I would like to hear Hersh's opinion on the government's 911 official story. The 911 false flag was so big, so audacious, that the majority of the most fearless, independent truth tellers working today refuse to write the facts about that day. The story would write itself given the amount of video, audio evidence from that day, and the hundreds of investigations and analysis amassed by journalists, scientist, engineers, and pilots on to this day. Hersh reported the illegal Iraq War fabrication - which continues to destroy nations, murder, maim, displace millions, accelerate ecocide, adding trillions of debt, all growing each day. The majority of Americans know and accept this horrible truth, but the idea these same evil elite sociopaths would initiate a plan to fly a few commercial jets into the antiquated skyscrapers sitting on the most expensive real estate on earth, no way! 911 was a twofer, the owners of the real estate got the buildings razed and cleared in record time, at no charge, insurance money to pay for the fresh, new, prime space in the Freedom Tower, AND the others in their group got their justification for global, perpetual war. I think most people know 911 was a false flag, but they cannot bring themselves to say it out loud, for to do so means everything they are living is a lie. It is a crime too far for them to accept, our government (oligarchs who own the politicians) murdering people all over the globe and destroying the life-sustaining biosphere for resources to grow their electronic 0s/1s wealth high score, well that is one thing, but flying jets into US buildings, well that is just damn too far. Fratricide of 3000 American people, unthinkable. Really? US vaporized hundreds of thousands of civilians to show off a new WMD and keep USSR from taking their share of the spoils of war, which if those shares were based on the number who died in the war, USSR would have been eligible for say about 90% give or take. If we asked the people all over the earth on the receiving end of US bombs, coups, occupations, i.e., "US meddling", torture, assassinations, if they thought US oligarchs were capable of 911 false flag crime, likely the majority would see this as a no-brainer.

My Lia was not the exception, but normal military operations, one massacre of 500 civilians, out of many massacres adding up to millions, that continues to grow each day, as another farmer or child picks up a live landmine, dies from disease caused by agent orange. I read it is estimated US has murdered over 20 million people around the world since WWII, without being in one legal, congressional authorized war.

One of the better books I've read.

Flows well, you'll want to spend more time reading it than you allotted.

You mention Hersh is now ignored by the American and British press. Everyone knows the fate of Julian Assange and we now do not hear from Wikileaks. Recently, the alternative press has been attacked and the availability of comments on those sites has been ended. In UK the only paper still permitting comments is The Independent. It seems that the power centers are closing down sources of alternative news and no-one seems to care. How bad does it have to get before we care?

I find it puzzling that Hersch did not, with his exposing at the time of the redirection of U.S. foreign policy, weapons of mass destruction hoax,...... include an analysis/exposure of the corporate interests in Iraqs/Afghanistan/Iran/Syria oil/energy reserves. Maybe he did, I have not read all of his reporting thoroughly. Also why he was never assassinated himself is to me at least a mystery. Car/airplane crash, forced suicide, fall from a 10 story window.....would any of his colleges investigated? Likely not.

"But the fact is that Seymour Hersh has not changed: American politics and the media have. Under the Bush years, it was still permissible within the corporate media to criticize American foreign policy, however few and far between were such voices."

Within both his “early” and “later” periods, Hersh remains a real Reporter while the perception of such by the petty bourgeoisie remained relative to what ultimately serves the interests of the ruling class. Given the crisis of capitalism, the fulfillment of which has grown ever-more desperate.

"But after Obama’s 2008 victory, the entire American political establishment, including its middle-class “left” wing, embraced military escalation in the Middle East, and the media followed suit."

If he were a Socialist, that genuineness would apply to everything.

"We do not share many of Seymour Hersh’s views, including his appeals to what he calls the reasonable sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus for a change in US foreign policy."

There is an addendum to the mention of My Lai.
There was one helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, and his door gunners who saw what was happening and were able to rescue a few villagers. To do that Thompson had to turn his guns on and threaten GIs.
After that, the Army treated him like dirt and for more than 30 years he and his crew went unrecognized.
The 2004 "60 Minutes" story text is more than little weak on the military Brass for my taste, but it does tell the story of one small group of men on a helicopter who acted heroically and reveals the real nature of the military at the top.
https://www.cbsnews.com/new...

Hugh Thompson was a real hero and his is such an important story. The murderers at My Lai would have us believe they (the soldiers) were all in on the massacre. Not true! Some stood by. some watched and others with Thompson taking the lead fought to defend the Vietnamese civilians and stopped the massacre.

I remember this.

Hersh is quite a compelling character. Very personable and totally without pretension.

Chris Hedges interviewed him , and what they were both quite honest about was that both at times ''pulled back '' on what they could have said in their reporting .

So at least they were honest about being dishonest , but then that goes with the territory if you seek to stay within the mainstream , be it media or political party.

just a thought ...

Read the book. I think you'll find your question answered. Usually, they can't say things because it will expose their sources. Other times, going up against the powerful, you'll need unassailable proof - which hard to come by. Early on in the book, as a cub reporter, he overhears a cop brag of shooting in the back a black man running away (along with racial slurs). A first big scoop he thinks, but his editor says, "you got nothing, it will be your word against a cop's."

A good point, but then there are ways to mention things . ''alleged'' is a good word.

A must read. But how many public libraries and book stores are under the shadow of the New McCarthyism ?

I bought it online and finished reading it two weeks ago. And I didn't use Amazon.

"Hersh left the New York Times in 1975, when he learned that the editorial board had secretly met with Gerald Ford and agreed to keep secret US government involvement in assassinations, and then conspired to keep Hersh from learning about it."
Watergate "burglar" E. Howard Hunt, of CIA infamy, threatened to expose the role of Allen Dulles, R.Nixon, J. E. Hoover, Johnson, et al, in the assassination of JFK, unless he was paid a million dollars for his continued silence. If memory serves, he (Hunt), got the money, but lost his wife, in a plane crash, in Dec. 1972, who was in the process of delivering the hush money from CREEP to the "burglars."
Hersch, had he probed, would have undoubtedly discovered massive incriminating assassination links in the Watergate investigation and that forbidden knowledge probably would have cost him his career, if not his life.

Ya have to wonder if Hersch ever read Jim Garrisons - New Orleans D.A - book "On the Trail of the Assassins".

Great review! I finished the book a couple of months ago. His writing style is like that of a novelist. I found a copy of his "Dark Side Of Camelot" about JFK in a thrift shop (it deserved better). One thing that stood out to me about both books: the corruption, the overweening sense of entitlement and downright evil of the ruling class is not in any way new.

No, it's not new and the more people who study and learn history, the better.

" Both the killer and the killed are victims in Vietnam" - this type of reasoning was used by the Nazis to whitewash their responsibility for the most sadistic acts. Nobody can make "a good boy" to kill and torture unarmed civilians, this soldier's mother you quote was in a total denial about the upbringing of her son. Please pay more attention to the longing for committing atrocities under favorable circumstances and the willingness to obey authority among many people, studies have been written on this topic (e.g. the Milgram experiment etc.)

This is a deeply subjective, idealist, and abstract comment on human nature "The longing for committing atrocities under favorable conditions". Who longs? Everyone, by birth? No difference between Kissinger and the 18 year old forcibly drafted into an army, indoctrinated, and dropped in the middle of a intensely violent war created by the Kissingers and Dulleses of the world? No difference between a fascist political tendency in German in the 1930s holding state power and an 18 year old conscripted to fight for his life in a criminal war?

Sections of the soldiers in the Vietnam War committed horrific acts, but Hersh's quote is quite clear. They are not the ones ultimately responsible for the horrific acts in the true sense - anybody with an ounce of historical or class understanding of the Vietnam War and imperialism, would see that is the main point. Those people who are actually responsible for the mass killing and sabotaging of entire generations - those people are the kind that attended John McCain's funeral. And McCain, of course, is NOT like the 18 year old drafted into military - he volunteered with relish to go bombing an oppressed country.

How do you explain the rise of violence in societies? How are soldiers dragooned into imperialist wars and committing all the atrocities therein?

Were all German parents c. 1900-1925 simply bad parents, capable of raising a country that furnished the Wehrmacht with its human materiel?

Such a perspective explains nothing, and instead lets the ruling class off the hook for atrocities committed in its name and by its direction.

You're defining "responsibility" as some moral absolute and not in the context of class.

"Nobody can make "a good boy" to kill and torture unarmed civilians, this soldier's mother you quote was in a total denial about the upbringing of her son."

You have no idea what a class based society can make those on its lower rungs do. It's all around you, and yet you can't see the friggin' forest.

The mainstream media is controlled by the intelligence agencies, and they only expose information which serves to carryout their agenda. Letting the public know that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are funding Al-Qaeda style terrorists to overthrow regimes in the Middle East is not something that the US Government wants revealed, especially since it "supposedly" was Al-Qaeda who's responsible for 9/11.

The minute Hersh's investigative reporting defied the Government's military agenda he was considered persona non grata. No genuine investigative journalism can coexist within the corporate state-run media.
It's impossible. It would be like expecting commentators on MSNBC and CNN to say that Russia-gate was concocted by the FBI, CIA, and a cabal of neoconservatives who are pressing
Trump to overthrow Assad.

A book worth reading.

I recommend it highly.

Excellent review of a thoughtful & courageous reporter with ethics! Sy Hersh clearly explains why he's now so censored in this book, and in many interviews since. Barack Obama was obsessed with leaks, and wanted them stopped. Hersh was even more vilified after publishing the "Killing of Osama bin Laden" in 2013, which has been reviewed by the WSWS. This story debunked Obama's narrative, reinforced by "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012), a Hollywood propaganda movie on bin Laden's execution by Navy Seals.

Most recently, Sy Hersh has been unable to publish his biography of Dick Cheney, because of sourcing, as he would have to give his sources away (something he doesn't do), and put them in jeopardy-- perhaps of being killed. Therefore he wrote this memoir, "Reporter" instead.

Essential political books by Sy Hersh also include: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983) and The Dark Side of Camelot (1997). http://ricsize.com/sy-hersh...

I read this book and can recommend it. I have been an admirer for many years.