Seymour Hersh.

• Author: Barsamian, David
• Position: Interview

Seymour "Sy" Hersh is a legendary investigative journalist. The Pulitzer Prize-winner catapulted to fame when as a freelancer he broke the story of the infamous My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops. These days, he says, he's been writing "an alternative history of Bush's wars." A regular contributor to The New Yorker, he helped expose U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners. He used his writings in that magazine as the basis for his latest book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. His recent article "The Coming Wars" revealed the Bush Administration's plans for Iran.

Born in Chicago, Hersh began his career in 1959 as a police reporter for the City News Bureau. He later worked for UPI, AP, and The New Fork Times. Since 1993, he's been at The New Yorker. His piece on neocon stalwart Richard Perle, "Lunch with the Chairman," provoked Perle to call him the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." Perle threatened to sue him for libel but later backed off. Recently, Max Boot, another neocon favorite, called him "the journalistic equivalent of Oliver Stone: a hard-left zealot who subscribes to the old counterculture conceit that a deep, dark conspiracy is running the U.S. government." For Hersh, their criticism is a sign he's doing his job.

His book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House won him the National Book Critics Circle Award. He doesn't have a lot of respect for the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who he says "lies like most people breathe."

Hersh has relentless energy. "I'm not one of those 9:00 to 5:00 guys during the week," he says. "I don't do much then because I can get people in trouble with a phone call. But at night and on the weekend I can call them." And he's restless, always on the lookout for a new lead.

Q: You go back to the Nixon era. You remember the wiretapping, the breaking and entering, the use of the IRS to pursue political opponents, the secret bombing of Cambodia. Compare this crew in the White House today with Nixon. What are the differences?

Seymour Hersh: It's interesting you say that because I think what's going on right now--and I'm not talking about the legal implications--is much more dangerous. Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House.

Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it.

And then, of course, Bush won reelection, with everything out there, all of our complaints, all of the issues, all of the troubles with Iraq. So where are we? Bush certainly sees himself as having been given an endorsement. He was asked about accountability in an interview, about why Rumsfeld, Rice, and Wolfowitz have been promoted, these people who led us into the debacle in Iraq. Bush said there was accountability--it was the election. So there we are.

Q: What are the implications of the White House taking control of intelligence?

Hersh: Essentially Rumsfeld wins, Cheney wins, and the CIA and State Department lose. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have more centralized control over intelligence, analysis, and operations than ever before. And the way they interpret the law, if the President authorizes an intelligence mission to be run covertly by the Pentagon, they don't have to tell anybody, including Congress, about it because the President is the commander in chief.

The critical difference here is ever since the...