Hersh: VP Cheney Heard Proposal Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War?

What does that have to do with anything?

The guy is a brilliant journalist. One of the best of our time. He is also legendary for taking giant leaps based on information given to him by anonymous sources.

Dark Side of Camelot was an incredible read. That doesn't mean it's all true.

 

It has to do with this:

With David Remnick and the fact-checkers at The New Yorker to keep him on a tight leash, Mr. Hersh's reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Bush Administration since September 11 has been ironclad. I recall no corrections or retractions in regard to any of his reporting on those matters. Hence the question.

 

As incredible as his resume is, he's been accused of making shit up before.

 

And yet not a single correction, retraction or clarification on the matters under discussion. Thus the specificity of my original question.

 

How exactly is the New Yorker fact-checking Hersh's anonymous sources?

 

Ben Bradlee knew who Deep Throat was. I think Katherine Graham knew as well.
No source is ever truly anonymous.
The other is that Hersh probably has documents backing up the stories. Hard to say what, but my guess is that he probably does.
He also probably has several people telling him the same thing, which adds to the credibility of the material.
Never mind that someone like an Admiral Fallon, or another former high-ranking officer, is telling Hersh what is shaking.
Also pay no attention to Thomas Powers reporting roughly the same thing, last month.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21592

 

One assumes that Mr. Hersh reveals the identities of his sources at least to his immediate editor. I'll further assume that they're revealed to Mr. Remnick as well. Those sources all have track records over the course of their use in The New Yorker. Some are probably more reliable, or better situated, than others. One thus presumes that Hersh uses multiple sources for the sake of comparison and accuracy on certain assertions, and will likewise use more than a single source to report from within certain meetings and planning sessions. I would assume that quotes from these sources are all fact checked by Hersh's editor for accuracy. You'll note the often fragmentary nature of these stories, in which Hersh builds his report source by source, but in which no major assertion is ever made without at least two sources behind it.

Any documentary evidence available at large, or available by FOIA, will be run through the fact checkers. They'll also corroborate whatever parts of the story they can without being told who the source in question is.

If you read Hersh's reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan and The White House since 2001, you'll see how scrupulously assembled and tightly edited these pieces are. New Yorker editors are going to excise anything that can't be borne out. And often have. That's the difference Mr. Hersh's work there and his work anywhere else.


JarFarrar makes a good point about the likely number of leaked documents Hersh has to back up his reporting.

 

Assuming that documents, identities of sources, etc. had been vetted is what made Stephen Glass' stories believable.

 

Interesting comparison. So let me put it another way.

That's the way it works for my friends at The New Yorker. And that's the way it works for me.

So I assume that's the way it works for Mr. Hersh.

 

Yeah, what has Sy Hersh ever done to compare to the journalistic heights of Stephen Glass?

 

If Hersh had documents that backed up his claims, I have to believe that he would be referring to them and possibly publishing as much of them as he could to prove their existence.

I re-read his Iran story from 2006. It is based largely on the subjective hunches of people on the periphery of the administration and then extrapolates as to how the administration would possibly carry out its objectives. Not exactly the hardest of hard news.

 

Yes, because referring specifically to a leaked top-secret document is always the best way to ensure your source's continued anonymity.

And is anything considered "hard news" until it actually happens?