{"id":242786,"date":"2016-05-10T22:45:49","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T22:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=242786"},"modified":"2016-05-10T22:45:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T22:45:49","slug":"seymour-hersh-says-doesnt-know-whether-hillary-clinton-knew-sarin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/seymour-hersh-says-doesnt-know-whether-hillary-clinton-knew-sarin\/","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Hersh Says He Doesn\u2019t Know Whether Hillary Clinton Knew About the Sarin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

I spoke by phone with Seymour Hersh on May 9th to ask him whether he would say publicly, that Hillary Clinton knew that her testimony which was given under oath to Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo on 22 October 2015 was false:<\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo: Were you aware or are you aware of any U.S. efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, directly or indirectly, or\u00a0through a cutout, to any Syrian rebels or militias or opposition to Syrian forces?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton: No.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo: Were you aware or are you aware of any efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to facilitate or support the provision of weapons to\u00a0any opposition of Gadhafi\u2019s forces, Libyan rebels or militias through a third party or country?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton: No.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh said he wouldn\u2019t, because he doesn\u2019t know whether she knew.<\/span><\/p>\n

He particularly objected to the headline of my story on April 28th,\u00a0“Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved\u00a0Sending Libya\u2019s Sarin to Syrian Rebels\u201d<\/span><\/a>, because he said that I was going too far to read this into his statement there, in regard to Hillary Clinton\u2019s knowledge of what Hersh had called the \u201crat line\u201d that State Department employee Christopher Stephens was operating in Benghazi Libya, of Gaddafi\u2019s weapons-stockpiles to Al Qaeda in Syria (called \u201cAl Nusra\u201d there), that, “there\u2019s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by\u00a0some channel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked him whether his having headlined his 13 December 2013 article \u201cWhose Sarin?\u201d<\/span><\/a> didn\u2019t reasonably indicate that he was alleging that this \u201cRat Line and the Red Line\u201d<\/span><\/a> of weapons into Syria had to do with the operation supplying Gaddafi\u2019s sarin<\/span><\/a> via Turkey to Al Qaeda in Syria, and he said that this isn\u2019t what he was intending to refer to, and that my article was wrong because I was assuming there that Hersh\u2019s reporting can be correctly understood in light of the other reporters\u2019 articles that I was using as a basis for interpreting or understanding his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

I called to his attention that the fact that Gaddafi\u2019s stockpiles included sarin had been rather widely alleged<\/span><\/a> by other journalists and was confirmed in 2015<\/span><\/a>, but he responded by saying that it\u2019s not something that he had reported and so I shouldn\u2019t have assumed that he accepted it as being factual.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s now clear to me that Hersh refuses to be interpreted, but wants only to be quoted. I am not quoting any of his statements here that he gave me over the phone, because he was phoning me in response to a message I had left on his answering-machine, and because what I reliably remember of it is the gist, not the exact words he used.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my own writing, I try to be as clear as possible, but in my article about what Hersh had meant by saying such things as “there\u2019s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by\u00a0some channel,\u201d I was perhaps too clear; and, so, if I had it to do over again, I might not headline that article\u00a0“Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved\u00a0Sending Libya\u2019s Sarin to Syrian Rebels\u201d<\/span><\/a>, but instead, something like \u201cSeymour Hersh Makes Vague Allegations About Sarin in Syria.\u201d In any case, I would otherwise change nothing within the article itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

As regards the question that Hersh raised, of whether it\u2019s valid to interpret what one trusted source (such as Hersh) says, by trying to relate it in a logically coherent way to what other trusted sources say, I reject Hersh\u2019s view that his vague allegations shouldn\u2019t be interpreted except by citing other allegations that he himself has had published. I interpret Hersh\u2019s insistence upon what might be called \u201cHersh\u2019s non-interpretation principle\u201d as being intended to protect himself from negative consequences that might result from powerful persons who perhaps wouldn\u2019t tolerate the continued existence of a reporter who writes too clearly and who is too prominently published (and thus too much of a potential threat).<\/span><\/p>\n

The terrific journalist\u00a0Rick Sterling<\/span><\/a>\u00a0had first brought to my attention doubt about the headline of my April 28th piece, which is the reason why I phoned and left that message on Hersh\u2019s answering-machine. Without Sterling\u2019s having drawn this matter to my attention, I might never have found that that doubt about the headline was justified. For this, I thank Sterling \u2014 and I stand corrected. Sterling suggests that a better headline might have been \u201cSeymour Hersh Implies Hillary Approved Sending Libya\u2019s Sarin to Syrian Rebels.\u201d However, now I know that even a headline such as that would be going too far, because Hersh doesn\u2019t want even to be said to \u201cimply\u201d anything. In a dangerous world such as this, I can respect the wisdom of Hersh\u2019s caution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse I spoke by phone with Seymour Hersh on May 9th to ask him whether he would say publicly, that Hillary Clinton knew that her testimony which was given under oath to Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo on 22 October 2015 was false: Pompeo: Were you aware or are you aware of any U.S. efforts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":242787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,1036,96,535,698,907,753,804,10937,8745,754,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-242786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-hillary-clinton","14":"tag-isis","15":"tag-police-state","16":"tag-politics-2","17":"tag-sarin","18":"tag-seymour-hersh","19":"tag-syria","20":"tag-usa-news","21":"tag-warfare","22":"tag-white-house","23":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}