Reporter is Sy Hersh's informative and engaging autobiography about his career as an investigative journalist and his work on some of the most ground-breaking stories of our time.
Hersh names names, but not just the wrongdoers he has reported on or the hinderers who sometimes made getting the story into print so difficult. He gives recognition and praise to the many journalists, academics, scientists, publishers, etc. doing significant work in their particular fields trying to keep the country on the right path and the public in the know. He is especially vocal in his respect for the numerous named and unnamed sources - military, intelligence, Congressional and others in government - who provided inside information; they did so because they were appalled by what their government was doing and understood that the oath they had taken was to the Constitution, not to a superior or to a President. I found the revelation enormously reassuring and can only hope this is more prevalent among those in government than often seems the case.
Hersh is a lone wolf though he occasionally collaborates with others, like Bob Woodward when they were trying to avoid duplicating each other's efforts on the Watergate story (Woodward left a "Kilroy was here" note outside one office to alert Hersh he'd already gotten that interview). He paid attention to stories that were getting overlooked or drowned out, like Harrison Salisbury's early reporting from Hanoi on the illegal bombing campaigns that were being denied by the US government. Many in the Washington press were too cozy with government spokesmen even to question the official narrative, much less to recognize that Kissinger's vaunted accessibility to reporters was how he manipulated them into blithely accepting his serial lies.
The reaction to Hersh's meticulously sourced book on Kissinger "was predictable: Those in the media whose success and insights were derived in part, from their closeness to Kissinger, hated it; others admired it." Many of the media critics who tore into Hersh hadn't even read the book yet, e.g., Ted Koppel, who gave no disclaimer and only later revealed that Kissinger had once offered him a job in the State Department. Hersh's insider accounts shed light on the "vile, vindictive, and paranoid atmosphere" of Nixon's administration, and it's horrifying: the power struggles between Kissinger and Haig, the isolation of Nixon from former advisors, the "five coups a day as various power centers try to take over." In desperation, the chief of naval operations finally planted an informant in Haig's office in mid-1972 just so he could find out what was going on in the secretive Kissinger's NSC.
Hersh's account of the Russian downing of Korean Flight 007 showed the Reagan administration's willingness to conclude, without evidence, that the Russians knew it was a passenger plane... until inside sources revealed that Flight 007, which had gone off course due to pilot error, had been mistaken for the American spy plane constantly flying off the Russian coast at the time. The NSA knew the truth all along but "chose not to tell others in the government what they didn't want to hear." Plus ça change...
Praise for truth-tellers depends on who they're telling the truth about, and the flak has been horrendous whenever Hersh applied his trademark investigative skills to someone viewed as untouchable - Kissinger was apparently one, JFK was another. We shouldn't have to be reminded that no one in a position of power is above scrutiny, no matter how well we like them; pretending otherwise just shows that our willingness to condemn or bless criminal or inhumane acts depends on who is doing them.
I didn't see much self-aggrandizing in Hersh's tale, beyond well-deserved pride in work that he obviously relished and passing mention of the awards he won. No surprise there; he's a reporter working on important stories that others have either ignored or missed and the awards signify the quality of his work, pave the way to wider exposure and encourage more insiders with critical knowledge to trust Hersh to use it judiciously while protecting their anonymity. I found Hersh no less willing to confess his mistakes, oversights, cluelessness, impolitic behavior and even petulance, or to share the less than glowing remarks made about him by some of his journalistic colleagues, including friends.
Hersh has been both praised and denounced for his chutzpah. That's probably an apt one-word description for him but may also be a key to the impressive investigative record he has amassed. It's certainly on display, sometimes humorously, in his account of skulking around Ft. Benning trying to find Lt. Calley of My Lai infamy, scooting past an office door on hands and knees to avoid being seen and taking off running twice when someone was poised to call "the colonel". Ft. Benning was an open base so there was no problem with his being there, but Calley was being kept well under wraps on a base that sprawled over some 285 square miles and Hersh was determined to find and talk to him before he could be ordered to leave (he did).
Another entertaining episode was when Hersh agreed to accompany his mischievous colleague, Les Gelb, to the State Department when Gelb needed to review the text of a background briefing by Kissinger: after Gelb introduced Hersh to Kissinger's spokesman, the man began to physically tremble, didn't take his eyes off him the entire time they were there and, as Gelb recalled later, reacted as though Hersh was Dracula. I especially appreciated this anecdote, imagining Hersh not as Dracula but as the people's Sword of Damocles.
In the closing chapter Hersh says, "I did not relish being the odd man out in terms of writing stories that conflicted with the accepted accounts, but it was a familiar experience." I think this will resonate with people from all walks of life who frequently find themselves at odds with the opinions shared by a consensus of their friends and colleagues, I know it did with me. I'm not sure I could have maintained my faith in humanity had I been privy to the horrific secrets Hersh knows (which is more than makes it into print). That he hasn't descended into cynicism or lost the inner light that has always guided him may be his most amazing accomplishment of all.
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About the author
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A Very Important Work
The author is in a class by himself. Whereas other investigative journalists who whistleblowers would contact such as Jack Anderson had regular columns, Seymour Hersh was an independent reporter who often struggled to get his most important stories published. Unlike figures like Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, who worked from an office passing on stories they developed by telephone, Hersh traveled and worked in the field. His personality was developed by growing up in a bit of a hard scrabble neighborhood in South Chicago, laboring to maintain his family's business after the death of his father. He is a street person with a strong work ethic and a cynical outlook which served him throughout his career, allowing him to judge false information from genuine narratives and garnering him dogged persistence not only in obtaining a story but in seeing it through to publication. To me the greatest theme is the venality of the mainstream media as he navigated through it. The picture he develops of the major newspapers and periodicals he worked for is that they are often driven by circulation or access issues which distort greatly what they present. Even now he's having to publish his most important works in England for such reasons. In particular his recent reporting on the fake narrative of the Obama Administration about their killing of Osama bin Laden was unwelcome news for the periodicals and papers in America. I highly recommend this work not only as a serious critic about the credibility of the mainstream media but as a story about what influences are required to forge someone with the required characteristics to do such groundbreaking work against the odds.
Top reviews from other countries
- John DuddyReviewed in Canada on July 3, 2018
Compelling Reading from a Professional.
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- Gary D ChanceReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2018
Invcredible: a must read for all
