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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mao II who wrote (21118)	3/15/2003 7:44:48 AM
From: Vitas	Respond to of 25898

<font color=red>The Consequences of Failure - A PROBLEM FROM HELL Message 18704026

To: Mao II who wrote (21118)	3/15/2003 7:46:47 AM
From: Mao II	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Sy Hersh casts critical eye on Bush administration By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 3/13/2003 CAMBRIDGE - The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh (or ''Sy,'' as everyone calls him) began his Tuesday night remarks at Harvard in typically incendiary fashion. ''I'm really happy this [event] tonight did not begin with a prayer,'' he said, taking a transparent shot at George Bush's religious fervor. ''We are not a theocracy, folks.'' This has been a week of open hostility between the reporter and the administration. In the March 17 New Yorker, Hersh wrote an eye-catching story accusing Richard Perle - a key proponent of Bush's policy on Iraq - of improperly blending his roles as a public advocate and a private businessman. When asked last Sunday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer to respond to allegations of ''conflict of interest,'' Perle flatly declared: ''Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.'' The ill will is mutual. Hersh is a scathing critic of what he considers this administration's tight control of information and hostility toward the media. ''They're tougher than the Nixon White House because you can't get them to talk,'' he said in an interview with the Globe. ''Even in the worst days of Nixon, and of Johnson and the war, you had access. ... This is the only administration I've been [around] that when I know I have a sensitive story, I don't have anyone to vet it with.'' Asked why Washington journalism isn't more aggressive, he said simply, ''The access has to come through official means for too many reporters.'' Perle's ''terrorist'' label doesn't quite square with the words of Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center, who introduced Hersh as ''the man who, for my money, is the best investigative reporter ever.'' (Hersh was in Cambridge to receive a career journalism award.) Whether you view him as an enemy or hero, Hersh, 65, is an indefatigable, irascible digger with a penchant for controversy and sources rivaled perhaps only by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hersh recalls, New Yorker editor David Remnick called and said, ''` You're not going to do anything else for the next year, are you?' And I said ` No.''' Since then, Hersh - who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam - has reemerged as a force in journalism, writing about the CIA's failure to deter the terrorist attacks, the corruption of our Saudi Arabian allies, US contingency plans to disarm Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and a US Delta Force raid in Afghanistan gone awry. As have a number of Hersh's stories, the Afghanistan piece generated controversy and angry denials. But he says, ''There's no way I back off the story.'' And Hersh has the confidence of Remnick, who says, ''I've worked on dozens of pieces with Sy, and I have never seen anybody work with such commitment and intensity.'' One catalyst for that intensity may be the tension between a journalist known for cultivating inside sources and a White House bent on enforcing internal discipline. ''These guys scare me,'' he told the Harvard audience. ''They're insulated, they're tough to get to.'' In the Globe interview, he defended those comments, declaring: ''We're not supposed to tell the truth about how we feel. ... We're professionals. We're entitled to have thoughts.'' boston.com