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688 points hunglee2 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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mmastrac ◴[] No.34713024[source]
It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing.

The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story.

What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".

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drewda ◴[] No.34716271[source]
Seymour Hersh has decades of credibility from reporting the My Lai Massacre to the abuses at Abu Graib.

But he does often rely on sources who remain anonymous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Use_of_anonymous...

I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is published in that magazine. That suggests to me that while Hersh can probably be generally trusted, his work is of a higher quality when it's published in an outlet like The New Yorker, as the editor-in-chief and other staff submit it to a more rigorous internal discussion. That's in comparison to probably no internal review or discussion by Substack.

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btown ◴[] No.34716463[source]
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi... goes over how his more recent work verges on conspiracy theory.

That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.

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kubectl_h ◴[] No.34719272[source]
Did you see Zero Dark Thirty?

If so, do you trust it to be accurate?

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smsm42 ◴[] No.34720566[source]
Does Zero Dark Thirty claims to be a factual description of the events, or a work of fiction?
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kubectl_h ◴[] No.34720809[source]
It is a dramatization of the hunt for OBL. It elides names, sources and methods for obvious reasons. The larger shape of the story aligns without how the administration and CIA claim the search and assassination of OBL played out. It is alleged that the CIA cooperated heavily with the filmmakers. This would make sense given the amount of torture apologia that is in the movie.
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1. smsm42 ◴[] No.34743157[source]
> It is alleged that the CIA cooperated heavily with the filmmakers.

I'm sure if they did, that was with the sole purpose of ensuring maximum factual accuracy, and no other purpose whatsoever.