Jack Shafer, press critic for Slate, an online magazine, said: "He has gotten lots of stuff wrong or only half right. He predicted that CIA director George Tenet was done, that special ops and air power could not defeat the Taliban; he said that the war in Iraq had faltered and we were in danger of stalemate. Ten days later, Baghdad fell. But after having a bad early war, he has been on a blistering run."
Hersh won a National Magazine Award last month for his articles last year about corruption within the Saudi royal family and stumbles in the war on terror by the U.S. military and intelligence.
"He is the consummate muckracker," Shafer said. "It's just important to catalog his hits and misses."
Hersh got his start in journalism during the 1960s at the City News Bureau in Chicago, where he wrote numerous articles about crime. After stints at United Press International and the Associated Press, he made a brief detour as a press secretary to antiwar presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. He soon returned to reporting, and came across the events at My Lai.
He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 and was eventually hired by the Times to help the newspaper catch up with the Post on the Watergate scandal. He published a number of influential articles at the paper, including breaking the news of broad-based domestic spying by the CIA, but it was a fitful collaboration.
He went on to write a number of books, including a damning portrait of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power, published in 1983. He returned to the Times for several special projects, but eventually landed at The New Yorker.
Hersh's journalistic crusades have received mixed reviews over the years. For example, his assertion in his book The Samson Option, about the Israeli effort to build a nuclear bomb, that there was a political conspiracy in the US to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran and prevent President Jimmy Carter's re-election caused an uproar and suggestions that he had over-reached.
Hersh is often compared to Woodward, an occasional antag-onist with whom he competed on Watergate. Woodward, an assistant managing editor for the Post, has also driven the news agenda recently with his latest book, Plan of Attack.
"They are like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb," said Leen of the Post. But while Woodward is on a first-name basis with many of Bush's highest-ranking officials, Hersh sticks to the back channels for articles that often countervail the official wisdom.
Hersh is a noir version of Woodward, darker and brusquer. Robert Baer, a former CIA officer and a friend and source of Hersh, can recall being dragged out of bed on a Sunday morning at 7am.
"He calls me and 10 other military and intelligence guys by 8 in the morning every day," said Baer, who affectionately named his dog Hersh because it is fond of digging through trash.
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