Who is Mr. Hersh? Or, when US media outlets were collectively speechless

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published the results of an investigation according to which acts of sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines were initiated by the US government with the support of Norway.

The American government and the CIA denied Hersh's version of events. In many US media, the journalist was accused of ‘not disclosing his anonymous source’, so his claims cannot be cross-checked. In addition, some have criticized the investigation for having ‘a lot of things that don't add up’.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin notes on this case: “We noticed that when the Nord Stream explosions first occurred, the American and other Western media speculated one-sidedly on the subject of the alleged culprit. But when the detailed report of American investigative journalist Hersh was released, these media outlets, which have always promoted freedom, professionalism and justice, were collectively speechless.”

Hersh's disclosure is supposed to promote relevant investigations. Yet right after the White House rejected Hersh's claims, media outlets from the US, and even those from other Western world, kept up with the stance. A more noteworthy phenomenon is not the change of Hersh's reputation, but the widespread silence of Western media's response. It's been days after the revelation, why hasn't the all-mighty US propaganda machine made any powerful case to contradict or overturn the accusation against Washington?

Business Insider, which called Hersh "investigative journalist" in 2015, labeled him as "discredited" on February 9, 2023. On the same day, German ‘Der Spiegel’ named Hersh a "controversial US journalist." But in 2016, the media outlet dubbed him "legendary." Apparently, because of the Nord Stream report, Hersh turned from "legendary" to "controversial" and even "discredited."

When Washington wants to rob the public blind over the case and make them angry at Russia, Hersh set a roadblock.

But who is Mr. Hersh, this investigative journalist who told about explosions on gas pipelines? Here are some details of his professional activities and life.

Seymour Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He was born in Chicago on April 8, 1937 to a Jews family. His parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1920s from Lithuania and Poland, respectively. He attended the University of Illinois Chicago and later the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a history degree in 1958.

He first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the ‘My Lai Massacre’ and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for ‘The New York Times’, and in 2004, he reported on the U.S. military's torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq for ‘The New Yorker’. He became well-known author with high with high prestige and popularity.

Hersh has won five George Polk Awards and two National Magazine Awards. He is the author of 11 books, including ‘The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House’ (1983), a biography of Henry Kissinger that won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In early 1968, Hersh served as the press secretary for anti-Vietnam War candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy in his unsuccessful campaign in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries. After leaving the campaign, Hersh returned to journalism.

On September 8, 1974, Hersh reported that the CIA, with the approval of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, spent $8 million to influence unions, political parties and media in Chile in order to destabilize the government of socialist Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in the September 11, 1973, coup d'état that brought to power a dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.

In February 2023, in a post to ‘Substack’, Hersh claimed that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines had been carried out by the US Navy, the CIA, and the Norwegian Navy, under the direct order of President Biden. Hersh's report relied on an anonymous source who stated that, in June 2022, US Navy divers placed explosive C4 charges on the pipelines at strategic locations selected by the Norwegians.

A spokesperson for the United States National Security Council said the report was "utterly false and complete fiction". The CIA said the claims were "completely false", and this was also the reaction from the Norwegian Foreign Department.

Following Hersh's report, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted that if the story was true, he and many of his fellow senators were not informed of the attack on Nord Stream. "If this turns out to be true, we've got a huge problem," Lee tweeted on February 8.

The Chair of Russia's lower house of parliament called for an international investigation for "bringing Biden and his accomplices to justice".

Now a zone of silence is being created around this honored journalist in the United States.

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