He's done some good work in the past, but now he's a worldwide laughingstock.

Remember First of April, 2003?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Lynch#Controversy_regarding_coverage

Edit to add:

Now he's making Pierre Salinger's final days look gravitas-laden by comparison.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/seymour-hersh-bin-laden-story-117830.html#ixzz3aX2rjmFn


Not at all surprising that some of us would swallow Hersh's version of events, unquestioningly. But many of his colleagues are asking plenty of questions. There's a problem when your account is based, primarily, on the word of a single "unnamed" source. Remember the Rolling Stone UVA story that should never have been printed? I have a feeling this is going to end Hersh's career with any serious media outlet. There's a reason why he had to print this story abroad, it's because the New Yorker knew it didn't meet their journalistic standards. Hersh has become Infowars, and he doesn't even know it yet.

you are a true patriot and one of the greatest journalists working today. Thank you for exposing the lies told by the State.

Seymour Hersh has produced amazing investigative journalism. But his newest bombshell reads like bad fiction.

By Phillip Carter


When Seymour Hersh is right, he’s really right. His incredible reporting unearthed the My Lai massacre in 1969, causing seismic tremors for the U.S. military that would reverberate for decades. Thirty-five years later, Hersh’s patient detective work uncovered the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, changing not just how U.S. forces treated detainees in the field but also how the U.S. military managed detention operations at Guantánamo Bay. These meticulously researched and reported pieces altered the course of American policy during two major wars, and set a gold standard for what investigative national security journalism can (and should) be.

Unfortunately, Hersh’s latest dispatch in the London Review of Books falls far short of this mark. In a piece published Sunday, Hersh asserts that the official story of how U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden in May 2011 was one, big, bright shining lie, shielded up until now by the hyperclassification surrounding the mission and a desire to protect America’s secret partners in Pakistan. To make these fantastic allegations, Hersh relies on a coterie of Pakistani sources, mostly retired from that country’s military or intelligence agencies, as well as a handful of anonymous U.S. officials or consultants. The shallow sourcing alone makes Hersh’s article suspicious. The convenient overlap between certain Pakistani interests and the truths revealed by Hersh cast doubt on the piece too, especially in the absence of more solid sourcing. Many of the actual details in the piece, such as the reported obliteration of Bin Laden’s corpse by gunfire, shred any remaining credibility the article might have. Little wonder the CIA told the Washington Post the report was “utter nonsense,” and a White House official said it had “too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions” to respond to each one.

If the facts were as Hersh reported, they probably would have come out by now. Not surprisingly given his Pakistani sources, Hersh’s version of truth aligns conveniently with Pakistani interests, particularly those of Pakistani generals anxious to make themselves look less impotent after the U.S. raid. In the U.S. version that has been told many times since 2011, Pakistan’s military fell asleep at the switch multiple times, allowing Bin Laden to live near Pakistan’s version of West Point, and allowing U.S. forces to conduct a lethal raid on their territory. In Hersh’s telling, Pakistani leaders look calculating, wise, and gifted at manipulating their American patrons.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_s_london_review_of_books_investigation_of_the_osama_bin_laden.html