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Vox Media reports:
[May 10], the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh finally released a story that he has been rumored to have been working on for years: the truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden. According to Hersh's 10,000-word story in the London Review of Books, the official history of bin Laden's death--in which the US tracked him to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan; killed him in a secret raid that infuriated Pakistan; and then buried him at sea--is a lie.
Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.
Zero Hedge says:
In a nutshell--and one really needs to read Hersh's magnum opus, as no amount of abbreviation will do it justice--Hersh accuses Obama of not only taking credit for the al Qaeda leader's death, but fabricating the story that resulted from what has been widely reported to have been a Navy SEAL incursion into bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. As a result the military and intelligence communities were forced to scramble and then corroborate the president's version of events.
Needless to say, the White House did not respond to Hersh's requests for comment.
Among the many allegations of Hersh's report are that:
- bin Laden had been a prisoner of the Pakistan intelligence at the Abbottabad compound since 2006 (something revealed previously in "Osama bin Laden 'protected by Pakistan in return for Saudi cash")
- that the two most senior Pakistani military leaders knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the SEALs to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms;
- that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden's whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US,
- and that, while Obama did order the raid and the SEAL team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration's account were false.
[...] bin Laden was murdered, plain and simple: [...] A former SEAL commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that 'we were not going to keep bin Laden alive--to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we're doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We've come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, "Let's face it. We're going to commit a murder."'
The big, slow, noisy helicopters they used had me convinced from the start that the official narrative was garbage... and I think everyone recognizes that these "special operations" teams are simply assassination squads.
takyon adds:
• R.J. Hillhouse Reported Essentials of Hersh's bin Laden Story in 2011 - With Seemingly Different Sources
• The Detail in Seymour Hersh's Bin Laden Story That Rings True
• A Crank Theory of Seymour Hersh: To understand the legendary national security reporter, you need to understand an archetype of the intelligence world: the crank.
• Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:11AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:30AM
From BBC, "It also didn't take long before some of Hersh's fellow journalists began questioning the story, most notably Max Fisher of Vox" which is the first link
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:06AM
Max Fisher, who goes straight for the ad-hominem, and has a track record of...?
Hersh, who revealed My Lai 40 years ago, and exposed Abu Ghraib torture including photos.
Point: Sy Hersh
Penalty: Max Fisher
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:19PM
Max Fisher, who goes straight for the ad-hominem, and has a track record of...?
This is the first sentence in the article:
On Sunday, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh...
Ad-hominem?
The first allegation from the article:
But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous.
Ad-hominem?
Max Fisher, who goes straight for the ad-hominem, and has a track record of...?
Oh, there it is!
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:51PM
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:56PM
Ad Hominem: colloquially known as "attacking the messenger."
Max Fisher's crazed attack...
Max_Fisher ... that's clever as fuck A+
useful idiots (e.g. @Max_Fisher) are trying...
Also, really??? Proof by random posts by Twitter blowhards? I notice you don't provide any examples of Mr. Fisher actually attacking the messenger. Calling it a conspiracy theory is attacking the argument.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:25PM
The first tweet - which began this cascade - is Mr Fisher, comparing Sy Hersh to Dan Brown or Alex Jones.
These are thing one expects from Fox news, not someone critiquing a consistently insightful investigative journalist who has been proven right by history nearly a dozen times - always upsetting the established narrative.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:54PM
Straight away, the title frames Hersh’s 10,000-word, years-in-the-making report as a nutbar conspiracy theory
http://coreypein.net/blog/2015/11/05/hersh-vox-bin-laden/ [coreypein.net]
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Aichon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:53PM
Just skimming through Max Fisher's piece for Vox [vox.com] (for which he cites zero sources beyond official statements the public has received up to this point), I see Fisher stating that Hersh is engaging in "unsubstantiated conspiracy theories", that he's "gone off the rails", that his recent reporting is just "more conspiratorial stories", and that this is one more addition to his "growing list of conspiracy theories".
He also has this gem:
Similarly, Hersh's earlier blockbusters were all quickly confirmed by dozens of independent reports and mountains of physical proof. That's how such exposés typically work: the first glint of sunshine brings a rush of attention, which uncovers more evidence and encourages more sources to come forward, until the truth is incontrovertible.
That is not how things have gone with Hersh's newer and more conspiratorial stories. Rather, they have tended to remain all alone in their claims, and at times have been debunked. This is not, in other words, the first time.
Mind you, he wrote that attack the day after Hersh's article came out, before anyone had had a chance to contact their sources and verify his claims. Since then, NBC News [nbcnews.com], The New [nytimes.com] York Times [nytimes.com], The Intercept [firstlook.org], independent [thespywhobilledme.com] reporters [thespywhobilledme.com], former CIA officers [noquarterusa.net], and Pakistan's The News [thenews.com.pk] have all either independently corroborated aspects of his story or have brought into the light earlier reports that corroborate aspects of his story but which were largely ignored at the time.
At this point, from what I can tell, they've corroborated at least his claims that...
...Pakistani intelligence was holding Osama bin Laden as a bargaining chip in a complicated relationship with terrorist groups
...the Saudis were paying the Pakistanis to keep Osama bin Laden in custody rather than turning him over
...it wasn't a courier network that allowed the US to trace Osama bin Laden
.. it was a CIA walk-in Pakistani intelligence officer (whose identity is no longer secret) that allowed the US to trace Osama
...that Pakistani generals Pasha and Kiyani were involved in the planning
...Pakistani intelligence knew of the SEAL raid in advance
...Pakistani intelligence called off police and military responses until after the raid was over
...the original cover story was going to be a drone strike, which had to be scrapped when the SEAL helicopter crashed
...the deal with the Pakistanis got thrown out when the original cover story was blown
...Osama bin Laden's body was actually disposed of in pieces over the Hindu Kush mountains
Hersh, of course, makes some additional claims (e.g. that the "treasure trove" of intel found in the compound was actually fabricated by the Obama administration) that have yet to be corroborated and may very well never be corroborated by anyone else, but to have all of those pieces of data corroborated in such a short period of time (and from current intelligence sources, in the case of the Pakistani walk-in's name), it suggests that there's at least something to his report, and that calls to dismiss it as a baseless conspiracy theory are unfounded.
I was incredulous when I first read it, even though the official story never sat right with me, but the more I'm hearing about it, the more it's sounding like people are stepping forward to confirm the things he's saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:54PM
If you want to do a proper conspiracy theory, why not tie in the burial at sea with a faked killing?
Obviously the killing was faked and his Muslim buddy Obama set him up in a safe house somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:09PM
Not everyone is aware of every news article ever (if they were, what would be the point of this site or news aggregators?). The link you have should probably be added to the list of links at the bottom, but the assertion that the submitter knew about another article that counters the points in his submission and intentionally left it out is unsubstantiated. You may not like the guy or his submissions, but not liking somebody doesn't make them a liar or a false-narrative-pusher or agenda-pusher.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by CoolHand on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:13PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:53PM
I wouldn't even call it "heavy" editing.
My original title was pretty flamey:
Seymour Hersh: Obama Totally Lied About Murder of bin Laden
My original dept. was
from the pants-on-fire dept.
I only included 1 paragraph from Vox (mainly to get the link to the whole deal); takyon added the second, which did blunt my obvious support of Hersh.
.
I did notice that the submission was "accepted" and that it disappeared from the queue (but didn't then immediately appear on the front page).
That had me worried about censorship for a bit, but it has all worked out.
-- gewg_