Seymour Hersh

This article on America's most famous investigative journalist makes interesting reading in light of the MSM triumphalism over the Schiavo "Talking Points Memo."

Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie (Just Not in Print)

There are two Hershes, really. Seymour M. is the byline. He navigates readers through the byzantine world of America’s overlapping national-security bureaucracies, and his stories form what Hersh has taken to calling an “alternative history” of the Bush administration since September 11, 2001.

Then there’s Sy. He’s the public speaker, the pundit. On the podium, Sy is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. “I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”

Previous posts on Hersh here, here, and here.

The New York article also notes the interesting arc of Hersh's career: he is praised and honored when he attacks Nixon or Kissinger or Bush or Rumsfeld. The MSM suddenly becomes concerned with his methods when he goes after JFK or Bill Clinton's appointees.

Hersh, of course, came to fame for "revealing" the My Lai massacre. But he was not always so energetic is digging for Vietnam fact nor was he always on the side of the victims. In America in Vietnam, G. Lewy quotes Hersh's response to the testimony of POWs on the conditions in NVN prisons:

There is evidence in the public record that Frishman [a former POW] seriously distorted the prison conditions inside North Vietnam.

Which is a really weasely way to call a POW a liar.