Cover-Up (2025)

[bunniefuu]

[dramatic droning music]

There are five major bases

in the United States

for the production of chemical

and biological weapons

and research into them.

Have there been any accidents?

You have the incident at Dugway.

[Sy] On a Sunday, one Sunday,

some sheep farmers noticed

that their sheep were dying.

By Monday, 6000 had died.

They've been testing

nerve gas there since the '60s.

Something went wrong.

An Air Force plane

had 40 gallons of nerve gas dyed red.

It blew over toward Salt Lake City.

[interviewer]

What about your family?

Have they had any ill effects from this?

Well, I don't know

whether it's from this or not.

We all had a stomach flu Saturday

and was vomiting

quite a bit all night long.

Whether it's related or not,

it kind of spooks you.

Medical, veterinarian

and other technical personnel

of Dugway Proving Ground

are in the field investigating

the cause of this problem.

[official] At this time,

it would be purely speculative

to attempt to fix a specific

cause of death of the sheep.

[Sy] I don't care what the Army says.

I investigated it,

um, for a magazine article I did,

and it was nerve gas

that k*lled the sheep.

And the Army wants to mess around,

but it was nerve gas.

Everybody says that off the record

and nobody's willing to say,

"Well, you know,

the Army's lying through its teeth."

[Sy] All right.

[blows rhythmically]

Come on.

Come on, just do it right.

[keyboard clacking]

[Sy laughs] It says,

"Hersh seems to know a great deal

about what they were investigating.

But it's okay, boss.

He's not aware of the cover-up."

Pretty amazing.

I didn't see this until about a year ago.

- All right. Showtime.

- [Laura] All right.

What do you want to do?

You've been filming all of this, right?

[Laura] We'd love to talk about sources.

Let's put it this way.

You'd love to talk about sources

and I'd love not to talk about sources.

[Mark]

It isn't necessarily specific sources.

Types of people you get?

We already went through

some of the people I get.

And I looked at the pads last night

and the names are all over them.

I never in my

this is all supposed to be after death.

[laughs]

[Mark] Sy, we're not exposing

any of these people.

[Sy] Some of these people

may be alive, you understand?

And a lot of them hated my guts

and still talked to me.

[Laura] And why do you think

they liked meeting with you?

I don't know.

If you work in the secret world,

and there's some guy out there

pounding away

and getting in there,

you know, why not talk to me?

I don't know, I don't know. I don't

You know, I don't psychoanalyze

those who talk to me.

Just like I don't psychoanalyze myself,

thank God.

Which you want me to do, I know.

But I'm not going to.

Not gonna go there.

Let's see,

I'm thinking of some people.

Here's somebody who worked for Kissinger.

And then here's

Here's a CIA woman.

It's complicated to know who to trust.

You know, I barely trust you guys.

[ethereal droning music]

[Sy] I've learned not to worry too much

about what others think.

Because I was always writing stories

that got certain people mad.

There's a history of America

that's so hard to write.

There always is another level.

My job as a newspaper reporter

is to find out secrets and facts.

If that's what

if that's what the issue is.

And you publish them.

Why do you publish them?

We publish them knowing

we're violating the rules

and the laws,

and we're breaking national security.

It's top-secret information

above top-secret

because we think

there's an outstanding reason.

We think there's a story here

of officials with responsibility

not conducting their affairs correctly.

And that's the issue I'm trying to make.

And there shouldn't be

any bar on the press, theoretically,

to publish anything we want,

because that happens to be the way

the Constitution

and the Bill of Rights was set up.

[Johnson]

When we get in a contest of any kind,

American people like to rise like this.

And they like for the opposition

to go down like this.

Now that--

that's not the kind of

w*r we're fighting in Vietnam.

I think we're moving more like this.

And I think they're moving more like this

instead of straight up and straight down.

We are making progress.

We are pleased with the results

that we're getting.

We are inflicting greater losses

than we're taking.

[dramatic droning music]

[expl*si*n rumbles]

[machinery whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

[typewriter clacking]

[Sy] You know,

the Pentagon is a strange place.

I mean, you get there

and you get your cup of coffee

and you sh**t the fat,

you read the papers.

Around 10:30, they come

and give you a little briefing.

You file a little something off that.

You know, these guys get paid

an awful lot of money

for doing things like

listening to the news conference

and waiting an hour

till the transcript's typed up,

and then writing a 500-word story off it.

That's what they do all day for a living.

That's not very much.

I think what you have in America

is not so much censorship,

but self-censorship by the press.

[indistinct chatter]

[Sy] When I was

at the Pentagon for the AP,

instead of going to lunch

with my colleagues,

I would go find young officers.

You know, talk a little football,

get to know them.

I had been in the Army.

I was in the Army reserves.

Eventually,

Army guys would just start saying,

"Well, you know,

it's m*rder incorporated there."

[scoffs] What? I said, "What do you mean?"

[dramatic droning music]

[LBJ] I, as President of this country,

will lay on the table

the schedule

for the withdrawal of all of our

[dramatic droning music]

[cheers and applause]

[helicopter whirring]

[Sy] There's a lot of brainwashing

going around.

And, you know, a lot of people

making decisions

about what people

should hear or listen to.

And we are in a stage

of open m*rder in Vietnam.

[helicopter blades whirring, muffled]

[indistinct chatter]

[protesters chanting]

[ethereal music]

[ethereal music continues]

[Sy] I was generally, um,

feeling useless in a sense.

I had just a sense of unease

about where I was

and where the w*r was.

There was this big story

that seemed impossible.

There's something

called the truth. [chuckles]

There was just

this massive truth out there,

and there was just

I didn't see a way to get to it,

and I worried about it.

I mean, I thought about that stuff.

[Sy] After a fight with the editor,

I quit the AP.

My wife Liz and I were married with a kid

and not much money.

I began to freelance a lot.

One day I get a call

from a guy I didn't know

and I said, "What's up?"

He said, "There's a terrible,

there's a terrible atrocity in Vietnam

that they're covering up."

It was murky.

[man] He described it

as a GI had gone nuts

and shot up a lot of people.

He didn't know much about it,

but the Army was in a panic about it.

[Sy] I had no name. I knew nothing.

I went to the Pentagon a couple times,

and there was one colonel I liked a lot.

And I bump into the colonel,

and now he's got a one star.

I stop him, and we said,

"Hi, you know, gee,

we haven't seen each other in years."

I said, "What's with the knee?"

He said, "Oh, I caught a b*llet."

I said, "Oh, my God,

you shot yourself in the knee

to become a general

and get a medal, right?"

[chuckles]

He laughed and he said,

"Go eff yourself."

We kept on walking.

So I said, "So what are you doing now?"

He said,

"I'm working for the chief of staff."

"Westmoreland?" He said, "Yes."

And I said, "What do you know

about some guy

sh**ting up a village?"

And he said, "Sy, let me tell you,

that guy, Calley,

I hope he goes to hell."

Whatever you said.

Calley? I had a name.

Of course I was spelling it wrong.

But eventually, I found

a clip from The New York Times,

and there was a little square

that a lieutenant named

William L. Calley Jr.

was being held for manslaughter.

And Calley, Calley, right?

I found out he had a lawyer named Latimer.

I called him up and I said,

"Hey, my name is Hersh."

And I said, "You know, I'm

on a flight to the West Coast

that stops in Salt Lake.

Is it okay if I stop in your office

and say hello?"

He said, "Sure, come on by."

You know, that wasn't the way it was.

I just wanted to be casual about it.

And I got to his office

and he pulled out a piece of paper.

There's a charge sheet.

Lieutenant Calley was charged

with k*lling 109 people.

He had the paper in front of him,

upside down.

I said to myself,

you're going to continue a conversation

and you're going to pretend

to be taking notes,

and you're going to write

almost letter by letter

as much as you can.

So I've got dynamite.

[whooshing]

So I decided I had to go find Calley.

And I flew to Fort Benning.

I got this ratty suit,

probably my wedding suit.

I'm wearing the same clothes for days.

I got there early in the morning.

I finally found him at midnight

the same day by sheer luck.

They put Calley into the housing

for colonels and generals.

It's the last place I was looking.

He was so different from what I wanted.

I wanted to see a monster.

And he starts telling me

a series of lies about,

"It was a firefight,

and there were a lot of enemy there.

Nobody knew who anybody was.

And all I was doing my job

protecting my troops,

and yes,

I'm sure civilians were k*lled,

but they were trying to k*ll us."

And he said, "My captain,

Ernest Medina, he's like me.

He's going through an investigation.

He'll tell you."

He picks up the phone and he says,

"Captain, I'm here

with a reporter from Washington.

And why don't you tell him

I was just following orders on all this?"

And Medina says, "I don't know

what you're talking about,"

and slams the phone.

And Calley gives me this look like

maybe maybe I'm the fall guy.

[typewriter clacking]

[return dings, clicks]

[Obst] Sy had tried to sell it

to a number of magazines.

Nobody would touch it.

Finally, he handed it to me and said,

"Don't f*ck it up."

And I spend the next nine hours

cold calling every managing editor

of every newspaper in America

and pitching my little heart out.

[interviewer]

Sy, last week you broke a story

about an Army lieutenant

who is accused of murdering

109 Vietnamese civilians.

Where did it first break into print?

[Sy] The Chicago Sun-Times,

5:30 on the street,

at 6:30 Washington time.

[interviewer]

That was your story, the Dispatch story.

[Sy] Right. Right.

And then it was in the first edition

of about, as I said, about 30 papers.

I think it takes sort

of a non-establishment approach.

I talked to LIFE who had said

no, they weren't interested.

LOOK, they weren't interested.

And that's when David Obst

took over, of Dispatch.

He assured me

he could get this paper

in the front pages intact.

I'm not on anybody's fan club

in the Pentagon these days.

They tried to keep it secret.

I broke that game up.

[shutter clicking repeatedly]

[dramatic music droning]

[shutter clicking continues]

[Sy] The Pentagon's view of this

is that Calley is some sort of a madman.

My hunch is he's not a madman.

And it raises a very real question,

were there really orders to

sh**t everything in the village?

And if so,

is this being done all the time?

[woman shouting]

We're with you, Calley!

[Sy] There was more.

There had to be more,

and I couldn't figure out

where to go.

The Army wasn't going to help me,

that's for sure.

[ring tone plays]

Oh, I didn't turn off my phone.

I'm so sorry.

No, no, no. Okay.

Let me just say this. The only

thing I called you about is,

I said the warning came too from Iran,

but it went through Saudi Arabia.

But I don't think that's important.

[man, over cell phone]

You said, "Presumably from Iran."

Well, it was from Iran,

but it was through the Saudis.

But it's okay. It's fine.

That's good enough.

[taps table]

We don't have to change it.

[indistinct voice over cell phone]

Goodbye, goodbye.

Trying to say goodbye. Goodbye.

He said, "You don't want to

give away too much." [laughs]

So here's what happened.

[Obst] We go back to my house

on McComb Street

and Sy's reading The Washington Post

and he sees a small little story

buried in there

about a kid named Ron Ridenhour

who claims that he had told

the Army about the m*ssacre.

[Sy] Ridenhour, eight months earlier,

wrote a letter, he sent it

to 30 members of Congress,

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

all the generals,

and to the White House,

to the President,

about what he knew was a dark deed.

So I went home to pack my bag.

Had to borrow money,

and took a plane to California

to see him.

Specifically, they told me

that they had seen

individuals, individual soldiers,

and some of the officers

going through the village,

and as they swept through the village,

if there were people standing

by the side of the trail,

through the village or in the village,

that they just gunned them down,

that they shot them,

they saw them, these people shot,

uh, with no provocation.

I felt that I had to take some action.

I had to do something.

I couldn't just rest with this knowledge

for the rest of my life. I couldn't.

I couldn't live with myself if I did.

[dramatic music playing]

[Sy] Ridenhour gave me

a company roster,

and he gave me the names of two people

who would talk to me.

One was a young man

who was a Mormon

that lived in Utah.

His name was Michael Terry.

So I went up there, I found him,

I went up that night.

His line was, it was "a n*zi-type thing".

The second person

that Ridenhour had told me about

was Michael Bernhardt.

I met him at Fort Dix.

It would have been impossible

to screw up that story.

All you had to do was

get out of the way of the story.

You had notes from Terry.

You had notes from Bernhardt.

Just let their voice be the story.

-[indistinct chatter]

-[shutters clicking]

What were your orders?

Prior to the operation,

the C.O.'s order was,

uh, to destroy the village

and its inhabitants.

Did you think the people

in the village were Viet Cong?

Uh, some of the people

in the village,

you say people in the village,

some of the people

in the village, uh,

weren't old enough to walk yet.

I don't see how

they could be Viet Cong.

[dramatic music droning]

[Obst]

There was a great reaction of people

not wanting to believe it.

Being angry at us

as being the messengers.

Nobody wanted to know

that the United States was the bad guy.

[dramatic music playing]

Recently, a few individuals

involved in serious incidents

have been highlighted in the news.

Some would have

these incidents

reflect on the Army as a whole.

They are, however,

the actions of a pitiful few.

But the Army as an institution

should never be put on trial.

I was trying to put together

what happened.

What the hell happened?

So that was my goal.

And I kept on.

I kept on finding people.

I found a lot of people

that talked to me an awful lot.

[Laura] Say more.

What do you mean? What happened?

How did it happen? Wha-- How--

The descent into madness.

[gentle music playing]

[Sy] You're getting me

to think about things

I don't want to think about.

I was looking for this kid

who had his foot blown off,

Paul Meadlo.

[vehicle humming]

He lived in this corner of Indiana.

It was a farm.

An old run-down farm.

And a very southern lady came out,

and I said, "I'm here to see Paul."

I said, "I'm a journalist.

And I wanted to talk about

what happened in the Army."

And then she said this line

that will stay in my head

the rest of my life.

She said, "I gave them--"

in a bitter voice-- [sighs]

"I gave them a good boy, and

they sent me back a m*rder*r."

[Meadlo's mother] When he came back,

he was just a-stuttering and I said,

"Well, what makes you do that?"

And he said,

"Mom, I have went through hell."

[Sy] I go to see Paul.

Then I said, "So what happened?"

And then he started just

[scoffs]

k*lling, m*rder, k*lling, expiation.

And, uh, straight as you can make it.

-[crickets chirping]

-[quiet music playing]

[dogs barking in the distance]

[Obst] Sy calls me, and he says,

"We've got the front-page story

of the world."

So I cold-call CBS Evening News,

and then I did something

that you're not supposed to do.

But I didn't know at the time you weren't.

I said, "We need money for it."

He says, "How much do you want?"

I had no idea.

I blurted out, "$10,000."

There's a pause. He says, "Deal."

[Sy] Mike Wallace is assigned

to do the interview.

Mike talks to him

for two minutes and says,

"Let's get him in a room right now."

And they start taping it.

How many people did you round up?

Well, there was about 40, 45 people

that we gathered in a,

in, like I say, uh,

the center of the village.

What kind of people?

Men, women, children?

Men, women, children.

- Babies?

- Babies.

And, we all huddled them up,

made them squat down.

And, uh

Lieutenant Calley came over and said,

you know what to do with them,

don't you?

And, I said, yes.

So I took it for granted that

he just wanted us to watch 'em,

and, he left and came back about

ten or fifteen minutes later,

and said, how come

you ain't k*lled 'em yet?

And, I told him that,

I didn't think you wanted us to k*ll 'em.

I thought you wanted us to guard them.

He said, no, he wanted them dead.

So he stepped back

about ten, fifteen feet,

and he started sh**ting them,

and he told me to start sh**ting them.

So I started sh**ting and fired

about four clips into the group.

- Men, women and children.

- Men, women and children.

- And babies.

- And babies.

But how do you sh**t babies?

I don't know,

it's just one of them things.

[rhythmic music playing]

[chanting] Hell no, we won't go!

Hell no, we won't go!

Hell no, we won't go!

Hell no, we won't go!

[Sy] The Army photographer involved,

Ron Haeberle,

he had two cameras.

For the Army, he ended up using

the black-and-white camera.

But he never told

anybody about

having another set

of color film.

[low music hums]

[Sy] After my first story broke,

he sold them.

[dark music playing]

[Sy] It was all over the world

once they published them.

[man speaking Vietnamese]

How many people died from your family?

Four people.

When you came back from the market,

what did you see?

I'm too young. I was afraid to look.

Are you the only survivor in your family?

Yes.

[in Vietnamese]

They came and burned down everything.

They beat some, captured some.

They k*lled everyone in a frenzy.

[man, in Vietnamese]

Do you know the reason why?

I don't know. I don't know the reason.

They rounded everyone up.

Even the monk was taken away and k*lled.

Can you guess how many people died?

-How many people were k*lled?

-Yes, how many?

I don't know, but I saw death everywhere.

I saw so many dead bodies.

My nephew,

who had just learned to walk--

He was clinging to my head and crying,

"Mommy, Mommy."

Then "bang," he got shot and died.

I just lay there but I couldn't see it.

[dark music drones]

We've been sort of committed

to a program

of almost at random m*rder, r*pe, etc.

I think everybody

just looked the other way,

including the reporters,

who obviously must have heard

about it. Some of them.

[Sy] It's appalling.

Why the hell didn't this get out?

That, to me, is the great question.

Here is the k*lling

of 400 or 500 people,

witnessed by perhaps

a dozen helicopters

who were assigned that day

for combat support.

The major general in charge

of the Americal Division

was in the air that day.

The colonel in charge

of the brigade was there.

The head of the task force was there.

Within a few days,

300 or 400 men, GIs, knew about it,

and yet nobody said anything.

Nobody reported it.

There's only two things,

I think, to conclude from this.

One is, of course, that it was

such a shockingly untoward event

that nobody

could even begin to discuss it.

The other one, I think

the more logical conclusion, is,

"Well, that's just

another day in Vietnam."

[low music droning]

[helicopters whirring]

[Sy] The whole Army ran on body count.

You measure success

by how many kills you have.

Westmoreland needed numbers.

And so how do you get

the kind of body count you want?

You had to go into places like My Lai

and tell them that

everybody there is a Viet Cong

and k*ll everybody.

They k*lled people three ways that day.

I'm talking, not everybody

in the company participated,

- but a majority did.

- You missed my point.

I just want to tell you what they did.

We're talking about,

let's just focus on what happened.

They gathered people, perhaps 100 of them

in groups, little circles,

and then some men with

automatic r*fle fire, shot them.

You don't know that of your own knowledge.

As a reporter, I know that.

Do you know that of your own knowledge?

You know, if reporters had to use

everything of their own

knowledge, they wouldn't get

much out of a presidential

news conference either.

After my story came out,

the Army did an investigation.

I was reading the testimony

as it happened.

And the Army, of course,

went totally crazy

trying to figure out how I got it.

It was supposed to be kept secret.

[official] Would you again,

taking the large aerial photo,

would you mark where,

to the best of your knowledge,

you saw the ditch with the bodies in it.

[soldier] Yes, sir.

[pen clicks on table]

[music hums]

[soldier] I don't know

if you want to hear this, sir.

[official] Fine. We'd like to

hear anything you have to say.

[soldier] All right, so the first shot

hit a baby in the head,

and I turned around and got sick,

because that was the first time I ever

Well, I k*lled a person before,

but not actually seen it,

the damage what it did.

[official]

Would you tell us what happened

after this group was shot?

[soldier] Well

right at or in that time,

there was several people

raping several women in this area.

There was three other guys

on one girl,

all at one time.

A guy would grab one of the girls there,

and in one or two incidents

they shot the girls when they got done.

[music hums]

Each day was another 30 years

of life on my shoulders.

That's how I felt.

It just got worse and worse and worse.

I spent two or three months finding kids,

and then I learned

It was just so horrible.

I learned more.

You know, a couple times

I couldn't take it anymore.

[music hums]

[Sy] They had testimony

showing that My Lai

was not isolated.

There was a second m*ssacre

the same day.

The Army went to great lengths

to describe My Lai Four

as an isolated incident.

Not only was it not isolated

in terms of the w*r,

but it wasn't even isolated

in terms of that day,

that morning, that area.

A mile and a half away,

this is going on too.

[indistinct chatter]

[Sy] There were 14 officers

that were clearly involved

in covering it up.

And the charges the Army

eventually filed on the 14

were dereliction of duty,

failure to obey lawful regulations,

and failure to duly report.

They were all either involved in m*rder,

planning m*rder or covering it up,

and they were charged

with "failure to report."

[muffled applause]

And then Westmoreland

finishes his four-year term,

and he's promoted,

even though everybody in the Army

and in the Joint Chiefs knows

he was k*lling civilians.

[muffled cheering, applause]

[cell phone rings]

[Sy] Hi.

Of course I will protect you in every way.

I don't even know how to describe you.

You tell me.

[woman] You can say

"a researcher who recently

returned from Gaza".

When you describe the targeting of women

and you describe the targeting

of children, who has statistics?

In terms of the systematic

targeting of children

with quadcopters,

I, myself, have dozens of X-rays

of children

with quadcopter b*ll*ts in their necks,

in their heads,

provided to me by doctors.

These are kids.

A f*cking nightmare.

And we're only in the first stage of it.

From my side, I don't have the privilege

of not believing

that something can be done,

because I'm daily in touch

with friends and loved ones.

Not believing means abandoning them.

- Are you going back?

- That's the plan.

What people don't understand

is that this is setting a precedent.

Gaza has collapsed

the past and the future.

This is the past and the future

combined, collapsed.

[gentle music playing]

[Sy] My father never talked

about much at all with us.

The communication was

either nothing or rage.

[chuckles] But it's very typical

Eastern European.

I didn't know the secrets 'til later.

My dad was a Jewish refugee.

Came to America not knowing much English.

He was a violinist in the old country.

Played beautiful violin.

He came from a small village

called eduva.

In Lithuania, in those days,

being Jewish was a marker.

Somehow, when he was about 16 or 17,

in 1920, 22,

he got from central Lithuania

to Hamburg

and saved $12

to get on a ship in steerage

to come to America.

Not knowing English,

not knowing much at all.

[gentle music playing]

[Sy] Years later, when the Germans came,

they marched all the Jews

out to the woods

and then ex*cuted them.

They were all wiped out.

And I-I never talked to him about it

because I never knew about it.

Never, not a word about the Holocaust.

It would have been a story

I wanted to hear.

[Laura]

And your mom never told you?

My mom never talked about anything.

And if she did, she didn't tell the truth.

I knew that right away.

That's just the way it was.

My mom liked to bake.

And sometimes if she couldn't bake,

she would buy the cookies

and say she baked them as if--

as if we didn't know the difference.

You know what I mean?

So it was okay.

She was my mother.

I have a twin brother

who's a wave theory physicist.

My mother dressed us alike

until one day,

when we were about 13,

we realized, "This is crazy."

I didn't have any

in-family education.

And so I joined

the Book of the Month club.

I lived on books.

Books taught me how to think.

[children chattering, playing]

[Sy] My father had a business.

Laundry and dry cleaning.

On 45th Street and Indiana,

the South Side.

And I liked it. I liked working there.

It was all-Black community,

Black workers.

[cheering]

[Sy] There was a guy named Sterling,

he was about in his early 20s.

He was pressing pants for $0.12,

and he used to take me to games.

I saw all the great n*gro league players,

Satchel Paige and others, as a kid.

[cheering, muffled]

He made it pretty plain to me

that you're going to be okay, kid,

because, you know,

you got that color.

I don't have that color.

I'm going to be pressing pants

the rest of my life.

So I got that.

I got that. It wasn't that explicit,

but I got that.

I had two older sisters.

They were also twins.

They couldn't wait to

get the hell out of the house.

I was always living

a little bit by my wits,

because from the age of 15 on,

I was carrying the family.

I remember his coughing at night.

Three packs.

I remember his coughing.

It went from lung cancer

to brain cancer.

As he got sicker and sicker,

I could take him,

I could bathe him,

I could do all that stuff.

I went from getting

straight A's to nothing.

[chuckles]

I didn't go to school.

His argument was,

forget about college.

He needed me

to stay and run the store

because I could do it.

And Alan,

who was my brother, he just

He wasn't going to cut it.

He had to go to college.

But Seymour doesn't need college.

He'll be okay.

That was the way he did it.

Because I could run the store.

And I could, you know?

[Laura] What skills did you have

to run the store?

Talk. Pizazz. Like people.

-[traffic hums]

-[somber music hums]

[Sy] One night, I was driving

from the store after closing it.

And the way I knew he died

is I looked up and the light was dark.

I didn't even know

he was on the deathbed.

I mean, it just was an unthinking family.

That I couldn't say goodbye?

[music playing]

[train screeches, rumbles]

[Sy] There was a junior college.

The University of Illinois

had a junior college,

and it was very cheap.

That was the big thing.

I always knew I was a good writer.

I didn't think it was that valuable.

I just didn't think that

I couldn't see any reason

that was so important to me

when I'm ringing up the cash register,

giving people clothes.

One of the first assignments was

to compare any British novel

you want with an American novel.

And so I wrote this essay about it.

At the end of class one day,

I'm in the back row,

eager to get out.

And he said, "Is Seymour Hersh here?"

"Oh, f*ck," I thought.

"What have I done?"

I walked up to the front,

you know, head down.

And he said, "Are you Hersh?"

I said, "Yeah." He said,

"What are you doing here?"

And I knew what he meant.

"Well, my father died"

He said to me, "So where's your store?"

"47th and Indiana on the South Side."

He said, "You've got your own schedule?

Well, meet me tomorrow

at the admissions office."

I tear up thinking about it.

[chuckles]

"At the University of Chicago."

[chuckles]

And I go there, and they give me a test.

They said, "Wait, we can--

You don't need English 1."

I said, "Yeah, yeah,

I need it, I need it all."

So I took it all.

And that was it. It changed my life.

[rock music playing]

[horns start]

You gotta understand. I get to Chicago,

and it's a different world.

I had a girlfriend,

and she was from Washington,

and her father was in the government.

And she shocked me by saying

I must have been 19, 20

She said, "Oh, my God.

My father thinks Eisenhower

is such an as*h*le."

[gasps] Somebody talked about

a president that way?

"Your father said that to you,

and he's working in the"

She said, "Yeah, he's really,

really a dumb as*h*le."

[laughs] I said

"Presidents can be dumb assholes?"

You know.

I mean, you know, I was 19 or 20,

so I didn't understand the world.

Um And I didn't think

I was going to make it a better place.

I had no illusions.

Um Um

But I had a vague feeling

that I had some moxie going.

[chattering]

[Sy] One night at a bar,

a guy starts talking to me,

and I said, "What do you do?"

He said, "Well, I'm a reporter.

I've been at City News."

I said, "What do you mean, City News?"

He said,

"Don't you know anything about it?"

I said, "No."

It just was

It was like a miracle.

You know, I mean, it's just

like a friggin' miracle

that I found my way

to journalism.

-[typewriters clacking]

-[chattering]

[machines clattering]

[Sy] When they did a story,

I would roll out 12 copies

and put them in a bin

and put them, roll them up

and send them in the pneumatic

tubes to all the papers.

That was my job.

Within a month,

I'm promoted to being a police reporter.

[dramatic droning music]

I fell in love being a reporter.

I loved it.

[sirens wailing]

[Sy] Chicago was a mobbed-up city,

and the mob and the police

had something in common, ok?

I did understand that.

The first thing you learn is

"Do not f*ck with the cops."

If they're robbing and stealing,

that's not our business.

So I saw a tyranny up close, in a way.

And I understood it was a tyranny.

But it was also the most

exciting thing I'd ever been in.

[scoffs]

I'm writing something

that's going to be sort of puerile

in terms of what the real story is,

but close enough.

Um, you know, but it's important

because the warning

about Dimona is important.

You know, Dimona's not a target

You were wrong, you said 30 miles

between the airfield and Dimona.

It was 28 miles. You're losing it, kid.

[chuckles]

Goodbye, baby. Talk to you.

That was my Israeli friend

who helped me on the b*mb,

30 years ago.

Did you see it?

I sent it to you, let's see.

I mean, I either sent it to you

or I sent it to my dead mother.

Maybe she can read it.

I once came back from Hanoi,

I made a trip to Hanoi during the w*r.

She said, "Always going

where nobody wants you," you know.

"Always going where

nobody wants you." [chuckles]

Let's see what I did with that thing.

[typewriter clicking]

[return slides, clicks]

[Sy] I had a visa to go to Hanoi.

The Times called me up, said,

"We'd really like to publish

anything you have from Vietnam."

That's how Abe Rosenthal hired me.

When I got to The Times,

Henry Kissinger

wanted to see me right away.

He's really worried

about the guy that did My Lai

being at The New York Times.

That was not a comfortable feeling

for him,

because he always had his way.

[indistinct chatter]

[Sy] He was Nixon's

national security advisor,

and he spent a great deal of time

with reporters.

He was really working the press,

the media, very much.

I go see him in the White House.

And he said, "So, I'm interested

in what your impression was

when you were in Hanoi

in all those weeks."

I said, "Well, I can tell you

I saw no signs of a lack of morale."

Then I went on like that,

10, 15 minutes of badinage,

not about policy.

He said, "Hold on,"

and he called his aide on Vietnam.

And he said to him,

"This man knows more about

what's going on in Vietnam

than the CIA."

And I thought to myself,

"This can't be real."

I mean, am I supposed to be

flattered by this bullshit?

I was just amazed.

[quiet music playing]

[Sy] But that's how it worked.

Kissinger would call up

and talk to The New York Times'

bureau chief, Max Frankel.

[phone rings]

And Bernie Gwertzman,

who was doing

the main foreign policy article,

would write a story.

And it would reflect exactly

what Kissinger said.

"American officials say

talks reach a new impasse."

"Senior officials said today"

and it was just Kissinger.

I was knocked out by this.

The power the guy had in the paper.

And he sure as hell didn't like

what I was doing.

Nixon: This fellow Hersh

is a son of a b*tch.

Nixon: He's probably a communist agent.

Kissinger: Exactly. Exactly.

Nixon: I just thought it was shocking

The New York Times would run that.

Kissinger: Oh, it was a disgrace.

Nixon: What do you think?

Nixon: He was picking it, Henry,

right out of whole cloth.

[splashing]

I was just getting my feet wet

at The Times,

when somebody in the CIA

told me this most amazing story

about a top-secret operation.

The Russians had lost a submarine

that may have a codebook.

The CIA made up a cover story

to recover the Russian submarine,

using a boat owned by Howard Hughes,

called the Glomar Explorer.

It was the craziest

stupid operation in the world.

I had the story,

but the paper was convinced

by the government

not to publish it,

because of national security.

They didn't run it for two years.

I didn't quit, but I thought about it.

The biggest trouble I had

was managing Sy

at a newspaper that hated to be beaten

but didn't really want to be first.

The Times was scared to death

of being first on a controversial story

that challenged the credibility

of the government.

[indistinct chatter]

[journalist] Over the weekend,

five men were nabbed

in the Democratic National headquarters

here in Washington,

seemingly preparing

to tap or bug the place.

[Sy] It happened on a weekend.

And The Times had missed the story

because all the guys on weekends,

they were, you know,

at the beach somewhere,

you know, or at the club.

The Washington Post, meanwhile,

gets a police report of these guys,

and they send Woodward and Bernstein

down to cover it.

[Woodward] I go to the courthouse,

and there's the arraignment.

The judge asks the lead burglar,

James McCord,

"Where did you work?"

McCord goes-- [whispers] "CIA."

And the judge says,

"Speak up, speak up."

And he finally says, "CIA."

I am in the front row watching this,

and blurted out,

"Holy sh*t."

-[typing]

-[chatter]

[Woodward] It was

kind of portrayed in the media

as a bizarre, unexplained event,

and Carl and I didn't see it that way.

We still don't know nearly everything

that happened during the campaign

in terms of political espionage

and sabotage.

Not just wiretapping, but other acts.

[Woodward] It was a story

that we were alone on for seven months.

[Sy] Woodward and Bernstein had

the story, and they owned it.

Rosenthal eventually,

in the end of '72, came down

and he said,

"We can't let The Washington Post

push us around like that."

I didn't want to do Watergate.

I didn't know anybody

in the White House.

But I was sorta full of myself, you know?

And so I'm in the fringes,

I'm nibbling around, I'm getting

some stuff from the committee.

And eventually,

I found one of the five people

that broke in,

and he tells the story

about the whole cover-up.

[dramatic droning music]

[Woodward] On January 14th,

Sy Hersh's story

said the burglars were

being paid for their silence.

That was a very important story,

because it was additional

evidence of the cover-up.

This was a lifeline.

Not only that it was

Sy Hersh of My Lai,

but it was The New York Times.

That's why I called him up and said,

"Thank you. It's lonely."

[Sy] He said, "We had to get

The Times into the story.

We just couldn't believe

you guys wouldn't get into the story.

We couldn't believe how dumb you were."

And he said,

"Thank you, thank you, thank you."

And he meant that.

So I was able to keep the story

going for The Times.

It was great competition

with Carl and Bob.

It was fun.

[journalist] Mr. Mitchell,

The New York Times quotes

government investigators this morning

as saying that

you helped coordinate a plan

to cover up the Watergate

after the incident.

I noticed The New York Times

story this morning,

and it's about the same

as every other one I see

in The New York Times.

I don't believe any of them.

Nixon: g*dd*mn it, this story

in The Times, the one by Hersh--

He doesn't usually go

with stuff that's wrong.

I mean the son of a b*tch is a son of

a b*tch, but he's usually right, isn't he?

[Sy] At this point,

I'm getting stuff

that nobody else is getting.

There were people

in the White House staff talking to me.

I had some amazing people

talking to me in Justice.

I was beginning to get a sense

of the great extent of covert dirt.

[indistinct chatter]

[Sy] Kissinger was doing stuff

all over the world, covertly.

[quiet music humming]

He had control of covert operations

up to a great extent.

It's called the 40 Committee.

And Kissinger was the boss.

They would do anything to stay in power.

Any lie, any story. Bury anybody.

[chanting] Allende, Allende!

Allende, Allende!

[Sy] Nixon hated the Allende government.

They were lefties.

They were Communists.

They had nationalized

copper mines

that were owned by people

who were big supporters

of Nixon financially.

[indistinct chatter]

[Sy] So, there was a lot

of pressure on Kissinger

and the CIA

to make sure

Allende didn't stay in office.

[automatic g*nf*re]

[Sy] In '73, Allende was k*lled

and the overthrow took place.

[quiet music humming]

[footsteps tap]

[Sy]

A fascist named Pinochet came in.

They arrested thousands of people,

and many of them were k*lled.

[tape player rattling]

[player clicks]

[deep music drones]

[Woodward] It was all connected.

The Nixon re-election committee,

the Nixon White House,

the Nixon CIA.

It was all intertwined.

I shall resign the presidency

effective at noon tomorrow.

Vice President Ford

will be sworn in as President

at that hour in this office.

[music continues droning]

[Sy] People inside the CIA

began to tell me more.

[rhythmic music tapping]

[interviewer]

Sy, you're a reporter

who has come up with some scoops,

and yet who's also identified

as very much of a critic.

And yet, you continue to get leaks.

Does that mean the system

isn't as closed as you think it is?

[Sy] Of course it isn't.

No, of course not. Sure.

The thing I do is

I give service to leaks.

If they're a good leak, baby,

I drop everything and go get it.

People, for a lot of reasons, they talk.

They talk to me.

People want to talk about stuff they did

that was wrong and stupid.

That's what I always thought.

I got to be very friendly with a source.

Bob Kiley was his name.

He's dead now, so I can talk about him.

Kiley was recruited by the CIA

to spy on student activists.

He was increasingly disillusioned.

He left the CIA.

I called him.

He told me about CHAOS.

"What the hell is Operation CHAOS?"

He told me that, in the late '60s,

the government was under pressure

by the White House to find out

if the student movement

was being run by communists.

[students chanting]

[Sy] And so, the CIA

began making contacts with student groups

and recruiting inside them.

[chattering, chanting]

[Sy] Spying on American kids.

The guy running counterintelligence

was a man named James Angleton.

He was a mythical figure in the CIA.

I called him up, and I said,

"I know about CHAOS."

He not only denied everything,

he offered me two stories

if I wouldn't write that story.

I just knew it was right.

[rhythmic music playing]

[reporter] The New York Times

reported today

that the Central Intelligence Agency

had consistently violated

the terms of its charter

from the 1950s until the end

of the Nixon administration.

That included spying

on at least 10,000 Americans.

By law, the CIA

is supposed to gather

only foreign intelligence.

[Sy] Angleton was very angry

at me, to put it mildly.

[journalist] After several days

of intense pressure,

James Angleton told reporters

he has resigned

as chief of counterintelligence

of the CIA.

Jim Angleton.

Why did you resign?

I think the time comes to all men

when they no longer serve their country.

[journalist] Did you jump

or were you pushed?

I wasn't pushed out a window.

[shutter clicking]

[Sy] As I was doing the story,

people were looking at me at the agency.

They had been watching me for a long time.

[low music humming]

There was total panic,

because I knew about

this secret document

called "The Jewels".

I heard "Family" later,

but they called it "The Jewels".

The former CIA director

had put out the order

to gather all of the wrongdoing.

He wanted everybody

in the agency

who knew something that

was against the Constitution

to put together

a huge compilation.

Every criminal act

that had violated American law.

Foreign assassinations,

domestic spying, mind control

There was a big book, 600-700 pages.

And I knew about it.

[low music droning]

[Gerth] The CIA had operated

in the shadows

for all of its existence.

Sy's reporting was the trigger

that set up

the Rockefeller Commission.

And that, in turn,

led to the Church Committee.

The hearing will please come to order.

[Gerth] And as a result,

the public got its fullest

and ugliest portrayal

of a government agency

that had operated in secrecy.

[man] The whole truth

and nothing but the truth

so help you God.

- I do.

[senator] You just said, did you not,

that you knew in 1970,

and had known

for a substantial period of time,

that the CIA was opening mail

in New York City?

That is correct.

Certain individual rights

have to be sacrificed

for the national security.

[Sy] Operation CHAOS

was the tip of the iceberg.

The Senate this morning

meets in a rare secret session

to discuss its Intelligence

Committee's report

on the CIA's involvement

in plots to k*ll foreign leaders.

The decade of m*rder plots

spanned four administrations,

from the first attempt on Castro in 1960

under President Eisenhower,

to the death of a Chilean general in 1970

under President Nixon,

and some plots under

the Kennedy and Johnson tenures.

There was no policy

uh, since to assassinate

any foreign official or foreign leader.

There was no plot.

As far as I know,

the CIA was never responsible

for assassinating any foreign leaders.

Were there discussions about

possible assassinations?

I don't know whether

I've stopped beating my wife

or whether you've stopped

beating your wife or--

talks of that--

but in government

there are always discussions

of practically everything under the sun.

Of assassinations?

Of everything under the sun.

Well, you're not answering my question.

Well, I'm not trying

to answer your question.

[Sy] When Helms left,

he burned a lot of files.

He literally burned them

in his office.

I learned that from Kiley.

He was Helms's assistant.

The covert operations people,

the dirty tricks people,

they have their own histories

that they don't share.

"The Jewels" that were

finally released were redacted.

Obviously, there was much more.

We do know that the CIA, in the late '50s,

they were trying to make

a Manchurian Candidate

using LSD.

They were going to reprogram

somebody to be an assassin.

It was really crazy stuff.

And somebody from inside

was troubled by it.

Frank Olson was ready to quit,

and he was seen as a traitor.

[journalist]

Frank Olson plunged to his death

from the tenth floor of

the Hotel Statler in New York.

His family was told

he'd committed suicide.

[Sy] I have every reason

to believe

that was an organized CIA hit.

[chattering]

[journalist] In this segment

of our program, The CIA Story.

[audience applauding]

[Sy] The AP used to run

an annual convention.

[chatter continues]

[Sy] Every managing editor

of the newspapers was there.

[Colby] Thank you very much.

I am, in a way,

a managing editor, too.

Around 6:00, I go down

and have an editorial conference

with the various people

that put out our publications.

The President's brief,

the publication we put out

for a broader group

of Washingtonians.

With the credibility problems

that our people have had

about government,

it is quite natural that

they would expect to find

wrongdoing, cover-up,

and all the rest of those things

in the intelligence business.

And therefore, there is

great attention and excitement

when the veil of secrecy

is lifted, even a little bit.

Now this, I think,

is understandable,

but I do ask for some proportion

in the way,

particularly you,

ladies and gentlemen,

go at it in your job.

I think the story Mr. Colby's

referring to, of course,

is the domestic spying story.

Get this, they get

something like 650 pages

of evidence

of domestic wrongdoing

or allegations

of domestic wrongdoing,

which was sat on,

until that newspaper story

came out.

And I think what's needed,

frankly and honestly,

as an American citizen,

is a wipe out at the top.

You've got to get new people in.

And that's the way it is.

That's the way I see it.

So long.

[audience applauding]

All right. Thanks.

[journalist] The abrupt firing

of Defense Secretary Schlesinger

and CIA Director Colby

sent shockwaves through

the U.S. intelligence establishment.

[journalist] President Ford

has named George Bush

to succeed Colby

as CIA Chief.

[Gerth]

The one thing about Sy is

he's very complicated

and unpredictable.

And so,

depending upon the situation,

he could be quiet and tame,

or he could be

bouncing off the wall.

There's really no

one Sy Hersh M.O. other than

he takes notes in a way

that are unintelligible.

[Sy] I was in New York,

and I wanted to do

something different.

I started writing about corporations.

It was just

a totally different world,

and I knew nothing about it.

I heard about this fellow,

Jeff Gerth.

He was a freelance writer

who was writing for

an underground newspaper,

and he knew a lot.

So we became a team.

It was fun to do something

with somebody else.

I'd been a loner so long.

[Gerth] Sy had some sort of appeal,

I'm not sure I could explain it all,

but, you know,

a lot of people knew who he was

and it almost became enticing

for people to want to

"Oh, Sy Hersh is investigating this.

I want to talk to him."

Even if they knew

it was going to be some tough questions

and they might not come out

looking too good.

The New York Times had never done

a major investigation of a corporation.

The editors were nervous.

That was the beginning of the end

with me at The New York Times

when I started to write

about corporations.

There was just no question.

It was just horrible.

Before that, I could say,

"I'm doing this,"

and, "Go ahead. Godspeed, go get it."

But when it came to corporations,

"Why are you doing it? What? Why?"

So I had to write

a bullshit note like this

to the national editor

about why I wanted to do it.

[Sy laughing]

I see what I wrote.

"Part of the Sy Hersh continuing saga

of how the world really works,

or in this case,

more than you'll ever want to know

about Gulf and Western."

[Gerth] Gulf and Western

was a high-flying conglomerate

that had started out

as an industrial company

that had continued buying

all these no-name

industrial companies

and had then moved into

the movie business

and Simon and Schuster

and it moved up into

sort of the Hollywood

celebrity status.

[Sy] It was a new kind of corporation,

in which they had different parts

that had nothing to do

with the core business.

And they have enormous latitude to play.

They can hide money,

and they can hide profits.

[music warbling]

[Gerth] I had gone to business school,

and I was the one

who read the proxy statements

and the 10-Ks

and a lot of the litigation.

[Sy] We found fraud, corruption.

This was not going to be a friendly story,

and the newspaper didn't want to do it.

It said things about corporate America

that The New York Times,

as part of corporate America,

you know, didn't like.

And then Gerth,

for reasons known only to Gerth,

decided he'd read

all the corporation filings

of The New York Times,

and he said, "Oh, my God,

Abe, your buddy Abe,

had bought a new penthouse,"

and the board of directors

had given him a loan

at one-half the prime rate,

or something like that.

And I said, well, look,

we got a problem here.

We're writing about favorable

bank loans to a top executive,

and we've got a similar situation

with The New York Times.

[Sy] So I lost it. I was so angry.

And I went screaming at Abe,

"Are you crazy?

You took money from the board?

You're supposed to be

independent of the board!"

And Abe then said,

"My lawyer said it's okay."

And that's when I said,

"That's what every crook

I've ever talked to in my life tells me!"

[Gerth] Sy has found a way

of trying to get people's attention,

and [chuckles] screaming

is certainly one way to do it.

It's not his only tool,

but he definitely has

a short fuse sometimes.

I won't say he threatens people,

but he definitely ups the temperature.

Um, I mean, Gulf and Western

would say he threatened them.

In conversations

with one of their top executives,

Sy pissed him off.

And he wrote a very threatening

letter to the newspaper.

[low music hums]

[Sy] The editors put us through

absolute insanities

to get it in paper.

They tried everything they could.

They said,

"We need an extra source for everything,"

at the last minute, after editing it.

They still didn't want to publish it.

[sighs] You want to know why I quit?

Why I left? That's a major factor.

Let's put it this way.

There was no farewell party for me

when I left the paper.

Does it bother you

when somebody

Really, I mean, we're going

to get calls this morning.

I guarantee you

that people don't like you.

Does that bother you, or do you

think that's part of the game?

I don't like it. I don't like

I weep and moan and all the

I get some

wonderfully nasty reviews.

Some are very funny.

Our first call's from

Boise, Idaho this morning.

Good morning.

- You're on the air.

- Morning, Brian. This is Bill.

Yeah, Bill.

I just wanted

to make a comment.

I heard Mr. Hersh

make a statement.

I just wanted him to know

that it's guys like him

that I think

should be shipped out.

When you say shipped out,

what do you mean by that?

Well, I think Havana would be

a good stop for the first stop.

But what do you object to

the most?

[Bill] Huh?

What do you object to the most

in Mr. Hersh?

I guess we lost him.

Well, he made his point.

- Havana.

- Havana.

What do you say

to people like that?

I'll tell you my attitude, sir.

Again, with all due respect,

I have as much right to be here

as you do, buddy.

I saw the limits of daily journalism.

There is a limit.

You just can't do as much

if you're publishing something

and it appears in print the next day.

[music hums]

There's something about a book,

where you're not

blurting out things right away,

and you think longer and harder about it.

Every book I did got people mad.

Particularly the one

about John F. Kennedy.

[interviewer] This book of yours

has been described

as everything from evil to fictitious.

Why is it that historians and journalists

find your work so distasteful?

You know, the attacks

are not just that you wrote

a shoddy piece of work,

but that you're in it for the bucks.

Well, I mean, look,

I can just make some guesses.

You know, if you're a member

of the press corps

who was around in '60 to '63,

what am I saying about your job?

How you did it? I'm saying something bad.

This is a book that,

if I did it right,

was going to be

a sure hit.

Are you up and running, Mark?

[Mark] Yep.

[Sy] You worked the Lawford house,

beach house?

- [Sy] You saw Monroe there?

- Yes.

And did you know that

she and the President were together?

We had no access to the house,

so we didn't see

what was happening in the house.

But the assumption was that

he was having an affair

with Marilyn Monroe.

Okay, can we do off the record?

[Sy] Sure. We can do what you want.

[Friedman] When I was helping Sy

with the Kennedy book,

he came and said,

"You'll never believe this."

And he had gotten a hold

of some long-lost letters

of JFK and Marilyn Monroe.

This was gold.

They were in the collection

of a man named Lex Cusack.

But as it turned out,

it was fool's gold,

because Cusack was a forger.

And he had produced these letters.

Sy had been snookered.

He had maybe talked to too many people

about these papers that he'd found,

but he had not published them.

It was almost career destruction.

[interviewer] So how do you feel?

Like a dupe, idiot.

And secondly, horribly relieved,

because it meant you could, you know

It cleared up a whole number

of impossible to reconcile issues for us.

Of course, they had to be verified,

and the fact that they weren't true

was just that's part of the process.

Lex Cusack went to jail for nine years.

In my position, I'd want to minimize it,

but I always thought

that the day

I don't chase a story like that

is the day I'm dead.

[Sorkin] I was a fact checker

at The New Yorker when I met Sy.

I got to know him at a point

where I think he was a little vulnerable

and talking a lot about his process.

Sy was the subject of a story

about his JFK book.

It was a piece that was not uncritical.

[interviewer]

It's been suggested that

you didn't really follow

the facts where they led,

that you had a story

and you wanted to fit the facts to them.

Did you have a story in your mind

before you started the book?

Totally different one, of course.

Sy, you stand to make

a lot of money from this book.

It's a big book.

There's an ABC special coming up.

Did the prospect of that

big payday in any way

pressure you to push

some of the evidence

further than perhaps you should have?

- Is that what you would do?

- Well

Is it? I mean,

is that what you would do

as a professional journalist?

I wonder if there's a temptation.

Would you have that temptation?

Why would I, if you don't think you would?

[Sorkin] It's definitely

a cautionary tale for journalism,

but also for Sy and his strengths

and his things that maybe

are not necessarily strengths.

[sighs]

In case anybody cares,

this is less and less fun.

I started writing for Substack.

There might be a lot

of questions about, you know,

what's Hersh doing slumming,

or whatever you want to call it.

But I'm perfect for them. I'm an outsider.

[low music hums]

[journalist]

Who is behind the bombing

of the Nord Stream pipelines?

One of the great mysteries

of the past year.

Sy Hersh cites an unnamed source

who says the sabotage was

carried out by the U.S. Navy.

Hersh reports the Biden administration

began planning the act of sabotage

in December 2021,

two months before

Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[reporter] I'm sure you're aware

of the new report from Seymour Hersh,

"How America Took Out

the Nord Stream Pipeline."

- Did you read the piece?

- I'm familiar with it.

Beyond getting his facts entirely wrong,

as he has before

in very high-profile ways,

it is a fundamental

misunderstanding to suggest

that our intelligence community

is not subject to oversight.

[Sy] The attack is

It's a single source.

[Laura] Right.

Which has been the criticism.

So what?

So what? It's a legitimate criticism,

absolutely.

You know. Right?

- [Laura] Say more.

- Yeah. What do I, I mean, I

[Laura] I mean, it is a legitimate

The only point I'm saying is that,

of course, there was,

what am I going to do?

I can't write about who I know else

was brought in

from the Army, the Air Force,

because I'm exposing them.

Even if there's nine sources,

sometimes it's much better

just to make it one.

I'm sorry to tell you that.

Well, because you don't want to talk

you don't want,

"Sources in the State Department

and the CIA both agree"

[Laura] What if the source got it wrong?

And it's a single source?

What do you do?

Then I've got 20 years

of working with a guy

that I've been wrong on.

Time after time, I'm told things

that turn out to be right.

Yes.

[Mark] This is it, right?

Or one of them.

There's, there's two or three of them.

Here's the problem with this stuff.

In one page, you got three people

that are absolutely private,

confidential sources.

These are all people that

I would never mention their names.

I can't do it.

So I don't know what to tell you.

Putting their name out there

would be murderous.

Look at this.

I don't know how this stuff

slipped into your file,

but you got them.

This has gone way beyond

I ever thought would happen.

And it's not good for me.

It's not good for my people.

What the f*ck is this doing in your hands?

You know.

I'm looking at it, thinking this is

What is this?

Now, I'll go home,

and I look at these things and,

this is an FBI guy,

but most of them are CIA guys.

[Mark] I think I have some sense

of some of these people,

and I don't think we're

in a position at any point

or we're intending at any point

to jeopardize any of these people.

Well, I'd like to quit. I'd like to quit.

Look, I made a contract with you.

I'm doing it. I've been very faithful.

I'm very good.

[Laura] Sy, hold on.

I probably shouldn't

have started with you,

but you came to me 20 years ago,

and I said to you all,

when I'm ready, I'll do it.

And then you asked me again,

and I thought, why not do it?

But I'm ambivalent about it.

You guys, you know too much

about what I'm doing.

You have too many people.

There's people there you

don't even realize who they are,

some of them,

but they're in it, and I don't

I'm in a position now

I'm not telling you stuff.

So I'd like to quit.

[producer] Maybe we should

Should we cut?

What? No, let's just quit it.

[Mark] Just cut the cameras, please.

[producer]

We're just going to cut cameras.

[quiet music hums]

[Laura] This isn't easy for you.

I was very happy

not talking about myself.

Very happy.

And I'm doing it, and so

There are some days

I'm really irritated at myself,

but if you do something,

you have to do it 100%.

There's no ambivalence.

Yeah, there's always ambivalence.

But forget about ambivalence.

You know, I gave you my notebooks.

And so, that's where we are.

Let's set the record straight.

I don't leave everything.

I've been married, you know, 60 years.

So let's get that clear.

It's not that I leave everything.

Some things I stick to.

[quiet music playing]

[Laura] We have very few words

from you talking about Elizabeth.

[Sy] It's complicated

because she's a psychoanalyst.

She has a very strong commitment

to the confidentiality of her office.

[Laura] So what can we say?

[Sy] She's a very special person.

Let's just put it that way.

And she waited for me to grow up.

I think that's fair.

I was always a little bit in outer space.

I'm not a wacko.

I have a family with children.

I couldn't have married better,

because there was somebody

always there

to put things in focus.

I'm obviously a high-octane person.

And so, you know,

I married the right person

who can calm me down

and keep me

from going into total despair.

There were often times it was so sad.

I was writing such terrible stuff.

There were moments

when I was doing the My Lai reporting.

I would hear about throwing up

two-year-old kids

and catching them on bayonets.

And I had a two-year-old

[panting]

That's the first time I couldn't take it.

[voice breaking] And so I call Liz up

and I said, "I don't know.

I don't think I can take it."

And she said, "It has nothing to do

with your son or me or

It has nothing to do with it."

"It's not about your children."

So that was helpful.

She would get me through

when I'm in a crying jag

in a pay phone.

I despair a lot sometimes. And so, um

I was very lucky to marry her.

[rattling]

I'll take The Times.

I leave The Post for her.

I've been writing about Syria

because, obviously,

I was pretty shocked it fell so quickly.

I read this stuff now,

and I say to myself,

I really misjudged him.

It's been so long,

I haven't seen this article in years.

I wrote stories

for the London Review.

There were reports that

Assad nerve-gassed his own people.

I saw him two or three or four times,

and I didn't think he was capable

of doing what he did.

Period.

And let's call that wrong.

Let's call that very much wrong.

[Laura] But is that an example

of getting too close to power?

Of course. What else is it?

The human rights people were all over him.

I never thought he was Mother Teresa,

but I thought he was okay.

But if I have made a claim

in prior interviews to be perfect,

I would now withdraw it,

that's all. I wasn't perfect.

[helicopter whirring]

[helicopter radio chatter]

It's now about five days

since the major ground forces

entered Iraq.

It's almost four days and 30 minutes ago

that the air w*r began.

We're still, needless to say,

much closer to the beginning than the end.

[Sy] I was very much against that w*r

because it made no sense.

But The New Yorker was more willing

to run stories, puff stories about it,

and more willing to run,

perfectly willing to run

my tough stuff about it.

[Sorkin]

At some point, I became Sy's main editor

when he was writing for The New Yorker.

Right before the invasion of Iraq.

He just called up and just was

full Sy raging at the heavens.

I think part of him wondered why

we didn't all collectively throw ourselves

in front of the machine and make it stop.

You know, he was like,

"This is the moral issue of our time."

And he just thought

it was such a mistake.

He thought it was such a mistake.

[Sy] This is the guy.

Sadiq's the guy that told me the story.

Sadiq was a two or three-star general

in the Iraqi Air Force.

[Operated by U.S.]

He asked me, "Do you know about

the prison in Abu Ghraib?"

[death by t*rture]

[low music hums]

[Sy] He said,

"They're arresting everybody

and sending them to Abu Ghraib."

People that had nothing to do

with anything.

There were sexual assaults

and children were being assaulted.

Horrifying abuse.

Months later, I get a call

from a former Marine intelligence officer

named Roger Charles.

He had retired

and was hired by 60 Minutes.

And so he came to me and said,

"We got a problem."

He told me about Abu Ghraib,

and I go, "Ah!"

CBS had photographs.

They had gotten photographs

from somebody,

of showing t*rture,

but they couldn't get it on the air.

[Laura] What's the government doing?

Well, the government's doing

everything they could

to stop the story by going

to the executive of CBS

and telling him,

"You're not going to publish the story,

because it's going to hurt

the American w*r."

I made some calls.

I learned that one of the GIs

that had been accused,

the lawyer for him

happened to be a lawyer

who represented a My Lai kid.

I went up to New Hampshire to see him,

and he said to me,

"You know, there was a report done."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

So then he gave me this.

I mean, you can see,

this is the one he gave me.

The interview stopped here.

I took the report,

I started reading it,

and I said, "I'm out of here."

[quiet music drones]

[Sy] The author of the report

was a two-star general named Tony Taguba.

I couldn't believe the guts he had.

He was accusing higher ranking generals

of gross misconduct.

Initially started with

a kid in the unit, named Darby.

He went to the Army

Criminal Investigation Division

and gave them photographs.

There were thousands of them.

[Sorkin] I was working late. Sy called,

and said something like, "I've just

read the most devastating Army report."

[Sy] The report had been bad enough,

but then I got photographs.

They were horrifying.

[quiet music hums]

The CIA had beaten one prisoner to death.

I felt we had to tell 60 Minutes.

So I called up the producer.

I said, "If you don't do it Thursday,

on Sunday, we're going to

run the report with pictures

and say, we're doing this story

because a major network called CBS

did not fulfill its obligations.

It's going to be the second paragraph."

Two weeks ago, we received an appeal

from the Defense Department

and eventually from the chairman

of the Military Joint Chiefs of Staff,

General Richard Myers,

to delay this broadcast,

given the danger and tension

on the ground in Iraq.

We decided to honor that request

while pressing for the Defense Department

to add its perspective

to the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison.

This week, with the photos

beginning to circulate elsewhere,

and with other journalists

about to publish

their versions of the story,

the Defense Department agreed

to cooperate in our report.

[Sy] So, they did it.

And, on Friday, my story came out.

[crowd chanting]

It went on for about 18 days.

Was it the same thing every day?

Every day my schedule was 23 hours

of t*rture, and one hour of rest.

And there were many kinds of t*rture.

Like these photos--

I remember being forced

to stand like this.

With other people.

I remember being forced

to stand like this.

They would try to interrogate me.

And one of the things they'd say

He threatened me

If you don't talk, if you don't confess,

we'll let the soldiers

r*pe you.

[cameras snapping]

[overlapping voices]

[journalist]

If I could follow up, Mr. Secretary,

Given the ramifications

of not only what is in this report,

the findings specifically,

but the pictures, the photographs

that you knew as of a couple weeks ago

were going to be broadcast.

Why did you not feel incumbent

upon yourself at that time

to ask for the findings,

or just take a look

at the pictures beforehand

so you could perhaps

be prepared?

I think I did inquire about the pictures

and was told that we didn't have copies.

Is that not correct?

[official] We didn't have them here.

I didn't have them.

[journalist]

Mr. Secretary,

a number of times from the podium,

you've said U.S. troops

do not t*rture individuals.

Does this report undercut your notion

that the U.S. doesn't t*rture?

I'm not a lawyer.

My impression is that

what has been charged

thus far is abuse,

which I believe technically

is different from t*rture.

Just a minute.

I don't know if it is correct

to say what you just said,

that t*rture has taken place,

and therefore I'm not going to

address the t*rture word.

[Rehm, on the radio] You're listening

to The Diane Rehm Show.

You're on the air.

[man, on the radio]

First of all, I want to say,

especially to Mr. Hersh,

that in all of this

sanctimonious self-righteousness

you're doing more to encourage

the insurgency and t*rror1st

attacks on Americans.

Mr. Hersh is clearly partisan.

Let's admit that.

This is propaganda,

whether or not it proves

to be true or exaggerated,

and you will be culpable

and responsible directly

for any backlash that results

by fanning the flames of this story.

[Rehm, on the radio] Sy Hersh.

[Sy, on the radio] Oh, nobody

likes the messenger, you know,

I just don't like American

soldiers torturing people.

[quiet music hums]

[Taguba] We saw what we saw.

We wrote down what we heard.

I didn't know how to react, other than

being angry.

And Rumsfeld accused me

of leaking it.

I was indignant.

I looked him in the face.

Then we started

talking about the report.

You know, why did it happen?

What did you do? Blah blah blah.

So, I kept repeating it, over time.

And then somebody asked,

is this t*rture or is it abuse?

I said, well,

there's two distinctive values

when it comes to interrogation.

Abuse is basically slapping

or not giving them food

or whatever have you.

t*rture's when you inflict

grievous bodily harm.

So I give him an example.

You have a detainee

that's being interrogated naked,

his clothes were taken away

from him,

laying down on the floor

and a broom handle

is being shoved up his rectum

and he's being kicked

by two civilian interrogators.

Now that's t*rture.

[indistinct chatter]

It doesn't matter what I believe.

What matters is what you can find.

At some point in

an interview with public radio,

I said, "Here's my phone number.

Just give me a call."

[Sy, on the radio]

Get in touch with me.

202 872-0703, just call.

Leave a number.

I'll get in touch with you.

[Sy] And sure enough, I got

a call a couple hours later

from a woman that said,

you better come talk to me.

[Lo Sapio] We met at a Friday's.

You know, we talked for a little while

and then I said,

"Well, I have my laptop here.

I can show you the pictures."

And we were in a booth

in a relatively private area.

So I did open the laptop

and I shared

some of the pictures with him.

I lent my former

daughter-in-law my laptop

when she deployed to Iraq.

So upon her return,

she returned my laptop

and I noticed there were a lot

of photographs on the laptop.

She wasn't involved,

but she was among many people

with whom these pictures

were shared.

[low music hums]

[Lo Sapio] The pictures I remember most

were of a man

being menaced by a dog.

The fear was so evident.

I just remember Sy saying to me,

"You know,

this is really important stuff."

And "would you be willing

to give me a copy of these?"

And I was reluctant,

because I was afraid.

But I wanted

the facts to be exposed.

I wanted the truth to be exposed.

[Laura] What would have happened

if there hadn't been

photographs?

If there hadn't been photographs?

No story.

[woman, over cell phone]

I've sent you

just under three dozen images.

I have 10,000 images.

From north to south of Gaza.

I would love to ask you

how you got these,

but I'm not going to.

So tell me what I'm seeing.

So these are Israeli soldiers,

occupation soldiers, in people's homes,

who are basically giving

a set of instructions

to the unit.

They're very well aware of civilian spaces

before they b*mb them.

But these images,

I mean, literally, again,

their names are on the walls,

they are going to be used

to piece together incidents

to understand who was where.

You have an image, for example, 3A.

- 3A. Let me go find it.

- Where they

Where they mark all of Gaza.

Which battalions that are entering

from these areas, from those areas,

this, plus a record of massacres.

We can basically trace it back

to the unit that committed

the w*r crimes.

People are already starting

to prosecute them,

which is why

the Army is freaking out.

Okay. And now this is all,

this is all background.

I'm not allowed to write any of this.

For now no,

but you'll be the person

I'll come to when we're ready.

[dramatic droning music]

[journalist] This afternoon,

William Calley stood to attention

as Colonel Clifford Ford read the verdict.

The jury has found him guilty

on three counts of premeditated m*rder,

one count of as*ault

with intent to m*rder.

[chanting] Free Calley now,

free Calley now.

[journalist] And while the rally

for Calley was in progress,

hundreds of telegrams

were pouring into

the Western Union office.

Most all of them protesting

the conviction of Calley

and promising their support.

It's called "The Battle Hymn

of Lieutenant Calley".

[singing]

My name is William Calley

I'm a soldier of this land

I'm trying to do my duty

And to gain the upper hand

But they've made me out

A villain

They have stamped me

With a brand

As we go marching on

The day the verdict of guilty

came in on Calley,

radio stations started calling

us for extra copies then.

You shipped

16 5" last night,

and you can give me how many today?

[man singing]

I'm just another soldier

From the shores of USA

Forgotten on a b*ttlefield

10,000 miles away

While life goes on as usual

From New York to Santa Fe

As we go marching on

[journalist]

In the late afternoon,

the President ordered Calley

released from jail.

[shouts and applause]

[Sy] He ended up serving only

three or four months in prison.

And then he was done.

[indistinct chatter]

[dramatic droning music]

[Sy] We are a culture

of enormous violence.

It's just so brutal.

There's a level you just can't get to.

[Laura] So why do you keep

doing the work?

You can't have a country that does that.

That's why I've been sort of

on the warpath ever since.

You can't just

have a country that does it

and looks the other way.

If there's any mantra

to what I do, that's it.