The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Seymour Hersh.md

---
category: "Authors & Journalists"
tags:
  - Person
  - Journalist
  - Nuclear
  - Israel
  - Media
  - Pulitzer
  - MyLai
  - OperationCHAOS
  - Azorian
  - Holystone
  - ChurchCommittee
  - SamsonOption
  - Chile
  - AbuGhraib
  - AriBenMenashe
  - RobertMaxwell
aliases:
  - Seymour M. Hersh
  - Sy Hersh
  - Seymour Hersch
summary: "Seymour M. Hersh is an investigative journalist whose reporting on My Lai, CIA domestic surveillance, Israel's nuclear program and Abu Ghraib drew responses from the governments concerned."
born: 1937-04-08
location: "Chicago, Illinois, USA"
relations:
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[City News Bureau of Chicago]]"
    start: 1959
    end: 1960
    role: police reporter
    fn: 1
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Associated Press]]"
    start: 1963
    end: 1967
    fn: 1
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Eugene McCarthy]]"
    start: 1968
    end: 1968
    role: press secretary, presidential campaign
    fn: 1
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Dispatch News Service]]"
    start: 1969
    end: 1970
    role: reporter, My Lai Massacre
    fn: 4
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[New York Times]]"
    start: 1972
    end: 1979
    role: Washington and New York reporter
    fn: 1
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[The New Yorker]]"
    start: 1992
    role: contributor
    fn: 2
  - type: subject_of
    with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
    start: 1975
    end: 1975
    role: proposed leak inquiry, May-June 1975
    fn: 24
updated: 2026-10-09
---

[[Seymour Hersh]] (born April 8, 1937, in [[Chicago, Illinois]]) is an [[United States|American]] investigative journalist and author. He won the 1970 [[Pulitzer Prize]] in International Reporting for his account of the [[My Lai Massacre]], reported for the [[New York Times]] in the 1970s, and has written books on [[Israel]]'s nuclear program, [[Henry A. Kissinger]] and [[John F. Kennedy]]. Several of his stories drew formal responses from the agencies and governments they named, and those responses are recorded in the files described below.

### Early career

Hersh was a police reporter for the [[City News Bureau of Chicago]] from 1959 to 1960.[^1] He then worked for [[United Press International]], which sent him to [[Pierre, South Dakota]]. In 1963 the [[Associated Press]] hired him in Chicago, and by 1964 he was working for the agency in Washington. He left the AP in 1967.[^1] His first book, *Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal*, was published by [[Bobbs-Merrill]] in 1968.[^2]

In 1968 Hersh was press secretary to Senator [[Eugene McCarthy]] during the antiwar Democrat's presidential primary campaign. He left politics after McCarthy lost the 1968 primaries.[^1]

### My Lai and the 1970 Pulitzer Prize

In November 1969 Hersh published his account of the My Lai Massacre through the [[Dispatch News Service]], a Washington agency that sold stories to newspapers. Under a directive of November 26, 1969, the [[U.S. Army]] had Lieutenant General [[William R. Peers]] investigate the original Army investigation of the events of March 16 to 19, 1968 in Son My Village, [[Quang Ngai Province]]. Peers's final report is dated March 14, 1970.[^3]

The 1970 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting went to Hersh, listed under the Dispatch News Service in Washington, for his reporting on My Lai.[^4] [[Random House]] published his books *My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath* in 1970 and *Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4* in 1972.[^2]

### Indochina reporting and the CIA, 1972

On July 3, 1972, the New York Times ran Hersh's article reporting that the United States had been secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam, Laos and South Vietnam for military purposes. Government sources, civilian and military, told him the [[U.S. Air Force]] program had most recently been aimed at hindering the movement of North Vietnamese troops. A former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] agent was quoted saying that the agency first used the technique over Hue in about August 1963, when the [[Ngo Dinh Diem|Diem]] regime was facing Buddhist demonstrations.[^5] On July 5, 1972, John Goldsmith of the [[Senate Armed Services Committee]] staff called the CIA's legislative counsel, John M. Maury, to say that the story was attracting considerable interest and would no doubt be the subject of formal inquiry in upcoming Senate deliberations. Goldsmith said he was preparing a note for Chairman [[John Stennis]] suggesting that Stennis be briefed.[^5]

On November 30, 1972, Representative [[Lucien Nedzi]], chairman of the House Armed Services intelligence subcommittee, told the CIA's legislative counsel of an earlier conversation that day with Hersh. Nedzi relayed three allegations that he said Hersh had raised: that narcotics were coming out of Indochina on Continental Air Lines flights; that the CIA had conducted surveillance of foreign embassies in the United States, in one instance over the objection of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]; and that the Agency had used pressure to get an American traveling to China to cooperate in supplying information. The memorandum records that the third allegation concerned Nedzi most, and that the legislative counsel offered a briefing on the [[Domestic Contact Service]].[^6]

### Chile, 1974

On September 8, 1974, the New York Times published Hersh's report that [[William Colby]], the Director of Central Intelligence, had told Congress that the Nixon administration authorized more than $8 million in covert activities by the CIA in [[Chile]] between 1970 and 1973 to make it impossible for [[Salvador Allende]] to govern. Colby testified at a top-secret hearing in April 1974 that the aim was to "destabilize" the Marxist government. The article also reported that the agency first intervened against Allende in 1964, when he was a presidential candidate.[^7]

### Operation CHAOS and the 1975 inquiries

On December 20, 1974, Colby met Hersh at CIA headquarters. In his memoir, Colby wrote that Hersh told him he had learned from several sources of a "massive" operation against the antiwar movement involving wiretaps, break-ins, mail intercepts and surveillance of American citizens, and that Colby told him the story had merged two separate matters: an operation to determine whether foreign powers were manipulating the antiwar movement, which Colby said had been terminated, and mail intercepts, wiretaps and surveillance that he said had nothing to do with the antiwar movement.[^8]

Hersh's article in the New York Times of December 22, 1974, on page one and datelined December 21, reported from "well-placed Government sources" that the CIA had conducted a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups during the Nixon administration. It reported that intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens were kept by a special unit of the CIA reporting directly to [[Richard Helms]], then Ambassador to [[Iran]]. An unnamed official was quoted saying, "This is explosive, it could destroy the agency."[^9] According to the editors of the *Foreign Relations of the United States* volume, the article named [[James Jesus Angleton]] as overseer of the operations and [[Richard Ober]] as the official who assembled a large staff, and reported on mail opening and on surveillance of antiwar activists, journalists and former employees, including [[Victor Marchetti]]. It also reported that a check of CIA files ordered by [[James R. Schlesinger]] had produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities inside the United States beginning in the 1950s.[^8]

The Department of Justice announced on December 23 that it would investigate the charges. Senators [[John Sparkman]] and Stennis and Representative Nedzi announced hearings for January. Colby telephoned President [[Gerald Ford]] aboard Air Force One and told him that nothing comparable to the article's allegations was going on in the Agency. On December 23, Henry A. Kissinger telephoned White House Chief of Staff [[Donald Rumsfeld]], who was in Vail. Kissinger told him, "I do know that Sy Hersh is a son-of-a-bitch," and recommended asking Colby for a written report on the body of fact to which the article referred.[^8] The White House had not been briefed on the catalogue of CIA misdeeds that Schlesinger had commissioned the year before, known as the [[CIA Family Jewels]].[^8]

CIA records carry the program as [[Operation CHAOS]], MHCHAOS. The first piece of official correspondence in the Agency's chronology is an August 15, 1967 memorandum from [[Thomas Karamessines]], Deputy Director for Plans, to the Chief of the Counter Intelligence Staff, which named Harry Rositzke and Dick Ober as candidates to run it.[^10] The [[Rockefeller Commission 1975|Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States]] reported that the operation compiled some 13,000 different files, including files on 7,200 American citizens, with the names of more than 300,000 persons and organizations entered in a computerized index, and that the Agency terminated it on March 15, 1974.[^11] The [[Church Committee]] reported the same figures and that the program was not terminated until March 1974.[^12]

In January 1975 the Rockefeller Commission was constituted under Vice President [[Nelson Rockefeller]].[^13] On January 27, 1975, the Senate created the Church Committee, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by [[Frank Church]]. Its final report was issued on April 26, 1976.[^14]

Hersh also appears in the Church Committee's own findings. In 1971 the computer of the Justice Department's Interdivisional Information Unit included data on prominent persons, among them Seymour Hersh, [[Ralph Abernathy]] and [[Cesar Chavez]]; the unit's subject list, when provided to the CIA, contained records of approximately ten to twelve thousand individuals.[^15][^16]

### Glomar Explorer and Colby's requests to delay

Hersh had been investigating the [[Hughes Glomar Explorer]], the CIA vessel built to raise a sunken Soviet submarine, since as early as January 1974. A note to the March 19, 1975 memorandum of conversation in the *Foreign Relations of the United States* volume, citing the CIA Executive Registry files, states that Colby urged Hersh to delay publication in conversations on February 1, 1974 and February 10, 1975.[^17] The volume's editorial note states that Colby had held meetings with journalists, including Hersh, to persuade them to delay stories about the operation. Syndicated columnist [[Jack Anderson]] mentioned the ship on his radio program on March 18, 1975. The next day the [[Los Angeles Times]], the [[Washington Post]] and the New York Times published front-page stories on the vessel. Hersh's March 19 article in the New York Times gave the operation's purpose, a cost estimated at more than $250 million, the technology and the results.[^18]

On March 28, 1975, Colby argued that a second mission was inadvisable after the exposure. The [[40 Committee]] concluded on June 5 that the program should end, and Ford approved that recommendation on June 16. The ship was mothballed on August 30, 1976.[^18]

### The submarine intercept story and the May 1975 prosecution deliberations

The prosecution deliberations in the Ford files concern a different Hersh article. The New York Times published it on May 25, 1975, and it described intercept missions by American submarines in Soviet waters, under the codeword Holystone. President Ford convened a meeting on Tuesday, May 27, 1975, from 5:00 to 5:55 p.m. in the Cabinet Room, with Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, Colby, Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State [[Robert Ingersoll]] and [[Brent Scowcroft]]. The memorandum of the meeting records Ford saying, "Somehow someone must be made an example of," and Schlesinger calling the disclosure "a flagrant violation of the law." Schlesinger said he had spoken to the Attorney General the month before, that there was some indication Hersh held files of signals intelligence material, and asked "How about a search warrant to get them?" Colby said a June 1974 New York Times article had been similar but without detail and had seemed to come from the Marchetti book, that the Supreme Court's refusal to review the Marchetti case was good news, and that although publication under Section 798 of the Espionage Act was a crime, there had been only one conviction under it, on a guilty plea. Scowcroft said the real problem was the people leaking the material.[^19]

Ford said an internal investigation was needed, at least internally and perhaps by the Bureau. Schlesinger suggested that the FBI do it, and the memorandum records, in brackets, "The President decided to go the FBI route." Ford said a communication to Justice ought to ask for action and for recommendations under the law ("prosecution of Hersh and the New York Times"). Rumsfeld proposed formal notice to the New York Times that the matter was being taken seriously. Schlesinger said that if the mission were turned off, a search warrant should be considered, adding that the material "could also be given to a grand jury." Ford closed: "Let's get the best people in Phil's [Buchen's] office and Justice going on it. Also, Justice should look into the alternatives of getting at Hersh and the New York Times."[^19]

On May 30, 1975, Rumsfeld cabled [[Dick Cheney]] from Brussels asking to be told whether the operation would continue, saying the FBI investigation should begin soon unless it would adversely affect the operation, and directing that it not be initiated if it would.[^20] A memorandum of the same date from [[Robert McFarlane|Bud McFarlane]] of the National Security Council staff to Cheney, marked Holystone, reports the Defense Department position: that the Navy's tentative view was that planning for continuation should go forward, that an investigation was "considered a bad idea" to the extent it could generate publicity leading to a Soviet reaction, and that Schlesinger concurred.[^21] Cheney relayed this to Rumsfeld, recommended that no investigation be launched for the time being, and set out three options: continue the operation and take no action against those responsible for the story; continue it and take limited action such as private discussions with publishers; or discontinue the operation and enforce the laws against unauthorized disclosure.[^22]

A May 31, 1975 memorandum in the same folder reports a meeting at 11:00 a.m. that Saturday with McFarlane, Colby, Attorney General [[Edward Levi]], Admiral [[Bobby Ray Inman]], the Director of Naval Intelligence, and others. It states that Levi had instructed the Criminal Division and the FBI to prepare a specific proposal for an investigation into possible violations of the criminal code; that the FBI investigation would not begin until the plan was approved; that the Hersh story "has not created any great amount of interest"; and that Levi felt any FBI investigation must have sound legal justification, so that, in the memorandum's words, "we should not have an FBI investigation if there is no intention to prosecute." It adds that the Navy's intelligence director found the story's sources probably were ex-government employees and the Marchetti court file, and that the use of the outdated codename Holystone was a telling indicator.[^23]

On June 2, 1975, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General wrote to Colby with eleven questions that it said had to be answered to move ahead with the first steps necessary for a prosecution and for a determination whether a prosecution should be undertaken, including which statements in the May 25 article were classified and whether the data came from a specific document.[^24] An undated memorandum to the Attorney General from Assistant Attorney General [[Rex E. Lee]] and Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney of the Criminal Division described the investigative steps for a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sections 793 and 798, for contempt proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia over a protective order in the Marchetti case, and for a civil contempt action. It identified an interview with Hersh as the initial FBI step, noted that a similar article had appeared under the byline of Laurence Stern in the Washington Post on January 4, 1974, and stated that grand jury subpoenas to Hersh and Stern could follow, with a grant of immunity if they invoked the Fifth Amendment.[^25]

### The Price of Power (1983)

*The Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House* was published by [[Summit Books]] in 1983. An excerpt ran in the [[Atlantic Monthly]] in December 1982 in two installments under the title "Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile." The second installment opens with a Navy enlisted man assigned as confidential aide and secretary to Rear Admiral [[Rembrandt Robinson|Rembrandt C. Robinson]] on the National Security Council staff in September 1970, and describes the White House handling of its most highly classified documents, including intelligence material, in that office.[^26] In February 1981 the Times ran a front-page article by Hersh headlined "New Evidence Backs Ex-Envoy on His Role in Chile," concerning the former ambassador [[Edward Korry]].[^27]

### The Samson Option (1991)

*The [[Samson Option]]: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* was published by Random House in 1991, with a British edition from [[Faber and Faber]]. Hersh wrote that he interviewed many senior American officials, most of whom spoke for the first time about their knowledge of Israel's nuclear arsenal, and that he did not do research in Israel, where journalists must submit material to military censors who can make changes or deletions. The book describes how Israel became a nuclear power in secret and how that secret was shared, sanctioned and at times willfully ignored by top American officials since the [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] years.[^28]

Hersh's account of Israeli intelligence in the Maxwell and Davies episode rests on [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]. Hersh wrote that Ben-Menashe first contacted him in mid-1990, that interviews began in early 1991, and that Ben-Menashe agreed, in Hersh's words, "as no other Israeli would," to be directly quoted on nuclear issues. Ben-Menashe left the United States for exile in Australia in June 1991. Hersh added that Ben-Menashe's allegations about Iran arms sales had been strongly denied in Washington and Jerusalem and were still under congressional review in the summer of 1991.[^29] Ben-Menashe's account is that the book, together with [[Gary Sick]]'s *October Surprise*, which also quoted him as a prominent source, led to an intense and prolonged barrage of media attacks seeking to discredit him.[^30]

The book's account of [[Nicholas Davies]], foreign editor of the [[Daily Mirror]], comes from Ben-Menashe. Ben-Menashe is quoted saying that he and Davies had been partners in an arms sales firm, [[Ora Limited]], which operated from Davies's London home from 1983, and that "Davies was my main backup on all the Iran arms sales." He recalled that "Nick had a friend in the Mossad" and a casual meeting in London. Hersh wrote that Davies then accepted an invitation to visit Israel. Hersh also wrote that [[Mordechai Vanunu]] had been compromised to the Israelis by Davies, and that Davies's contact in the matter was Ben-Menashe.[^31] The book cites a 1987 cable to Ayatollah [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]] offering four thousand TOW missiles at $13,800 each, which stated that a British citizen named Nicholas Davies would have authority to sign contracts in Iran on behalf of Ora Limited. Davies, reached by telephone, acknowledged that he knew Ben-Menashe, denied any involvement in arms sales, and said Ben-Menashe was only a news source. Hersh also quoted Davies's second wife, the actress [[Janet Fielding]], as saying she knew Davies was selling arms in partnership with Ben-Menashe while he was foreign editor of the Mirror.[^32]

The book was published in Britain on Monday, October 21, 1991. Two members of the [[House of Commons]], [[George Galloway]] and [[Rupert Allason]], raised its claims in the chamber the next day under parliamentary privilege.[^33] On October 23, 1991, [[Robert Maxwell]], the proprietor of the Mirror group, who was in New York, sought an injunction against distribution of the book, and the Mirror Group said libel writs were being issued against Faber and Faber. Davies said, "The allegations are a complete and total lie." Maxwell called the accusations "ludicrous, a total invention."[^34]

[[Newsweek]] reported on November 4, 1991 that Maxwell had sued, Davies had sued, and Faber and Faber had sued back. It reported that Hersh insisted he had independent verification for much of what Ben-Menashe said, that the Mirror had announced an internal investigation into one aspect of Davies's story, and that the former KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, whom Ben-Menashe named as having agreed to write a foreword for a planned book, told the magazine he was not writing anything and had never heard of Ben-Menashe.[^35] The Sunday Times of October 27, 1991 reported that its reporter Peter Hounam, who had handled Vanunu's story in 1986, had himself taken the photograph of Vanunu that Ben-Menashe said was flown from Israel to Davies, and had given it to Vanunu's agent. It reported that Hounam concluded none of Hersh's account of Ben-Menashe's dealings over the Vanunu affair had been verified from any other source, and that Hounam gave his opinion at a meeting with lawyers that Hersh had been hoaxed. Hersh argued that he had checked his facts, and Faber decided to go ahead. The same article quoted [[ABC News]] investigations producer Christopher Isham as saying that on a scale of unreliability from hero to minus eight, Ben-Menashe recorded minus eight or minus seven on every major question in a polygraph examination, and reported that Hersh believed such tests were unreliable.[^33]

Maxwell died in November 1991.[^36] In Ben-Menashe's account, Hersh and his publishers filed a countersuit against Maxwell, Davies and the Mirror Group, and some of the critical denials in the Mirror articles were shown to be false.[^30] On Thursday, August 18, 1994, [[Mirror Group Newspapers]] apologized "unreservedly" in court for a series of articles in October 1991 that attacked Hersh and Faber and Faber, acknowledged that its attacks had been "entirely improper," and agreed to pay Hersh and his publisher "substantial damages and meet their legal costs." Hersh had sued over suggestions that his book made false allegations about Maxwell and Davies.[^36] In his 2018 memoir *Reporter*, Hersh wrote that the newspaper issued "a very abject apology."[^37]

### The Dark Side of Camelot (1997)

*The Dark Side of Camelot* was published by [[Little, Brown]] in 1997. It examines John F. Kennedy's private conduct and his ties to organized crime.[^2]

### Abu Ghraib

Hersh published "Torture at Abu Ghraib" in [[The New Yorker]] on May 10, 2004, "Chain of Command" on May 17, and "The Gray Zone" on May 24; [[HarperCollins]] published *Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib* later that year.[^2] "The Gray Zone" attributed the origins of the [[Abu Ghraib]] abuses to a [[Pentagon]] operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words including Copper Green, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved in 2003 for expansion to the interrogation of prisoners. The article named [[Stephen Cambone]], the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Major General [[Geoffrey Miller]], the commander at Guantanamo who was summoned to Baghdad in late August 2003, as central figures. It cited the internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General [[Antonio Taguba]] in February, as showing that Miller urged commanders in Baghdad to place military intelligence in charge of the prison, and quoted the report as saying that "detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation."[^38]

The former intelligence official quoted in the article said he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or General [[Richard Myers]] knew that atrocities were committed, but that "it was their permission granted to do the sap, generically, and there was enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses." Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesman said, "I will not discuss any covert programs; however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7, 2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere else."[^38]

The Taguba report records that Lieutenant General [[Ricardo Sanchez]] asked on January 19, 2004 for an investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, citing detainee abuse, escapes and accountability lapses that he said indicated systemic problems.[^39] It describes a team led by Miller that visited the headquarters of Combined Joint Task Force Seven from August 31 to September 9, 2003, using Guantanamo procedures as baselines, and states that its executive summary said detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.[^40] The investigating officer commented that the Miller team's recommendation that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for exploitation of internees would appear to conflict with the recommendations of Major General Donald Ryder's team and Army Regulation 190-8.[^41] Taguba's finding of fact was that between October and December 2003 numerous incidents of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" were inflicted on detainees in Tier 1-A at Abu Ghraib, intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force, and that members of the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion and 205th Military Intelligence Brigade also committed abuses.[^42]

### The killing of bin Laden and Nord Stream

Hersh's essay "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" appeared in the [[London Review of Books]] in the issue of May 21, 2015. It names as its major American source a retired senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the initial intelligence on [[Osama bin Laden]] in Abbottabad, with two other American sources who were longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command, and information from inside [[Pakistan]]. It states that bin Laden had been a prisoner of Pakistan's intelligence service at the Abbottabad compound since 2006, and that senior Pakistani military leaders knew of the raid in advance.[^43] On May 11, 2015, White House National Security Council spokesman [[Ned Price|Edward Price]] rejected the account: "This was a US operation through and through," he said, and "The notion that the operation was anything but a unilateral US mission is patently false."[^44]

On February 8, 2023, Hersh published "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline" on his [[Substack]] page, with the subtitle that the New York Times had called the attack a mystery but that the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret until now.[^45] According to Newsweek's summary, Hersh wrote that President [[Joe Biden]] ordered specialized Navy divers to destroy the pipelines after the national security community debated the plan for nine months. The explosions had occurred on September 26, 2022, in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. White House National Security Council spokesperson [[Adrienne Watson]] said, according to Reuters, "This is utterly false and complete fiction," and spokespeople for the CIA and the State Department also denied the account.[^46]

### Footnotes

[^1]: EBSCO Research Starters, "Seymour M. Hersh," https://ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/seymour-m-hersh.
[^2]: Daniel C. Tsang, "Selective Bibliography: Seymour M. Hersh," UC Irvine Libraries, November 13, 2007 (books, including *Chemical and Biological Warfare* (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), *My Lai 4* (Random House, 1970), *Cover-Up* (Random House, 1972), *The Dark Side of Camelot* (Little, Brown, 1997) and *Chain of Command* (HarperCollins, 2004); New Yorker articles of May 10, May 17 and May 24, 2004; New Yorker articles from December 14, 1992).
[^3]: Lieutenant General W. R. Peers, transmittal of the final report of investigation, March 14, 1970, in Department of the Army, *Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident*, vol. I, 1970, https://archive.org/details/army-report-on-my-lai. The transmittal states that it follows the directive of November 26, 1969.
[^4]: The Pulitzer Prizes, 1970 International Reporting, https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1970.
[^5]: Memorandum for the record, OLC 72-0768, "Senate Armed Services Committee Interest in Hersh Story re 'Rainmaking,'" July 5, 1972, with attached copy of Seymour M. Hersh, "Cloud Seeding in Indochina Confirmed," *New York Times*, July 3, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030115-5, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030115-5.
[^6]: Memorandum for the record, OLC 72-1162, "Representative Nedzi's Conversation of Today with Seymour Hersh of the New York Times," November 30, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030019-2, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030019-2.
[^7]: Seymour M. Hersh, "C.I.A. Chief Tells House of $8-Million Campaign Against Allende in '70-73," *New York Times*, September 8, 1974 (dateline September 7), as reprinted in CIA reading room item CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020130-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp09t00207r001000020130-9.
[^8]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Document 17, Editorial Note, quoting William E. Colby and Peter Forbath, *Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA* (Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 389-393, and a December 23, 1974 Kissinger telephone transcript (Department of State, Kissinger Telephone Transcripts), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2/d17.
[^9]: Seymour M. Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," *New York Times*, December 22, 1974, p. 1, as reprinted in CIA, *News, Views and Issues*, No. 21, December 27, 1974, CIA-RDP77-00432R000100340001-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp77-00432r000100340001-9.
[^10]: CIA, "Chronology of Significant MHCHAOS Correspondence," item 1, approved for release January 18, 2017, CIA reading room document C01481988, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01481988.
[^11]: Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, *Report to the President* (June 1975), ch. 11, "Special Operations Group, 'Operation CHAOS,'" pp. 130 and 148.
[^12]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 94-755, Book II, "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, pp. 7 and 103.
[^13]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Persons list (Rockefeller, Nelson A., Chairman of the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, January-June 1975), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2.
[^14]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 94-755, Book I, "Foreign and Military Intelligence," April 26, 1976, Letter of Transmittal (Senate established the Select Committee on January 27, 1975, by S. Res. 21).
[^15]: Church Committee, *Final Report*, Book II, "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, p. 82.
[^16]: Church Committee, *Final Report*, Book III, "Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, pp. 503-504 (Justice Department Interdivisional Information Unit, citing Statement of Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman, January 14, 1975).
[^17]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXV, Document 197, Memorandum of Conversation, March 19, 1975, editors' note citing CIA, Executive Registry, Job 80M01048A, Box 7, Seymour Hersh, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197.
[^18]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXV, Document 183, Editorial Note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d183.
[^19]: Memorandum of conversation, May 27, 1975, Ford, Schlesinger, Colby, Rumsfeld, Ingersoll, Scowcroft, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 12, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0314/1553088.pdf, pp. 1-3. The released text is declassified in part.
[^20]: Cable from Rumsfeld, Brussels, to Cheney, May 30, 1975, Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 6, folder "Intelligence - New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh (2)," Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
[^21]: Memorandum, Bud McFarlane to Dick Cheney, "Holystone," May 30, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
[^22]: Memorandum, Cheney to Rumsfeld, May 30, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
[^23]: Memorandum of May 31, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf, pp. 1-3.
[^24]: Letter, Office of the Deputy Attorney General to W. E. Colby, June 2, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
[^25]: Memorandum, Rex E. Lee and John C. Keeney to the Attorney General, "Recent Disclosure of Classified Information in New York Times Article," undated, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf, pp. 1-9.
[^26]: Seymour M. Hersh, "Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile," *Atlantic Monthly*, December 1982, second of two installments, CIA reading room item CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402830023-3. Book: *The Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House* (Summit Books, 1983).
[^27]: Seymour M. Hersh, "New Evidence Backs Ex-Envoy on His Role in Chile," *New York Times*, February 1981, CIA reading room item CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830047-7, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402830047-7.
[^28]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (Random House, 1991), Author's Note, pp. ix-xi.
[^29]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), note on Ben-Menashe at p. 260.
[^30]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
[^31]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), pp. 309-310.
[^32]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), pp. 310-311.
[^33]: "Mirrorgate: Spies, Arms Dealers and Secrets," *The Sunday Times* (London), October 27, 1991, reproduced at https://peterhounam.com/?p=4257.
[^34]: United Press International, "Maxwell to seek injunction against book," October 23, 1991, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/10/23/Maxwell-to-seek-injunction-against-book/9254688190400/.
[^35]: "One Man, Many Tales," *Newsweek*, November 4, 1991, https://www.newsweek.com/one-man-many-tales-201744.
[^36]: Associated Press, "Writer wins damages, apology in libel suit," *Deseret News*, August 20, 1994, https://www.deseret.com/1994/8/20/19125977/writer-wins-damages-apology-in-libel-suit.
[^37]: Seymour M. Hersh, *Reporter: A Memoir* (Allen Lane, 2018), as quoted in John Newsinger, review, *Lobster* 76, https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/lob76-reporter-memoir.pdf.
[^38]: Seymour M. Hersh, "The Gray Zone," *The New Yorker*, May 24, 2004, pp. 38-44, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/24/the-gray-zone.
[^39]: Department of the Army, *Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade* (Taguba report), 2004, Background, para. 1, p. 6, https://hrlibrary.law.umn.edu/OathBetrayed/Taguba-Report.pdf.
[^40]: Taguba report, Background, para. 6, p. 7, and Part One, Assessment of DoD Counter-Terrorism Interrogation and Detention Operations in Iraq (MG Miller's Assessment), para. 1, p. 8.
[^41]: Taguba report, IO Comments on MG Miller's Assessment, para. 2, p. 9.
[^42]: Taguba report, Findings of Fact, para. 5, p. 16.
[^43]: Seymour M. Hersh, "The Killing of Osama bin Laden," *London Review of Books*, vol. 37, no. 10, May 21, 2015, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n10/seymour-m.-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden.
[^44]: Agence France-Presse, "White House Rebuts Journalist's Claim on OBL Raid," *Defense News*, May 11, 2015, https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2015/05/11/white-house-rebuts-journalist-s-claim-on-obl-raid/.
[^45]: Seymour M. Hersh, "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline," Substack, February 8, 2023, https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream.
[^46]: Jon Jackson, "Did Biden Order an Attack on Russia's Nord Stream Pipelines? What We Know," *Newsweek*, February 8, 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/0-1779948.