Seymour Hersh

Prologue: Chasing Sy Hersh

xi Prologue Chasing Sy Hersh I have been chasing Sy Hersh, America’s quintessential investigative reporter, for twenty-five years. He did not know it, however, until five years ago. I first met Seymour Myron Hersh in the fall of 1985 when he was fortyeight years old. I had invited him to speak at my university, a small state college seventy-five miles from New York City near the Hudson River, where I taught journalism for thirty years. His controversial best-selling book, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, had come out in the spring, and his speaking fee had doubled, from $2,000 to $4,000, although we got him at the bargain rate. (He now commands $20,000 a speech.) My office was located in a remote part of the 257-acre campus, and I hoped Hersh could find me. He was scheduled for an afternoon workshop with journalism students. He arrived fifteen minutes before showtime. “This is a tough place to find,” he said. “Well,” I answered, “I figured if you could find Calley at Fort Benning, you could find my office.” He shuffled his feet in an “aw-shucks” manner, looked away, and said, “That was a long time ago.” It had been sixteen years ago, actually, since he had tracked down the notorious William Calley who ordered the killing of nearly five hundred Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai in 1968. Hersh’s exposé earned him the Pulitzer Prize in journalism and cemented his fame.1 As we walked across campus I told him how my wife, an investigative reporter, worried so much each time she published. “We all worry,” he said. “We are out there alone.” His book on Kissinger was bringing howls of protest from the former secretary of state’s minions, and one minor xii PROLOGUE participant in the plotline had sued Hersh for $50 million, although it ultimately was resolved in Hersh’s favor. At the workshop that afternoon I could not get him to discuss journalistic technique for the students I had asked to attend. Instead, he wanted to talk about the CIA, intelligence gathering, Richard Nixon, and Kissinger. The reporter did not want to talk about reporting—only what he had uncovered in the process of reporting. Like all the great journalists, his passion was reserved for the issues. Form and function were of little interest. Before his evening lecture, the college president hosted a dinner at her home. The president invited vice presidents, deans, and local officials . This kid from Chicago, the son of immigrant parents, a law school dropout and former Chicago crime reporter, was a celebrity, “a fucking celebrity,” as he called himself in a triumphant post-Pulitzer interview. One guest was Alan Chartock, a political science professor who was also a well-known personality on a network of National Public Radio stations he ran from the state capital in Albany. Hersh had a Washington DC neighbor whom Chartock knew. Hersh liked the man; Chartock did not. They proceeded to argue about him over dinner. When he left the dinner, Hersh said to me, “Who is that little prick?” I explained he is a considerably influential pundit in New York’s capital. Hersh just uttered more profanities. Hersh seldom minces words or pulls punches, I came to learn. He goads and blusters and intimidates, leaving enemies everywhere he goes, from presidents to generals to secretaries of state. It is part of his style—and success. The evening lecture went better. Nearly 750 people packed the college’s largest lecture hall. Hersh had his notes on three small cards tucked into his pocket, but he spoke without them, fluently and passionately, assailing the immoralities of the Nixon era from Vietnam to Watergate. To many people in this university town, Hersh was a hero, and they applauded frequently. Hersh more than earned his fee. For Hersh, who had bankrupted himself as he traveled around the world to research The Price of Power, it was one of hundreds of talks to fill the coffers before the great investigative reporter zeroed in on his next target. He has had, in fact, two careers: the journalist who has produced hundreds of newspaper PROLOGUE xiii and magazine articles and nine books, and the public speaker who has crisscrossed the nation hundreds of times talking to crowds big and small in his breathless style, often...