This is the same journalist who broke news about Mai Lai, reported in-depth on Abu Ghraib, and much more. Serious, serious news.
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> According to Hersh's story, Navy SEALs met no resistance at Abbottabad and were escorted by a Pakistani intelligence officer to bin Laden's bedroom, where they killed him. Bin Laden's body was "torn apart with rifle fire" and pieces of the corpse "tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains" by Navy SEALs during the flight home (no reason is given for this action). There was no burial at sea because "there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case."
> The first hints came in the latter years of the Bush administration, when Hersh reported repeatedly that the US was on the verging of striking Iran. These included reports stating that the US might even bomb Iran with a nuclear warhead, and later that the administration had considered using US special forces disguised as Iranians to launch a "false flag" attack as a premise for war.
> The moment when a lot of journalists started to question whether Hersh had veered from investigative reporting into something else came in January 2011. That month, he spoke at Georgetown University's branch campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address alleging that top military and special forces leaders "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta ... many of them are members of Opus Dei." He suggested that they belong to a network first formed by former Vice President Dick Cheney that is steering US foreign policy toward an agenda of bringing Christianity to the Middle East.
> The next year, in 2012, Hersh reported in the New Yorker that the Bush administration had secretly armed and funded an Iranian terrorist group known as the MEK in 2005. Two sources, neither with direct knowledge, told Hersh that American special forces had flown the Iranians all the way to Nevada to train at a base there. This detail was both spectacular and puzzling: the US has bases throughout the world, including several in the Middle East; why bring terrorists to Nevada?
2. Not at all implausible. Remember Stuxnet? Washington was evidently going to extreme lengths.
3. This one seems speculative but not implausible. Neoconservatism is closely linked with crazy religious beliefs.
4. It is established fact that the CIA flew Tibetan extremists to Colorado to train them in the 1950s. Nothing puzzling about this.
The last one in particular is deeply embarassing and shows the Vox blogger has little grasp of history.
Here's a fawning local Nevada news segment about a former Green Beret training the mujihadeen, aired two months after 9/11:
The burden of proof is on HIM. It isn't up for us to debunk what he's saying (though I'm sure many can), he has to prove it, and he hasn't. No single corroboration from other big sources? Seems odd.
b) recovering a submarine is not the same as saying, actually Assad is an innocent bystander and the rebels gassed themselves, The CIA worked with Putin and Assad to undermine Obama...also US soldiers raped children and video recorded it, oh and let's not forget that the US planned to fake how OBL was killed in coordinate with Pakistan because stealth helicopters aren't possible (so how could the US fly below deck and get into Pakistan undetected!).
All claims by him, none with a lick of evidence.
The very premise of stealing a Soviet submarine wreck off the ocean floor with nobody noticing is pants-on-head insane. The USN thought the CIA was being moronic to even consider this plan. The USN's idea was a lot saner; to simply use submersibles to extract intelligence-relevant materials from the wreck underwater, not lift and take the entire wreck. No surface ships needed, much less an expensive purpose-built attention-drawing surface ship.