CAIRO: “What drives me is the belief in truth internationally renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh told a packed crowd at the American University in Cairo.
“I wish I could give you some good news. There isn’t a lot.
Hersh first made headlines in 1969 when he exposed the controversial My Lai massacre and cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he later won the Pulitzer Prize. Since then he has exposed a series of high-level secrets and scandals, including Israel’s nuclear arsenal and most recently, Abu Ghraib.
He was at the event to discuss his latest exposé for The New Yorker magazine, now making headlines globally, concerning destructive clandestine schemes by the Bush administration in the Middle East to undermine Shia Iran, as well as to discuss the details of the Abu Ghraib scandal which broke in May 2004.
In character, Hersh makes strong accusations. In “The Redirection article, he argues that the US’s new strategy is to cause a “fitna, or civil war in the Middle East, pitting Muslim against Muslim, “brother against brother.
This, with the help and coordination of Saudi counterparts. “I can’t tell you how dangerous this is, he says. Hersh accuses the American administration of running illegal and unauthorized operations in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, to support movements countering Hezbollah and current regimes.
Intrinsic to the strategy is insisting that certain members in the conflict refuse to compromise, as has happened with Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s repeated attempts to negotiate and make peace with Israel.
Hersh spoke of the obvious irony of the Bush administration’s refusal to negotiate with the Iranians until they comply with the very thing they are supposed to be negotiating for.
He further mentioned the mysterious disappearance of between $9 to 12 billion of Iraqi oil money held by the Americans for safekeeping after their invasion of the country.
Despite his harsh criticisms and the atrocities he reveals, Hersh maintains compassion and attempts to understand the “villains in any situation.
Regarding one woman, whom he refers to as the “child, implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal, and whose nearly 80 pictures of American troops abusing and humiliating prisoners, Hersh tried to show the audience the other side of the monsters we saw.
Hersh described how the mostly lower-class US troops in Iraq were briefly trained before becoming prison guards. The girl’s mother described to Hersh her daughter’s strange behavior upon returning from duty, how she left her husband, skipped town and showed erratic, depressed, even suicidal behavior. Every week she got a new tattoo until she was covered with the dark patches.
“It was as if she wanted to change her skin, Hersh says the mother told him.
Such depictions are not meant to arouse greater sympathy for the soldiers than for the prisoners but Hersh wants to spread the message that “the people who do the shooting are as much victims as those being shot at, in the hope that perhaps Americans will be more aware of the effects of this war on their own soldiers.
At the same time, he believes the US has unfairly demonized Hassan Nasrallah, who Hersh has often interviewed. While he refers to him as the “most important person, in Lebanon right now, Hersh says that his influential speeches go unmentioned in American media.
He asserted that the US government was plotting with Israel before the kidnappings that triggered the 34-day July assault on Lebanon even happened. It also refused to seek an immediate ceasefire “contrary to every principle it has known in the past.
His politics are clear: “I don’t know if the world will be a better place in five years. In two years it might, he joked, referring to the 2008 US presidential elections.
He spoke of “extremely bad leadership and said Bush was the “most radical president we’ve ever had. “[Bush] is immune to change, inert to information. Once he’s set his mind, new facts cannot enter it.
He is neither a polemicist nor an idealistic, reserving some criticism to US foreign policy under the Clinton administration.
“What’s happening doesn’t reflect the best of us, and it doesn’t reflect us at all, said Hersh, pointing to officials who seek his help in exposing policies they disagree with.
He maintains hope in the American public who must start “questioning their government, as must Arab citizenry.
Audience members during and after the lecture showed similar concern, and even despair at American foreign policy, questioning whether there could be a revival of the military draft and asking about the silence of the American people.
The picture he drew was mostly grim but he did have a few hopeful words for the region based on his experience with the Heikal Foundation, which invited Hersh to give a three-day workshop on investigative journalism attended by 70 Arab journalists.
Impressed with the quality of journalists and the number of women who attended the seminar, as well as with the increasing use of Internet and blogging, Hersh told one student after the lecture that “things are going to be wild here in the next couple of years . you’re going to see some big changes in the world.
“The trend is more openness.
He does however foresee escalating confrontation between the media and the government. “It bodes not well for conflict, he says, as “the government is going one way, while the people are going the other way.
Hersh told The Daily Star Egypt that he originally became a journalist because he flunked out of law school. “It was the only job I could get.
And he has not stopped since.
He added that while there had been “downtimes, he never reached a point where he was too tired of confrontation or too disillusioned to stop.
“People tell me nobody pays attention to the stories they write. Ninety percent of what I write now doesn’t make any difference.
Still, he continues because, he says “journalism can make things better.
Hersh’s most recent book “Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib looks behind the scenes of the “war on terror and the connection between the hunt for Al-Qaeda and the Iraq war. His previous books include “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, “The Target is Destroyed, “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.
