"It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?" Smiley slowly lifts his turtle-lidded eyes. "That would be Seymour Hersh."
From the ghosts of My Lai to the ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Hersh has surely made some violence-prone enemies, poking his nose where it hasn't been invited, following it with a sharp stick to unearth the villainy when humans embrace the dark side. It's a wonder he's still alive. But few independent investigative reporters have as many ears listening as Hersh, and it would be noticed if he'd gone missing. With The Killing of Osama bin Laden, he's at it again, debriding the official narrative, making more enemies. "The story stunk from Day 1," he told a reporter. Go on, Mr. Hersh.
The Killing of Osama bin Laden is a collection of four pieces Hersh contributed to the London Review of Books. Some have sniffed that they didn't appear in the New Yorker, as if the LRB had never heard of fact checking. The grief-of-denial the stories have spawned has come from various sources including vested interests: parties to the crime, writers who got the story wrong. But these four works are tight investigative reports, with the gaps to be expected, and with the gathering momentum of Hersh's experience and reasoning. In the end, one set of stories is seasoned and matured; there is no rush to press. The other stories — official press briefing, book, article, television, film — have seasoned too, like the contents of a dumpster in the sun. Your choice.
The bin Laden story starts with a snitch and ends in betrayal. Of course Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs; that's not in question and never has been. But before we read that parts of his body — "The squad came through the door and obliterated him," said Hersh's primary source — were sprinkled over the Hindu Kush from the homeward-bound helicopter (here is one of Hersh's sources when Hersh brought up the famous burial at sea. "The consultant laughed and said, 'You mean, he didn't make it to the water?' "), let's look at the other three articles, which have a grip all their own in their very venal everydayness.
One article has to do with the conduct of the war on terror. It has as its lodestar the rule of law and the rights of man, and as its target serious lapses in judgment and integrity by the executive branch, its failure to grasp recent history, and its displays of hubris and exceptionalism. Hersh convincingly argues that in its hunger to topple Bashir al-Assad, the Obama administration has been arming the wrong opposition (in his telling, the military has had to make an end run around the administration to get vital equipment into, if not the right, then the best available hands). On the conduct- unbecoming issue, the promised-to-be-closed Guantánamo continues to operate, with 100 prisoners, no due process, no accountability. Read this closely: "[David Obey, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee] had dared to take on George Bush and Dick Cheney over aspects of their war on terror - - as Obey and others in Congress believed — were not being shared with, and perhaps were not even financed by, Congress, as stipulated by the Constitution." Hersh has a way of letting you feel the chill.
In another piece, "Whose Sarin?," this time dealing with chemical warfare as a line in the sand, Hersh produces evidence that questions exactly who is deploying sarin gas in Syria. American intelligence agencies have reason to believe Syrian jihadists have mastered the mechanics of sarin gas. And, again, in their hurry to root out Assad, the administration cherry-picks and alters available information. One of Hersh's sources in the intelligence community asked, "How can we help this guy" — Obama — "when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along." Most reporting on the matter is feeble, relying on government assessments rather than intelligence assessments, let alone direct observation. (Flight-path analyses released by the administration were termed "totally nuts" by Theodore Postol, professor of technology and national security at MIT.) In blaming Assad, the administration boasted that it knew exactly what the Syrian regime was up to: "chemical weapons personnel were on the ground, in the area, making preparations." In truth, according to Hersh, this was a back-story, and it backfired: the Daily Mail wrote, "Intelligence report says US officials knew about nerve-gas attack in Syria three days before it killed over 1,400 people — including more than 400 children."
A third piece on military-to-military assistance details Obama's trapped, Cold War thinking regarding Syria. His understandable distrust of Vladimir Putin, and Putin's alliance with the unsavory Assad, clouds his ability to see a shared regional anxiety. Hersh raises a number of thorny questions here: Why is the CIA funneling arms to the Syrian opposition via Turkey when the jihadists control the opposition? Why is Turkey looking the other way at the growth of ISIS? (Could it be money? Could it be its long-simmering discord with Kurds?) Why have we not cultivated the strategic cooperation with Syria post-9/11? As he points out, cooperation with Syria has led to the foiling of al-Qaida attacks on the Fifth Fleet and the identification of al-Qaida informants. The Joint Chiefs had arranged for indirect intelligence sharing with Syria under various conditions, and while that agreement got bogged down, it pointed the way to a more flexible approach than the current hard line.
Lastly, the article on the discovery and targeted assassination/extrajudicial killing/premeditated murder of bin Laden presents a very different scenario as we have been led to believe. The story relies on three principal sources: a retired senior intelligence source who was privy to much of the story, from initial intelligence concerning Abbottabad to after-action reports, and two longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. Thin? Not by investigative reporting standards, not with Hersh's Rolodex (which, it is rumored, has the dimensions of the London Eye) also at hand.
At the heart of the story, Hersh asserts that bin Laden's whereabouts were revealed to the U.S. by a "walk-in," a retired Pakistani intelligence official, a year before the extreme-prejudice operation. (Hersh also notes that it may be possible the U.S. government knew of bin Laden's whereabouts for many years; contradictory information is part and parcel of investigative reporting — of all reporting, for that matter.) The walk-in was looking for that $25 million bounty. He explained that bin Laden had been captured in the northern borderlands in 2006, having been turned in by locals. Pakistan's intelligence arm, ISI, kept bin Laden as leverage to ensure that the Taliban and al-Qaida didn't run operations that clashed with ISI interests. When the U.S. learned of the compound in Abbottabad, according to Hersh's sources, they put the braces on the Pakistani brass, suggesting a drop in the massive military aid sent to Pakistan. Pakistan caved, but on the condition that the raid be kept secret and a cover story — that bin Laden had been killed by a drone in the north — would be spread a week later to prevent reprisals.
In the version Hersh offers, the dramatic SEAL operation was in reality a cakewalk: the site was left without protection and the Pakistani authorities would not intervene. Still, "Obama had to 'get out in front of the story' before someone in the Pentagon did." So much for international promises. As for the coordinated SEAL story, Hersh's source said, "SEALS cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger." As for the body in the bag: "It's a great hoax — like Piltdown man." So, too, that trove of intelligence supposedly found at the compound.
In these four essays, Hersh offers a reminder that journalism's job is to offer a counterstory to the official narrative, the product of a mind suspicious of power and a listening, discerning ear. "It's the classic unraveling of a poorly constructed cover story," he writes. Sometimes it's just that simple.
Peter Lewis is the director of the American Geographical Society in New York City. A selection of his work can be found at writesformoney.com.
Reviewer: Peter Lewis
