Leader of the pack

In the American reportage of Afghanistan one byline stands out in the fog of war: Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker. In one scoop after another, the 64-year-old Hersh has thrashed his colleagues, including his old rival Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post and Watergate. Hersh led the pack on the intelligence failure on the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre; he had the best insider account of disarray at the CIA; he revealed US wiretaps on the ugly shenanigans within the Saudi royal family, he reported US contingency plans to disarm Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and, most controversially, he reported that a raid behind Taliban lines by US elite commandos was far from the “flawless” operation the Pentagon claimed. It was an “outrage” that left several US troops wounded, a military officer told Hersh. And all this from the freelance Hersh’s tiny, cramped Washington office. Guardian UK