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Seymour Hersh
159 quotes
“It dates back to my breakthrough story: the My Lai massacre revelation... Editors... wanted nothing to do with a story about a massacre committed by American soldiers.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a frightening time for me, in terms of my faith in the profession I had chosen.... I was more than a little rattled—make that terrified—by the failure of senior editors at prominent magazines to jump at a story that would get international attention, especially when those editors professed to deplore the war and want it to end.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think they've thought this through thoroughly. I know that sounds strange. I don't think Secretary of State Blinken and some others in the government are deep thinkers...”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm sure there were some people who thought, Boy, is this going to give the American economy a long-term boost...”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think they've always been obsessed with re-election, and they wanted to win the war, they wanted to win a victory, they wanted Ukraine to somehow magically win. There might be some people who think that maybe it's better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that's crazy.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think we got caught up in something that won't work, the war won't end well for this government.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people involved in the operation saw that the President wanted to freeze Germany for his short-term political goals, and that horrified them. I'm talking about Americans who are very loyal to the United States.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The CIA, as I put it in my article, works for power, not for the constitution... But even that community is appalled that Biden has decided to expose Europe to the cold to support a war he will not win. This is nefarious to me.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I did was really deconstruct the obvious. I mean, you have to hear what the president said. But, of course, there were secret plans, that I’m writing about, and they include — there was a committee set up. Jake Sullivan was directly involved. He was the national security adviser, still is. They set up a team to look at options about how to put pressure on the Russian government to back off.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The threat the president had yet to make had not been made, and this is December, before New Year’s Day, of the year before, 2021. And the question inside the committee, and it included the usual — CIA, NSA, Treasury Department, State Department, you name it ... The option was: Do you want us to do something kinetic or something not kinetic? In other words, not kinetic would be more sanctions, and something kinetic would be, you know, taking out the pipeline”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Victoria Nuland’s statement, that you mentioned, came actually before the president’s... at that time, I think, the committee involved — a lot of sophisticated people in the intelligence and operation community concluded you could do it... that led to the comments, which really, of course, made the people on the inside go half-crazy, because it was supposed to be completely covert... it was simply described as a classified operation. None of the rules of reporting to Congress involved are involved — were involved.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s a tiresome game to me... I’m embarrassed to say it after all those wonderful years I had at The New York Times. I wasn’t even thinking of taking a story like this to The New York Times. They’ve decided that the Ukraine war is going to be won by Ukraine, and that’s what its readers get, and so be it. That’s their call. So, I just did my reporting.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nord Stream 1 was a godsend for the German economy and Western Europe. They produce so much gas at such low prices that the German government was actually able to resell some of the gas the Russians were providing at a profit, without Russia objecting.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And so, the German economy is huge. It’s booming. You know, the cars, we know about. Germany has the largest chemical company in the world, BASF. And everybody is — right now it’s hell to pay. It’s gotten very cold there. There’s a lot of anger”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world has taken a very bizarre turn. I also — you know, it doesn’t matter what I think.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s no question there’s been a polarization of the press since Trump got in. We’re now on two sides — you know, right, left, Democrat, Republican, however you describe it.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’ve got a president, a Democratic president, that has done some good stuff domestically, but I can tell you I’m not understanding the total commitment to Ukraine. And I’m not understanding what I read, because, obviously, I have access to a lot of people who see things.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve been... writing about covert activities for — am I that old?...the stories I’ve been getting about the war... have been pretty dire.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the end is just a question of time. Right now it’s a question of how many more people Zelensky wants to kill of his own people. It’s going to be over.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s also an enormous continuing of hatred of all things Putin in this country, which is — foreign policy disagreements are one thing, but it’s very personal here.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t think there’s any chance that Putin wants to take over Europe. I don’t think he wants to take — he wants to have Ukraine tamed, but he’s not interested in doing anything more.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here’s what Biden did... the ultimate point of the story, why so many people, even the intelligence community, are very troubled by it... he said, “I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support. And I know winter is coming, and if it’s going to be bad, I don’t want the Germans to say, ’We’ve got to check out, because we’re getting massacred. We’ll be massacred with no cheap fuel, and our economy will go bonkers. We’re going to check out, and we’re going to open up the gas line,’” which they could do. So he took away that option.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This goes back to the Bush-Cheney years... they began to talk about the threat... of cheap energy for Europe, was always seen as a threat to make Europe... more willing to trade with Russia. We always wanted to isolate Russia. This has been a theme of the last decades.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And I think the consequences of this for the Europeans are going to be horrific. They really — this has cut into the notion that they can depend totally on America, even in a crisis.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s going to undercut NATO, which I always found to be supremely useless,”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There’s not enough of it. It’s very expensive.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the consequences politically for us in the long run, looking at even potential some countries walking out of NATO. If that’s what he thinks, that our being cold is less important than him keeping a war going that he’s not going to win”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for the source question, you know, I’ve been doing this so long.... you know, I’m lucky. I’ve had, for 20 or 30 or 40 years, people inside who not only are faithful to what they’re doing, but also are not afraid to be critical of it. And so, that’s the kind of source that, you know, reporters dream about. And I’ve had people like that for forever. And I still do.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t think that Blinken and some others in the administration are deep thinkers.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Joe Biden decided not to blow them up. It was in early June, five months into the war, but then, in September, he decided to do it.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What’s courageous about telling the truth? Our job isn’t to be afraid. And sometimes it gets ugly. There have been times in my life, when — you know, I don’t talk about it. Threats aren’t made to people like me; they’re made to children of people like me. There’s been awful stuff. But you don’t worry about it — you can’t. You have to just do what you do.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“William L Calley Jr., 26 years old, is a mild-mannered, boyish-looking Vietnam combat veteran with the nickname “Rusty:’ The Army is completing an investigation of charges that he deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in a search-and- destroy mission in March 1968 in a Viet Gong stronghold known as “Pinkville.” Calley has formally been charged with six specifications of mass murder. Each specification cites a number of dead, adding up to the 109 total, and charges that Calley did “with premeditation murder… Oriental human beings, whose names and sex are unknown, by shooting them with a rifle.” The Army calls it murder; Calley, his counsel and others associated with the incident describe it as a case of carrying out orders... One man who took part in the mission with Calley said...We were told to just clear the area. It was a typical combat assault formation. We came in hot, with a cover of artillery in front of us, came down the line and destroyed the village. There are always some civilian casualties in a combat operation. He isn’t guilty of murder.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1969
“Calley’s attorney said in an interview: “This is one case that should never have been brought. Whatever killing there was was in a firefight in connection with the operation.... You can’t afford to guess whether a civilian is a Viet Cong or not. Either they shoot you or you shoot them" This case is going to be important—to what standard do you hold a combat officer in carrying out a mission?... Calley’s friends in the officer corps at Fort Benning, many of them West Point graduates, are indignant. However, knowing the high stakes of the case, they express their outrage in private. “They’re using this as a Goddamned example,” one officer complained. “He’s a good soldier. He followed orders. There weren’t any friendlies in the village. The orders were to shoot anything that moved.” Another officer said “It could happen to any of us. He has killed and has seen a lot of killing. ..Killing becomes nothing in Vietnam. He knew that there were civilians there, but he also knew that there were VC among them.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1969
“Three American soldiers who participated in the March 1968 attack on a Vietnam village called Pinkville said in interviews made public today that their Army combat unit perpetrated, in the words of one, “pointblank murder” on the residents. “The whole thing was so deliberate. It was point-blank murder and I was standing there watching it,” said Sgt. Michael Bernhardt, Franklin Square, N.Y., now completing his Army tour at Fort Dix, N .J .... This is his version of what took place: “They (Calley’s men) were doing a whole lot of shooting up there, but none of it was incoming — I’d been around enough to tell that. I figured they were advancing on the village with fire power. I walked up and saw these guys... setting fire to the hootches and huts and waiting for people to come out and then shooting them up... They were gathering people in groups and shooting them. As I walked in, you could see piles of people... all over. They were gathered up into large groups. I saw them shoot an M-79 (grenade launcher) into a group of people who were still alive... They were shooting women and children just like anybody else. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. We had no casualties. It was just like any other Vietnamese village—old Papa-san, women and kids. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember seeing one military-age male in the entire place, dead or alive. The only prisoner I saw was about 50.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hamlet Attack Called “Point-Blank Murder” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 1969
“In a private letter dated Aug. 6, 1969, Col. John G. Hill, a deputy for staff action control in the office of Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland, wrote that Medina acknowledged that he had requested Bernhardt to wait until a brigade investigation of the incident was completed. Nothing came of the investigation. ... Bernhardt said that about 90 per cent of the 60 to 70 men in the short-handed company were involved in the shootings. He took no part, he said. “I only shoot at people who shoot at me,” was his explanation. “The Army ordered me not to talk,” Bernhardt told the interviewer. “But there are some orders that I have to personally decide whether to obey; I have my own conscience to consider...” he said.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hamlet Attack Called “Point-Blank Murder” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 1969
“A former GI told in interviews yesterday how he executed, under orders, dozens of South Vietnamese civilians during the United States Army attack on the village of Song My in March 1968. He estimated that he and his fellow soldiers Shot 370 villagers... Paul Meadlo, 22 years old... gave an eyewitness account—the first made available thus far—of what happened when a platoon led by Lt... Meadlo, Who was wounded in a mine accident the day after Pinkville, disclosed that the company captain, Ernest Medina, was in the area at the time of the shootings and made no attempt to stop them... Meadlo is back at a factory job now in Terre Haute, fighting to keep a full disability payment from the Veterans’ Administration. The loss of his right foot seems to bother him less than the loss of his self-respect. Like other members of his company, he had been called just days before the interview by an officer at Fort Benning, Ga., where Calley is being held, and advised that he should not discuss the case with reporters But, like other members of his company, he seemed eager to talk. “This has made him awful nervous,” explained his mother, Mrs. Myrtle Meadlo, 57, New Goshen, Ind. “He seems like he just can’t get over it. I sent them a good boy and they made him a murderer.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ex-GI Tells of Killing Civilians at Pinkville, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 25, 1969
“Meadlo said he crashed through the door and “found an old man in there shaking. “I told them, ‘I got one,’ and it was Mitchell who told me to shoot him. That was the first man I shot. He was hiding in a dugout, shaking his head and waving his arms, trying to tell me not to shoot him.” After the carnage, Meadlo said, “I heard that all we were supposed to do was kill the VC. Mitchell said we were just supposed to shoot the men.” Women and children also were shot... He has some haunting memories, he says. “They didn’t put up a fight or anything. The women huddled against their children and took it. They brought their kids real close to their stomachs and hugged them, and put their bodies over them trying to save them. It didn’t do much good,” Meadlo said.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ex-GI Tells of Killing Civilians at Pinkville, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 25, 1969
“The whole operation took about 30 minutes, Meadlo said. As for Calley, Meadlo told of an incident a few weeks before Pinkville. “We saw this woman walking across this rice paddy and Calley said, ‘Shoot her,’ so we did. When we got there the girl was alive, had this hole in her side. Calley tried to get someone to shoot her again; I don’t know if he did.” In addition, Calley and Medina had told the men before Pinkville, Meadlo said, “that if we ever shoot any civilians, we should go ahead and plant a hand grenade on them.” Meadlo is not sure, but he thinks the feel of death came quickly to the company once it got to Vietnam. “We were cautious at first, but as soon as the first man was killed, a new feeling came through the company...almost as if we all knew there was going to be a lot more killing.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ex-GI Tells of Killing Civilians at Pinkville, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 25, 1969
“An aide in the White House situation room, which is staffed around the clock, telephoned to report that the Israelis had informed Washington that they had successfully bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, twelve miles southeast of Baghdad. Allen immediately telephoned Reagan... The President, he was told, had just boarded his helicopter for the trip back to the White House. "Get him off," Allen ordered. It was, after all, the new administration's first Middle East crisis.... "Mr. President, the Israelis just took out a nuclear reactor in Iraq with F-i6s." Israel, aided by long-term, low-interest American credits, had been authorized in 1975 to begin the purchase of seventy-five F-16s "for defensive purposes only." p. 8”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mission planners, anxious to avoid international protest, had gone to extremes to mask the operation: it was hoped that Iraq and the rest of the world would be unable to fix blame for the bombing on the unmarked \ Israeli Air Force planes. The attack had been carried out, as planned, in two minutes, and the likelihood of any detection was slight. But Menachem Begin, buoyed by the success, stunned his colleagues on June 8 by unilaterally announcing the Israeli coup.... On the next day, as Israel was besieged with protests, the prime minister defended the operation and vowed that Israel was ready to strike again, if necessary, to prevent an enemy from developing the atomic bomb. p. 9”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end. The basic target of Israel's nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again. Epilogue p. 319”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the last decade, Jonathan Pollard, the American Navy employee who spied for Israel in the mid-nineteen-eighties and is now serving a life sentence, has become a cause célèbre in Israel and among Jewish groups in the United States. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a consortium of fifty-five groups, has publicly called for Pollard's release, arguing, in essence, that his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally.... Pollard himself, now forty-four, has never denied that he turned over a great deal of classified material to the Israelis, but he maintains that his sole motive was to protect Israeli security.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The case against Jonathan Pollard, The New Yorker, January 18, 1999
“Last December, after Saddam Hussein threatened to end seven years of United Nations arms-control inspections, President Clinton ordered American attacks on Iraq. Once again, the world watched, on television, as missiles fell on carefully picked targets. The purpose of the attacks, Clinton told reporters, was to "degrade" Iraq's capacity for waging war, and he added, "I gave the order because I believe we cannot allow Saddam Hussein to dismantle UNSCOM and resume the production of weapons of mass destruction with impunity." The President was mistaken. The United Nations Special Commission for Iraq, known as UNSCOM, had already been effectively dismantled, by the shortsighted policies of his own Administration.Then, a few hours after Clinton spoke, William Cohen, the Secretary of Defense, appeared on television. "One thing should be absolutely clear," he told reporters. "We are concentrating on military targets." That, too, was a misstatement, for two of the targets were sites where Saddam was known to entertain mistresses, and they were specifically struck in the hope of assassinating him.Saddam responded to the bombing--and the bungled assassination attempt--by formally ousting UNSCOM and turning anew to Russia, historically his most important trading partner. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, American policy has collapsed in Iraq, and a Cold War mentality has returned.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Saddam's Best Friend, How the C.I.A. made it a lot easier for the Iraqi leader to rearm, By Seymour M. Hersh The New Yorker, April 5, 1999, p. 32
“The National Security Agency, whose Cold War research into code breaking and electronic eavesdropping spurred the American computer revolution, has become a victim of the high-tech world it helped to create. Through mismanagement, arrogance, and fear of the unknown, the senior military and civilian bureaucrats who work at the agency's headquarters, in suburban Fort Meade, Maryland, have failed to prepare fully for today's high-volume flow of E-mail and fibre-optic transmissions -- even as nations throughout Europe, Asia, and the Third World have begun exchanging diplomatic and national-security messages encrypted in unbreakable digital code. The N.S.A.'s failures don't make the headlines...Last month, General Hayden agreed to speak to me, at his unpretentious top-floor offices at Ops 2, the N.S.A. headquarters building. He is an affable spymaster, who laughs easily, offers no slogans, and promises no quick fixes... "The issue is not people but external changes. For the N.S.A., technology is a two-edged sword... In its forty-year struggle against Soviet Communism," Hayden noted, "the N.S.A. was thorough, stable, and focussed." Then he asked "What's changed?" and he answered, "All of that.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Intelligence Gap: How the digital age left our spies out in the cold, The New Yorker, December 6, 1999
“[[Philip Giraldi|[Phillip] Giraldi]], who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army sta, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani Official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani Officials, and went no further.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012)], Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know].”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’ This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'When your version comes out – if you do it – people in Pakistan will be tremendously grateful,’ Durrani told me. ‘For a long time people have stopped trusting what comes out about bin Laden from the official mouths. There will be some negative political comment and some anger, but people like to be told the truth, and what you’ve told me is essentially what I have heard from former colleagues who have been on a fact-finding mission since this episode.’ As a former ISI head, he said, he had been told shortly after the raid by ‘people in the “strategic community” who would know’ that there had been an informant who had alerted the US to bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad”
Seymour Hersh (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source