary's political hopes crashing to ground. But extraordinary claims require &c., and the fact that Hersh had to publish this in the LRB rather than The New Yorker or WaPo (both regular outlets for many of his scoops) indicates that their editors were very uncomfortable with his sourcing as well.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoI read the article, because it's at such variance with the official version. I have no idea how close to reality it is. My gut feeling is that your skepticism is justified. would probably bring Hillary's political hopes crashing to ground Here we disagree. To put it crudely: NOBODY GIVES A FUCK! Let's look at something IMO much more serious, Hillary's prowess at trading commodities.[1] She supposedly makes a cash deposit of under $1,000 into a trading account, and through a series of quite astute trades walks away with about $100,000 (about $323,000 in today's money) in about ten months, all as part-time activity. As someone summarized it: Only four explanations can account for these remarkable results. 1) Blair may have been an exceptionally good trader. 2) Hillary Clinton may have been exceptionally lucky. 3) Blair may have been front-running other orders. 4) Or Blair may have arranged to have a broker fraudulently assign trades to benefit Clinton's account. Unless she was one of the greatest "amateur" commodities traders of all time, this was nothing more than a bribe to the Governor and First Lady of Arkansas. But, like I said, NOBODY GIVES A FUCK. As Wikipedia put it: "There were no official investigations of the trading and Clinton was never charged with any wrongdoing." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_...
- nl 11y agoNobody gives a fuck because there's no story. It was a long time ago and the combination of Blair being good and Clinton being lucky. They all made money, Clinton got out of the market before Blair, and then Blair went on to lose money.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agothe combination of Blair being good and Clinton being lucky Did you read the Wiki? Someone did some calculations of the "luck" involved: Using a model that was stated to give the hypothetical investor the benefit of the doubt, they concluded that the odds of such a return happening were at best 1 in 31 trillion For comparison, current Powerball odds are a mere 1 in 175 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#Payout_and_odds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#Payout_and_odds
- nl 11y agoYeah. If you calculate the odds on any given combination of trades they are frequently vanishingly rare. Lottery wins are incredibly unlikely too, and yet people win them.
- mercer 11y agoYes, but if the person winning the lottery is part of the lottery company, or has connections to it, a lot of suspicion seems warranted.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- waterlesscloud 11y agoI don't know if his story is correct or not, but it does make more sense than any of the several, constantly-changing official versions we've been offered.
- mgarfias 11y agoThe man can't even grasp the differences between special forces and special operations. Sensitive comm gear most definitely would have been smoked, but not with concussion grenades. So manyittle things wrong here that I can't give any credit to anything in this dumb article
- da02 11y agoWhat were some of the big things he got wrong in the past? (I'm curious since he's got a good reputation among the news publications I read.)
- extra88 11y agoHis Wikipedia article [1] has some examples, I think the worst example is the claim that the U.S. was funding a terrorist organization in Lebanon. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Criticism
- da02 11y agoThanks. I feel stupid not looking at that first.
- onewaystreet 11y ago> Then this story is huge, the sort of thing that would forever color Obama's place in history and would probably bring Hillary's political hopes crashing to ground. Few in the US are going to care either way. Osama is dead. How it happened doesn't really matter.