Need research help concerning Seymour Hersh

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Seymour+Hersh%22

He's a self-appointed hitman, for the dems.

Legit for what. 60 minutes?

He's a rat hitman.

What are you smoking?

Frankly, anyone who thinks Seymour Hersh is legitimate is no conservative and no fan of truth or honesty. You've only been here two days, but you've revealed yourself already.

Congratulations.

I can tell you from personal knowledge and observation while serving on a senior level advisory committee (as a retired invitee consultant) that Mr. Hersh's findings and comments have been used by the services' intelligence communities as a point of begining for further inquiry and analysis. He has sources and means that have often been seen as one point of verification of suppositions and surmises by both current and human intell guys at these same agencies ( I can speak more assertively about current intell vis-a-vis human or strategic intelligence since that was my livelihood for a long time). His reports have been accepted as a source in papers written by students as part of their studies at the various senior professional military education courses. My personal experience was at the one I attended and I was told the same was true at the other services' senior PME schools.

I have been in the audience at an informal after-luncheon event attended by primarily field, and some flag level, intell officers at which Mr. Hersh was a speaker and panel member discussing subjects of interest to the group. It would seem doubtful to me that he would have been invited to participate, or that these attendees would have been there if Mr. Hersh had nothing to contribute.

I am aware of no reason to question his personal truthfulness or the same relating to his reports. Having been in that game for several years, it is absolutely true that there is a vast amount of usable intelligence information out there in totally open sources. All one need do is to reflect on novels like: "Clear and Present Danger," "The Hunt for Red October," and others of similar nature to confirm the accuracy of the above assertion.

I can tell you from personal knowledge and observation while serving on a senior level advisory committee (as a retired invitee consultant) that Mr. Hersh's findings and comments have been used by the services' intelligence communities as a point of begining for further inquiry and analysis. He has sources and means that have often been seen as one point of verification of suppositions and surmises by both current and human intell guys at these same agencies ( I can speak more assertively about current intell vis-a-vis human or strategic intelligence since that was my livelihood for a long time). His reports have been accepted as a source in papers written by students as part of their studies at the various senior professional military education courses. My personal experience was at the one I attended and I was told the same was true at the other services' senior PME schools.

I have been in the audience at an informal after-luncheon event attended by primarily field, and some flag level, intell officers at which Mr. Hersh was a speaker and panel member discussing subjects of interest to the group. It would seem doubtful to me that he would have been invited to participate, or that these attendees would have been there if Mr. Hersh had nothing to contribute.

I am aware of no reason to question his personal truthfulness or the same relating to his reports. Having been in that game for several years, it is absolutely true that there is a vast amount of usable intelligence information out there in totally open sources. All one need do is to reflect on novels like: "Clear and Present Danger," "The Hunt for Red October," and others of similar nature to confirm the accuracy of the above assertion.

His reports about the intial actions in Afghanistan were so absolutely bogus as to belong in the fiction section of your local library.

You can't defend them. Don't even try.

Why you're even here at this forum is puzzling.

You may be referring to a flap some years ago over documents about JFK. Hersh's book on JFK, the Dark Side of Camelot, came under fire from Kennedy loyalists even before it was published. They challenged Hersh's supposed acceptance of disputed documents about Jack Kennedy, which was taken as indicating that the book would be unreliable.

In the end, Hersh did not use the disputed material in the book. Nevertheless, the attack diminished the force of the book, even though Hersh had some embarrassing new revelations about JFK. Most reviews mentioned the controversy, recycled the Kennedy loyalist allegations against Hersh, and took a critical tone toward the book.

Hersh is a left-winger, but he is also an energetic and at times capable investigative reporter. I think that he did a flawed but interesting job on JFK; but it is an investigative effort, not a history.

Here are couple of reviews on the Dark Side of Camelot. The first (Ed Epstein) is more credible than the second.

http://edwardjayepstein.com/archived/hersh.htm
http://www.assassinationscience.com/wrone2.html

There is a trick of sorts to reading investigative and analytical reporting. Read it once for effect, then pick out the hard and well-sourced facts. The rest is opinion and guesses, usually from people who have an ax to grind or only a small view of the issue. Often, the unnamed sources are not so much whistleblowers fearing retaliation as people so discredited that it is better not to name them.

Most of the time, when closely read, Hersh and other such reporters depend on conditional terms like "might" and "could" and "in the opinion of." They may be correct, but they are further from hard evidence for their conclusions than they pretend to be.

I was not impressed with Hersh's Abu Ghraib story. There were a lot of gaps, unnamed sources, and unsupported assertions. I don't think that Hersh's story is going to develop much further than it has.

Hersh has most likely been legit longer than you've been alive.

....and much longer than the two days you've been registered on this forum.

I was not aware of his earlier work on JFK. That's interesting. Thanks.

His piece on Afghanistan regarding the early raid outside Kandahar was entirely fabricated. He claimed that it was a colossal failure and that we took numerous casualties and were nearly routed by the Taliban. In fact, none of that was true; the only injury to a soldier was a broken ankle suffered during the parachute landing. His article was posted here and thoroughly discredited.