Samson, Shimshon (, meaning "man of the sun"); Shamshoun () or Sampson () is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) (Book of Judges chapters 13 to 16).

Samson was granted supernatural strength by God in order to combat his enemies and perform heroic feats such as wrestling a lion, slaying an entire army with only the jawbone of an ass, and destroying a pagan temple.

Samson is believed to have been buried in Tel Tzora in Israel overlooking the Sorek valley. There reside two large gravestones of Samson and his father Manoah. Nearby stands Manoah’s altar (Judges 13:19-24). It is located between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol.

Biblical narrative

Samson's activity takes place during a time when God was punishing the Israelites, by giving them "into the hand of the Philistines". An angel appears to Manoah, an Israelite from the tribe of Dan, in the city of Zorah, and to his wife, who had been unable to conceive. This angel proclaims that the couple will soon have a son who will begin to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines. The wife believed the angel, but her husband wasn't present, at first, and wanted the heavenly messenger to return, asking that he himself could also receive instruction about the child that was going to be born.

Requirements were set up by the angel that Manoah's wife (as well as the child) were to abstain from all alcoholic beverages, and her promised child was not to shave or cut his hair. He was to be a "Nazirite" from birth. In ancient Israel, those wanting to be especially dedicated to God for a while could take a nazarite vow, which included things like the aforementioned as well as other stipulations. After the angel returned, Manoah soon prepared a sacrifice, but the Messenger would only allow it to be for God, touching his staff to it, miraculously engulfing it in flames. The angel then ascended up into the sky in the fire. This was such dramatic evidence as to the nature of the messenger, that Manoah feared for his life, as it has been said that no-one can live after seeing God; however, his wife soon convinced him that if God planned to slay them, he would never have revealed such things to them to begin with. In due time the son, Samson, is born; he is reared according to these provisions.

When he becomes a young adult, Samson leaves the hills of his people to see the cities of the Philistines. While there, Samson falls in love with a Philistine woman from Timnah whom he decides to marry, overcoming the objections of his parents who do not know that "it is of the Lord". The intended marriage is actually part of God's plan to strike at the Philistines. On the way to ask for the woman's hand in marriage, Samson is attacked by an Asiatic Lion and simply grabs it and rips it apart, as the spirit of God moves upon him, divinely empowering him. This so profoundly affects Samson that he just keeps it to himself as a secret. He continues on to the Philistine's house, winning her hand in marriage. On his way to the wedding, Samson notices that bees have nested in the carcass of the lion and have made honey. He eats a handful of the honey and gives some to his parents. At the wedding-feast, Samson proposes that he tell a riddle to his thirty groomsmen (all Philistines); if they can solve it, he will give them thirty pieces of fine linen and garments. The riddle ("Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet") is a veiled account of his second encounter with the lion (at which only he was present). The Philistines are infuriated by the riddle. The thirty groomsmen tell Samson's new wife that they will burn her and her father's household if she does not discover the answer to the riddle and tell it to them. At the urgent and tearful imploring of his bride, Samson tells her the solution, and she tells it to the thirty groomsmen.

Before sunset on the seventh day they said to him, :"What is sweeter than honey? :and what is stronger than a lion?" Samson said to them, :"If you had not plowed with my heifer, :you would not have solved my riddle." He flies into a rage and kills thirty Philistines of Ashkelon for their garments, which he gives his thirty groomsmen. Still in a rage, he returns to his father's house and his bride is given to the best man as his wife. Her father refuses to allow him to see her and wishes to give Samson the younger sister. Samson attaches torches to the tails of three hundred foxes, leaving the panicked beasts to run through the fields of the Philistines, burning all in their wake. The Philistines find out why Samson burned their crops and they burn Samson's wife and father-in-law to death. In revenge, Samson slaughters many more Philistines, smiting them "hip and thigh".

Samson then takes refuge in a cave in the rock of Etam. An army of Philistines went up and demanded from 3000 men of Judah to deliver them Samson. With Samson's consent, they tie him with two new ropes and are about to hand him over to the Philistines when he breaks free. Using the jawbone of an ass, he slays one thousand Philistines. At the conclusion of ''Judges'' 15 it is said that "Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines".

Later, Samson goes to Gaza, where he stays at a harlot's house. His enemies wait at the gate of the city to ambush him, but he rips the gate up and carries it to "the hill that is in front of Hebron".

He then falls in love with a woman, Delilah, at the Brook of Sorek. The Philistines approach Delilah and induce her (with 1100 silver coins each) to try to find the secret of Samson's strength. Samson, not wanting to reveal the secret, teases her, telling her that he will lose his strength should he be bound with fresh bowstrings. She does so while he sleeps, but when he wakes up he snaps the strings. She persists, and he tells her he can be bound with new ropes. She ties him up with new ropes while he sleeps, and he snaps them, too. She asks again, and he says he can be bound if his locks are woven together. She weaves them together, but he undoes them when he wakes. Eventually Samson tells Delilah that he will lose his strength with the loss of his hair. Delilah calls for a servant to shave Samson's seven locks. Since that breaks the Nazarite oath, God leaves him, and Samson is captured by the Philistines, who stab out his eyes with their swords. After being blinded, Samson is brought to Gaza, imprisoned, and put to work grinding grain.

One day the Philistine leaders assemble in a temple for a religious sacrifice to Dagon, one of their most important deities, for having delivered Samson into their hands. They summon Samson so that people can gather on the roof to watch. Once inside the temple, Samson, his hair having grown long again, asks the servant who is leading him to the temple's central pillars if he may lean against them (referring to the pillars).

:"Then Samson prayed to God, "remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes" (''Judges'' 16:28)". "Samson said, 'Let me die with the Philistines!' (''Judges'' 16:30) He pulled the two pillars together, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more as he died than while he lived." (''Judges'' 16:30).

After his death, Samson's family recovers his body from the rubble and buries him near the tomb of his father Manoah.

The fate of Delilah is never mentioned.

Rabbinic literature

Rabbinical literature identifies Samson with Bedan; Bedan was a Judge mentioned by Samuel in his farewell address (1 Samuel 12:11) among the Judges that delivered Israel from their enemies. However, the name "Bedan" is not found in the Book of Judges. The name "Samson" is derived from the Hebrew word "shemesh", which means the sun, so that Samson bore the name of God, who is called "a sun and shield" in ; and as God protected Israel, so did Samson watch over it in his generation, judging the people even as did God. Samson's strength was divinely derived (Talmud, Tractate Sotah 10a); .

Jewish legend records that Samson's shoulders were sixty cubits broad. (Although many talmudic commentaries explain that this is not to be taken literally, for a person that size could not live normally in society. Rather it means he had the ability to carry a burden 60 cubits wide (approximately 30 meters) on his shoulders). He was lame in both feet, but when the spirit of God came upon him he could step with one stride from Zorah to Eshtaol, while the hairs of his head arose and clashed against one another so that they could be heard for a like distance. Samson was said to be so strong that he could uplift two mountains and rub them together like two clods of earth, yet his superhuman strength, like Goliath's, brought woe upon its possessor.

In licentiousness he is compared with Amnon and Zimri, both of whom were punished for their sins. Samson's eyes were put out because he had "followed them" too often. It is said that in the twenty years during which Samson judged Israel he never required the least service from an Israelite, and he piously refrained from taking the name of God in vain. Therefore, as soon as he told Delilah that he was a Nazarite of God she immediately knew that he had spoken the truth. When he pulled down the temple of Dagon and killed himself and the Philistines the structure fell backward, so that he was not crushed, his family being thus enabled to find his body and to bury it in the tomb of his father.

In the Talmudic period, some seemed to have denied that Samson was a historic figure and was regarded by such individuals as a purely mythological personage. This was viewed as heretical by the rabbis of the Talmud, and they attempted to refute this. They named Hazelelponi as his mother in Numbers Rabbah Naso 10 and in Bava Batra 91a and stated that he had a sister named "Nishyan" or "Nashyan".

Interpretations

Academics have interpreted Samson as a demi-god (such as Hercules or Enkidu) enfolded into Jewish religious lore, or as an archetypical folklore hero, among others. These views sometimes interpreted him as a solar deity, popularized by "solar hero" theorists and Biblical scholars alike. The name Delilah may also involve a wordplay with the Hebrew word for night, 'layla', which of course consumes the day. Samson bears many similar traits to the Greek Herakles (and the roman Hercules adaptation), inspired himself partially from the mesopotamian Enkidu tale : Herakles and Samson both battled a Lion bare handed (Lion of Nemea feat) , Herakles and Samson both had a favorite primitive blunt weapon (a club for the first, an ass's jaw for the latter), they were both betrayed by a woman which led them to their ultimate fate (Hercules by Dejanira , while Samson by Delilah ). Both heroes, champion of their respective people, die by their own hand : Herakles ends his life on a pyre while Samson makes the Philistine temple collapse upon himself and his enemies.There are many more similitudes which point towards the herculean myth and anecdotes (and moreover indo-european heroes) as well as local semitic deities.

These views are much disputed by traditionalist and conservative biblical scholars who consider Samson to be a literal historical figure and thus absolutely refute any connections whatsoever to similar mythological heroes; that Samson was a "solar hero" has been described as "an artificial ingenuity".

Some biblical scholars suggest that Samson's home tribe of Dan might have been related to the Philistines themselves. "Dan" might be another name for the tribe of Sea Peoples otherwise known as the Denyen, Danuna, or Danaans. If so, then Samson's origin might be entirely Aegean. These speculations are in stark contrast to the historical depictions expressed in the Bible and are therefore mutually exclusive.

Joan Comay, co-author of ''Who's Who in the Bible:The Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament'', believes that the biblical story of Samson is so specific concerning time and place that Samson was undoubtedly a real person who pitted his great strength against the oppressors of Israel.

In contrast, James King West finds that the hostilities between the Philistines and Hebrews appear to be of a "purely personal and local sort". He also finds that Samson stories have, in contrast to much of ''Judges'', an "almost total lack of a religious or moral tone".

Folk culture

Samson parades are annual parades of a Samson figure in different villages in Lungau, Salzburg and two villages in the north-west Styria (Austria). Samson is one of the giant figures at the "Ducasse" festivities, which take place at Ath, Belgium.

A regional version of Samson (spelled ''Sanson'') plays a major role in many accounts of Basque mythology, where he is represented as a mighty giant capable of hurling heavy stones, often providing an explanation for the origin of mountains and megalithic monuments. In some places this role is played by a development of the character Roland (''Errolan'').

See also

Cultural references to Samson

Samson Unit

Shamash

References

External links

'Samson' by Solomon Solomon

Category:Judges of ancient Israel Category:Old Testament saints Category:Ancient people who committed suicide Category:11th-century BC biblical rulers Category:Hebrew Bible people Category:Book of Judges

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name	Hal Lindsey
birth date	November 23, 1929
birth place	Houston, Texas, United States
occupation	Writer, Evangelist
parents	}}

Harold Lee "Hal" Lindsey (born November 23, 1929) is an American evangelist and Christian writer. He is a Christian Zionist and dispensationalist author. He currently resides in Texas.

Biography

Lindsey, the son of Percy Lacy Lindsey and Daisy Lee Freeman, was born in Houston, Texas. Lindsey suspended his course of study at the University of Houston to serve in the Korean War, then worked as a Mississippi River tugboat captain.

He entered Dallas Theological Seminary in 1958 (with the help of Lt. Col. Robert Thieme, pastor of Berachah Church in Houston, which Lindsey had attended) where he studied with John F. Walvoord, author of the 1974 best-seller ''Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis.'' He received a certificate in theology. With Jan, the second of his four wives, he worked with Campus Crusade for Christ and continued with them until 1969. He then helped a mission in Southern California which continued until 1976. He was also a frequent speaker and Sunday School teacher at Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim, California. In 1969, he wrote his first, and most well-known book, ''The Late, Great Planet Earth''.

Published in 1970 by Zondervan, ''The Late, Great Planet Earth'' became a bestseller. Coming on the heels of the Six-Day War, the book fueled the popularity of Dispensationalism and its support of ethnic Jews as the "chosen people of God". Many of Lindsey's later writings are sequels or revisions and extensions of his first book.

Lindsey hosted ''International Intelligence Briefing'' on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and serves on the executive board of Christian Voice.

''International Intelligence Briefing'' was removed from the air on TBN for the entire month of December 2005. Lindsey claimed that this was because "some at the network apparently feel that [his] message is too pro-Israel and too anti-Muslim." TBN owner Paul Crouch, however, contended that "TBN has never been and is not now against Israel and the Jewish people." Crouch said that Lindsey's show was pre-empted for Christmas programming. Lindsey countered that this was the first time his show had been preempted for the entire month of December. TBN later admitted that a secondary reason for pre-empting the show was that it "placed Arabs in a negative light."

Lindsey resigned from TBN on January 1, 2006, and indicated that he would pursue another television ministry. His new program, ''The Hal Lindsey Report'', is focused on Biblical prophecy and current events, and is carried on the Angel One and DayStar networks. In January 2007, Lindsey announced that he would be returning to the TBN network. ''The Hal Lindsey Report'' airs on TBN under his own financing.

He wrote in an essay on WorldNetDaily that Barack Obama was paving the way for, and demonstrating the world's readiness for, the antichrist, "Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him — a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib ... The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance."

Biblical Interpretations

In ''The Late, Great Planet Earth'', Lindsey wrote that he had concluded, since there was no apparent mention of the United States of America in the books of Daniel or Revelation, that the USA would no longer be a major player on the geo-political stage by the time the tribulations of the end times arrived. Lindsey also interpreted from Revelation and prophetic texts that the European Economic Community, which preceded the European Union, was destined (according to Biblical prophecy) to become a "United States of Europe", with ten members, which in turn he says is destined to become a "Revived Roman Empire" ruled by the Antichrist. The European Union currently has 27 members.

A later book, bearing the title ''The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon'', implied that the battle of Armageddon would take place in the not too distant future, stating "the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it" and that the U.S. could be "destroyed by a surprise Soviet nuclear attack." The book strongly suggests that the 1980s would see the biblical events of tribulation and end times come to pass. The book was quietly taken out of print in the early 1990s, possibly due to the failure of Lindsey's apocalyptic predictions to come true during the 1980s.

''Planet Earth - 2000 A.D.'', published in the early 1990s, states that Christians should not plan to still be on earth by the year 2000.

Lindsey's earlier predictions all assumed that the Cold War would continue indefinitely, and had eschatological significance; he explicitly identified Russia with the apocalyptic figure of Gog. He also assumed that the 1960s counterculture would eventually become the dominant culture, and become the source of prophesied "immorality" that would lead to the establishment of a false religion.

Bibliography

''The Late, Great Planet Earth''

''Satan is Alive and Well On Planet Earth''

''The Liberation of Planet Earth''

''There's a New World Coming''

''The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon''

''The Final Battle''

''The Terminal Generation''

''Planet Earth: The Final Chapter''

''Rapture''

''Planet Earth - 2000 A.D.

''Apocalypse Code''

''Blood Moon''

''Vanished into Thin Air: the Hope of Every Believer

''The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad''

See also

Christian eschatology

Unfulfilled religious prophecies

Summary of Christian eschatological differences

Christian Voice (USA)

References

External links

Hal Lindsey's web site

Hal Lindsey commentaries on WorldNetDaily

The Hal Lindsey Report at Daystar Television Network

The Hal Lindsey Report at Trinity Broadcasting Network

Hal Lindsey at Rapture Ready

Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:American Christian ministers Category:American Christian religious leaders Category:American Christian writers Category:American Christian Zionists Category:American evangelists Category:American religious writers Category:Apocalypticists Category:Christian eschatology Category:Christian fundamentalists Category:Christianity conspiracy theorists Category:Dallas Theological Seminary alumni Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:Trinity Broadcasting Network Category:University of Houston alumni

nl:Hal Lindsey ja:ハル・リンゼイ fi:Hal Lindsey sv:Hal Lindsey

name	Seymour Hersh
birth date	April 08, 1937
birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
alma mater	University of Chicago
occupation	Journalist
spouse	Elizabeth Sarah Klein
awards	Polk Award (1969, 1973, 1974, 1981, 2004)Pulitzer Prize (1970)George Orwell Award (2004) }}

Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to ''The New Yorker'' magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a "five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award."

He first gained worldwide 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. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.

Early years

Hersh was born in Chicago to Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian Jewish parents who immigrated to the US from Lithuania and Poland and ran a dry-cleaning shop in the far west side neighborhood of Chicago, called Austin. After graduating from the University of Chicago, with a history degree Hersh found himself struggling to find a job. He began working at a Walgreens before being accepted into University of Chicago Law School but was soon expelled for poor grades. After returning for a short time to Walgreens Hersh began his career in journalism as a police reporter for the City News Bureau in 1959. He later became a correspondent for United Press International in South Dakota. In 1963, he went on to become a Chicago and Washington correspondent for the Associated Press. While working in Washington Hersh first met and befriended I. F. Stone whose ''I. F. Stone's Weekly'' would serve as an initial inspiration for Hersh's later work. It was during this time that Hersh began to form his investigative style, often walking out of regimented press briefings at the Pentagon and seeking out one on one interviews with high ranking officers. After a falling out with the AP over their refusal to run a story on the US government's work on biological and chemical weapons Hersh left the AP and sold his story to ''The New Republic''. During the 1968 presidential election, he served as press secretary for the campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy.

Vietnam and the New York Times

After leaving the McCarthy campaign, Hersh returned to journalism as a freelancer covering the Vietnam War. In 1969, Hersh received a tip from Geoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice regarding an Army lieutenant being court-martialled for killing civilians in Vietnam. His subsequent investigation, sold to the Dispatch News Service, was run in thirty-three newspapers and exposed the My Lai massacre, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

In 1972, Hersh was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of ''The New York Times'', where he served from 1972 to 1975 and again in 1979. Hersh was also active in investigating the Central Intelligence Agency's Project Jennifer.

After the New York Times

His 1983 book ''The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House'' won him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the ''Los Angeles Times'' book prize in biography. In 1985, Hersh contributed to the PBS television documentary ''Buying the Bomb''. In 1993 Hersh became a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

Hersh has appeared regularly on the ''Democracy Now!'' show.

Selected stories

My Lai Massacre

On November 12, 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US soldiers in March 1968. The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States. The explosive news of the massacre fueled the outrage of the US peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Hersh wrote about the massacre and its cover-up in ''My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath'' and ''Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4''. A movie was produced, based on this book, by Italian director Paolo Bertola in 2009.

Project Jennifer

In early 1974, Hersh had planned to publish a story on Project Jennifer, the code name for a CIA project to recover a sunken Soviet navy submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Bill Kovach, ''The New York Times'' Washington, DC bureau chief at the time, said in 2005 that the government offered a convincing argument to delay publication in early 1974—exposure at that time, while the project was ongoing, "would have caused an international incident." The ''NYT'' eventually published its account in 1975, after a story appeared in the ''Los Angeles Times'', and included a five-paragraph explanation of the many twists and turns in the path to publication. It is unclear what, if any, action was taken by the Soviet Union after learning of the story.

KAL 007

In his 1986 book ''The Target is Destroyed'' (Random House), Hersh alleged that the Soviet shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 in September 1983 was due to a combination of Soviet incompetence and United States intelligence operations intended to confuse Soviet responses.

Later releases of government information confirmed that there was a PSYOPS campaign against the Soviet Union that had been in place from the first few months of the Reagan administration. This campaign included the largest US Pacific Fleet exercise ever held, in April to May 1983. The report states that the Soviets, "probably didn't know (KAL 007) was a civilian aircraft" and uses Hersh's book as a reference for the PSYOPS campaign.

Mordechai Vanunu and Robert Maxwell

In his 1991 book ''The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy'', Hersh wrote that Nicholas Davies, the foreign editor of ''The Daily Mirror'', had tipped off the Israeli embassy in London about whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear weapons program first to ''The Sunday Times'' and later to the ''Sunday Mirror''. At the time, the ''Sunday Mirror'' and its sibling newspaper, the ''Daily Mirror'' were owned by media magnate Robert Maxwell who was alleged to have had contacts with Israel's intelligence services. According to Hersh, Davies had also worked for the Mossad. Vanunu was later lured by Mossad from London to Rome, kidnapped, returned to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. Davies and Maxwell published an anti-Vanunu story that was claimed to be part of a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Israeli government.

Hersh repeated the allegations during a press conference held in London to publicize his book. No British newspaper would publish the allegations because of Maxwell's famed litigiousness. However, two British MPs raised the matter in the House of Commons, which meant that British newspapers were able to report what had been said without fear of being sued for libel. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention". He fired Nick Davies shortly thereafter.

Attack on pharmaceutical factory in Sudan

On August 20, 1998, Hersh strongly criticized the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan—providing about half the medicines produced in Sudan—by United States cruise missiles during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Iraq

Hersh has written a series of articles for ''The New Yorker'' magazine detailing military and security matters surrounding the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. In March 2002 he described the planning process for a new invasion of Iraq that had been on-going since the end of the First Gulf War, under the leadership of Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Fried and other neo-conservatives. In a 2004 article, he alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld circumvented the normal intelligence analysis function of the CIA in their quest to make the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Another article, ''Lunch with the Chairman'', led Richard Perle, a subject of the article, to call Hersh the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."

A March 7, 2007 article entitled, "The Redirection" described the recent shift in the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy, the goal of which is to "contain" Iran. Hersh points out that, "a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles which described the treatment of detainees by US military police at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq. The articles included allegations that private military contractors contributed to prisoner mistreatment and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered torture in order to break prisoners for interrogations. They also alleged that torture is a usual practice in other US-run prisons as well, e.g., in Bagram Theater Internment Facility and Guantanamo. In subsequent articles, Hersh claimed that the abuses were part of a secret interrogation program, known as "Copper Green". According to Hersh's sources, the program was expanded to Iraq with the direct approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both in an attempt to deal with the growing insurgency there and as part of "Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A." Much of his material for these articles was based on the Army's own internal investigations.

Scott Ritter points out in his October 19, 2005 interview with Seymour Hersh that the US policy to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power started with US president George H. W. Bush in August 1990. Ritter concludes from public remarks by President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker that the Iraq sanctions would only be lifted when Hussein was removed from power. The justification for sanctions was disarmament. The CIA offered the opinion that containing Hussein for six months would result in the collapse of his regime. This policy resulted in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

MR. HERSH: One of the things about your book that's amazing is that it's not only about the Bush Administration, and if there are any villains in this book, they include Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security advisor, and Madeleine Albright.

Another thing that's breathtaking about this book is the amount of new stories and new information. Scott describes in detail and with named sources, basically, a two or three-year run of the American government undercutting the inspection process. In your view, during those years, '91 to'98, particularly the last three years, was the United States interested in disarming Iraq?

MR. RITTER: Well, the fact of the matter is the United States was never interested in disarming Iraq. The whole Security Council resolution that created the UN weapons inspections and called upon Iraq to disarm was focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is a vehicle for the maintenance of economic sanctions that were imposed in August 1990 linked to the liberation of Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait, I participated in that conflict. And one would think, therefore, the sanctions should be lifted.

The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed--and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution--within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration.

Iran

In January 2005, Hersh alleged that the US was conducting covert operations in Iran to identify targets for possible strikes. Hersh also claimed that Pakistan and the United States have struck a "Khan-for-Iran" deal in which Washington will look the other way at Pakistan's nuclear transgressions and not demand handing over of its nuclear proliferator A Q Khan, in return for Islamabad's cooperation in neutralising Iran's nuclear plans. This was also denied by officials of the governments of the US and Pakistan.

In the April 17, 2006 issue of ''The New Yorker'', Hersh reported on the Bush administration's purported plans for an air strike on Iran. Of particular note in his article is that a US nuclear first strike (possibly using the B61-11 bunker-buster nuclear weapon) is under consideration to eliminate underground Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. In response, President Bush cited Hersh's reportage as "wild speculation."

When, in October 2007, asked on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's hawkish views on Iran, Hersh claimed that Jewish donations were the main reason for these:

While speaking at a journalism conference recently, Hersh claimed that after the Strait of Hormuz incident, members of the Bush administration met in vice president Dick Cheney's office to consider methods of initiating a war with Iran. One idea considered was staging a false flag operation involving the use of Navy SEALs dressed as Iranian PT boaters who would engage in a firefight with US ships. This idea was shot down. This claim has not been verified.

Lebanon

In August 2006, in an article in ''The New Yorker'', Hersh claimed that the White House gave the green light for the Israeli government to execute an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Supposedly, communication between the Israeli government and the US government about this came as early as two months in advance of the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hezbollah prior to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict in July 2006. The US government denied these claims.

Criticism

Kennedy research

Hersh's 1997 book about John F. Kennedy, ''The Dark Side of Camelot'', made a number of controversial assertions about the former president, including that he had had a "first marriage" to a woman named Durie Malcolm that was never terminated, that he had been a semi-regular narcotics user, that he had a close working relationship with mob boss Sam Giancana which supposedly included vote fraud in one or two crucial states in the 1960 presidential election. For many of these claims, Hersh relied only on hearsay collected decades after the event. In a ''Los Angeles Times'' review, Edward Jay Epstein cast doubt on these and other assertions, writing, "this book turns out to be, alas, more about the deficiencies of investigative journalism than about the deficiencies of John F. Kennedy." Responding to the book, historian and former Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called Hersh "the most gullible investigative reporter I've ever encountered."

Hersh repeatedly described Kennedy as a playboy and implied that many journalists were aware of his womanizing but turned a blind eye, even ignoring or denigrating witnesses to the infidelity who wanted to go public. One of Hersh's assertions on his theme, however, is backed with erroneous references (and remains unsubstantiated). The author identified one Florence M. Kater as a "middle-aged housewife" who supposedly knew of Kennedy's womanizing during his 1960 presidential campaign. According to Hersh, this woman, who was allegedly the former landlady of JFK's senatorial aide/love interest Pamela Turnure, decided in 1959 to break the news on this topic. Inexplicably, "in late 1958" (the year ''before'' she decided to go public) she "ambushed Kennedy leaving the new apartment [to which Turnure allegedly moved to escape Kater's eavesdropping] at three A.M. and took a photograph of the unhappy senator attempting to shield his face with a handkerchief."

Hersh did not publish such a photograph in ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' or cite an interview with Florence Kater. She died many years before he started work on the book. If another writer or journalist ever interviewed her, Hersh did not use such a source. In the book he asserted that Kater had attended a 1960 presidential campaign stop near Washington, DC carrying a blow-up of her alleged photograph of an adulterous Sen. Kennedy attempting to shield his face.

"Kater was not taken seriously by the national press corps," wrote Hersh, "but she came close to attracting media attention. On May 14, 1960, just four days after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary, she approached him at a political rally at the University of Maryland carrying a placard with an enlarged snapshot of the early-morning scene outside Pamela Turnure's apartment. Kennedy ignored her, but a photograph of the encounter was published in the next afternoon's ''Washington Star'', along with a brief story describing her as a heckler.". A paralegal named Lawrence Cusack had shared them with Hersh and encouraged the author to discuss them in the book. Shortly before Hersh's publicized announcement, federal investigators began probing Cusack's sale of the documents at auction. After ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' became a bestseller, Cusack was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of forging the documents and sentenced to a long prison term. The documents signed by "John F. Kennedy" included a provision, in 1960, for a trust fund to be set up for the institutionalized mother of Marilyn Monroe. In 1997 the Kennedy family denied Cusack's claim that his late father had been an attorney who had represented JFK in 1960.

Use of anonymous sources

Some have criticized Hersh's use of anonymous sources in his reporting; implying that some of these sources are unreliable or even made up. In a review of Hersh's book, ''Chain of Command'', commentator Amir Taheri wrote, "As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In ''every case'' this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances... By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government."

David Remnick, the editor of ''The New Yorker'', maintains that he is aware of the identity of all of Hersh's unnamed sources, telling the ''Columbia Journalism Review'' that "I know every single source that is in his pieces.... Every 'retired intelligence officer,' every general with reason to know, and all those phrases that one has to use, alas, by necessity, I say, 'Who is it? What's his interest?' We talk it through."

In a response to an article in ''The New Yorker'' in which Hersh alleged that the U.S. government was planning a strike on Iran, U.S. Defense Department spokesman Brian Whitman said, "This reporter has a solid and well-earned reputation for making dramatic assertions based on thinly sourced, unverifiable anonymous sources."

Speeches

Those who criticize Hersh's credibility especially point to allegations Hersh has made in public speeches and interviews, rather than in print. In an interview with ''New York'' magazine, Hersh made a distinction between the standards of strict factual accuracy for his print reporting and the leeway he allows himself in speeches, in which he may talk informally about stories still being worked on or blur information to protect his sources. "Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people... I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say."

Some of Hersh's speeches concerning the Iraq War have described violent incidents involving U.S. troops in Iraq. In July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys:

In a subsequent interview with ''New York'' magazine, Hersh regretted that "I actually didn’t quite say what I wanted to say correctly...it wasn’t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs. And I just realized then, the power of—and so you have to try and be more careful." In his book, ''Chain of Command'', he wrote that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract interpreter at Abu Ghraib, during which a woman took pictures.

Link between the US government and Fatah al-Islam

In March 2007 Hersh asserted in a piece in ''The New Yorker'' that the United States and Saudi governments were funding the terrorist organization Fatah al-Islam through aid to Lebanese Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Following the publishing of the story journalists in Beirut uncovered that Hersh put forth the claim without any reliable sources. Hersh had heard the unconfirmed story from Robert Fisk who had, in turn, heard the story from former British intelligence agent Alastair Crooke. Crooke had only heard it circulated as rumor and no one had fact checked the claims before Hersh ran the story which prompted a variety of criticisms.

Morarji Desai Libel Suit

Hersh claimed in his 1983 book ''The Price of Power'' that former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai had been paid $20,000 a year by the CIA during the Johnson and Nixon administration. Desai called the allegation "a scandalous and malicious lie" and filed a $50 million libel suit against Hersh. By the time the case went to trial Desai, by then 93, was too ill to attend. CIA director Richard Helms and Henry Kissinger testified under oath that at no time did Desai act in any capacity for the CIA, paid or otherwise. Since Hersh did not have to take the stand or reveal the name of his alleged source, the Judge found in favor of Hersh.

Publications

Books

Hersh, Seymour M. (1968), ''Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal'', New York, New York: Bobbs-Merrill (US) and London: MacGibbon & Kee (UK). ISBN 0-586-03295-9.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1970). ''My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-43737-3.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1972). ''Cover-up: the Army's secret investigation of the massacre at My Lai 4''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-47460-0.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1983). ''The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House''. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44760-2. Excerpts from The Price of Power hosted by Third World Traveler

Hersh, Seymour M. (1986). ''The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-54261-4.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1991). ''The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-57006-5.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1997). ''The Dark Side of Camelot''. Little, Brown & Company. ISBN 0-316-36067-8.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1998). ''Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government''. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-42748-3.

Hersh, Seymour M. (2004). ''Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib''. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019591-6.

Hersh, Seymour M. (TBD). [book on the Cheney vice presidency]

Articles/Reportage

"Full list of published articles in the New Yorker

"Huge CIA Operation Reported in US against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents During Nixon Years" by Seymour Hersh, ''New York Times'', December 22, 1974 — Hersh's article detailing CIA covert operations which eventually led to the formation of the Church Committee.

Forewords

Hersh, Seymour M. (foreword) (2005) in Scott Ritter: ''Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein'' (Hardcover), Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-852-7

See also

Church Committee (''United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities''. Hersh's December 22, 1974 New York Times article on CIA operations was the main reason for the creation of this committee)

Ari Ben-Menashe

Mordechai Vanunu

Robert Maxwell

Opposition to war against Iran

References

External links

Seymour Hersh Interviewed by Mehdi Hasan

Articles

"Current State of Investigating Reporting", talk given at BU, May 19 2009

"Overwhelming Force" — What happened in the final days of the Gulf War?, ''The New Yorker'', May 22, 2000 issue

"The Cold Test" — What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear program., ''The New Yorker'', January 27, 2003 issue

"Lunch with the Chairman" — Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?, ''The New Yorker'', March 17, 2003 issue

"Who Lied to Whom?" — Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?, ''The New Yorker'', March 31, 2003 issue

"Offense and Defense" — The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon., ''The New Yorker'', April 7, 2003 issue

"Selective Intelligence" — Selective Intelligence, ''The New Yorker'', May 12, 2003 issue

"The Syrian Bet" — Did the Bush Admin. burn a useful source on Al Qaeda? ''The New Yorker'', July 28, 2003 issue

"The Stovepipe" — How conflicts between the Bush Admin. and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons. ''The New Yorker'', October 27, 2003 issue

"Moving Targets" — Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?. ''The New Yorker'', December 15, 2003 issue

"The Deal" — Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers? ''The New Yorker'', March 8, 2004 issue

"The Other War" — Why Bush’s Afghanistan problem won’t go away., ''The New Yorker'', April 12, 2004 issue

"Torture at Abu Ghraib" — American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, ''The New Yorker'', May 10, 2004 issue

"Chain of Command" — How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib, ''The New Yorker'', May 17, 2004 issue

"The Gray Zone" — How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, ''The New Yorker'', May 24, 2004 issue

"Plan B" — As June 30 approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds, ''The New Yorker'', June 28, 2004 issue

"The Coming Wars" — What the Pentagon can now do in secret, ''The New Yorker'', January 24, 2005 issue and the response by the Department of Defense

"Watergate Days", ''The New Yorker'', June 13, 2005 issue

"Get Out the Vote" — Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq's Elections?, ''The New Yorker'', July 25, 2005 issue

"Up in the Air" — Where is the Iraq war headed next?, ''The New Yorker'', December 5, 2005 issue

"The Iran Plans" — Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?, ''The New Yorker'', April 17, 2006 issue

"Last Stand" — The military's dissent on Iran policy., ''The New Yorker'', July 10 & 17 2006 issue

"Watching Lebanon" — Washington’s interests in Israel’s war., ''The New Yorker'', August 21, 2006 issue

"The Next Act" — Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?, ''The New Yorker'', November 27, 2006 issue

"The Redirection" — Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?, ''The New Yorker'', March 5, 2007 issue

"The General's Report" — How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties, ''The New Yorker'', June 25, 2007 issue

"Shifting Targets" — The Administration’s plan for Iran, ''The New Yorker'', October 8, 2007 issue

"A Strike in the Dark" — What did Israel bomb in Syria?, ''The New Yorker'', February 11, 2008 issue

"Preparing the Battlefield" — The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran, ''The New Yorker'', July 7, 2008 issue

"Syria Calling" — The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace, ''The New Yorker'', April 6, 2009 issue

"Defending the Arsenal" — In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?, ''The New Yorker'', November 16, 2009 issue

"The Online Threat" — Should we be worried about a cyber war?, ''The New Yorker'', November 1, 2010 issue

"Iran and the Bomb" — How real is the nuclear threat?, ''The New Yorker'', June 6, 2011 issue

THE TRAITOR The case against Jonathan Pollard The New Yorker, January 18, 1999

Category:1937 births Category:American Jews Category:American investigative journalists Category:The New Yorker staff writers Category:Espionage writers Category:George Polk Award recipients Category:Jewish American writers Category:Living people Category:My Lai Massacre Category:The New York Times people Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:War correspondents Category:Worth Bingham Prize recipients Category:American people of the Vietnam War

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