Covering the Pentagon, from Sy Hersh to Laura Loomer

Summary

On the Media (WNYC Studios)

Episode: Covering the Pentagon, from Sy Hersh to Laura Loomer
Host: Michael Olinger
Original Air Date: December 5, 2025

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Overview

This episode of "On the Media" critically examines the dramatic changes in Pentagon press coverage, focusing on the transition from traditional investigative journalism—exemplified by legendary reporter Seymour Hersh—to a new era where right-wing influencers and ideologically aligned personalities populate the Pentagon press corps. Through conversations with veteran Pentagon reporter Dan Lamoth, extremism journalist Anna Merlan, influencer-turned-Pentagon correspondent Cam Higby, and filmmaker Laura Poitras, the episode dissects how government transparency, press freedoms, and adversarial reporting are being challenged and, in many cases, undermined.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reporting on the Double-Strike Scandal and Pentagon Secrecy

• Introduction to Scandal (00:01–04:31)

  • The Pentagon faces lawsuits from the New York Times for restricting press access, following a year of scrutiny over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s actions and leadership.
  • The Washington Post broke a major story on a September U.S. strike on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, including a controversial second "double tap" that killed survivors—a potential war crime.

• Implications of Restricting Press Access (06:15–14:27)

  • Dan Lamoth, formerly of the Pentagon press corps, describes dramatic reductions in reporter access and the chilling effect on journalism.
  • New agreements would bar journalists from soliciting nearly any internal information—a move widely seen as a violation of First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Dan Lamoth (12:56):
"If you're asking me to sign up front, an agreement that says I will not solicit information—and not only classified information, but basically anything nebulously stated as 'defense information'—that could be virtually anything. It could be arbitrarily applied. It struck me as problematic ethically and otherwise as a journalist."

• Workflow and Relationships (11:08–11:47)
  • While physical access could sometimes yield leads, more often it facilitated trusted relationships with sources—vital for navigating contentious stories.

2. The New Pro-Trump Pentagon Press Corps

• New Faces, New Rules (16:47–18:08; 19:48–21:32)
  • Following the expulsion of traditional outlets, the Pentagon now accredits influencers and far-right activists, including Laura Loomer, James O’Keefe, and Matt Gaetz.
  • Anna Merlan of Mother Jones explains that the new crew openly declines to do investigative work and instead supports the Pentagon’s agenda.

Anna Merlan (19:48):
"They're pumped. When these new rules were first announced, people like Tim Pool essentially said, you know, we're not investigative reporters. So just…signaling right from the start that they didn’t intend to do investigative journalism about the Pentagon."

• Deputy Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson’s Far-Right Roots (20:14–22:42)
  • Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, has a history of xenophobic and antisemitic remarks and is part of the Trump-aligned media ecosystem.

Anna Merlan (20:43):
"[She] spent a lot of time tweeting...excluding immigrants and trans people, advocating for what she called 'zero immigration' and mass deportations, bemoaning the 'death of the west.'"

3. Press Briefings & Ideological Allyship

• Nature of Questions and Lack of Substantive Exchange (23:34–24:27; 24:47–26:07)
  • Questions from the new corps (e.g., Matt Gaetz, Laura Loomer, James O’Keefe) tend to bolster Trump administration positions or attack former press and government 'deep state' figures, rather than probe for accountability.
  • Many questions are rhetorical and designed not to elicit new information, while press briefings themselves produce little news.

Anna Merlan (27:52):
"What a lot of these folks did with most of their first day in the Pentagon was take pictures of themselves at desks that were previously occupied by mainstream news outlets. It seemed kind of clear that that was the point."

• Paradox of Conspiratorial Media Signing Up for State Vetted Access (28:30–29:59)
  • Anna Merlan notes the contradiction: those who built brands railing against government secrecy are now signing agreements not to uncover secrets.

4. Debate on Journalistic Standards: Cam Higby Segment

• From Debate Videos to Pentagon Desk (31:45–41:59)
  • Cam Higby presents his vision: journalists should not “harass” staff for leaks and should limit themselves to what is officially sanctioned; investigative journalism is downplayed as dangerous or unwarranted.

Cam Higby (32:21):
"But what I don't think it is is to wander about the most classified building in the United States and harass every employee you see with the express purpose of extracting state secrets."

• Host Pushes Back—The Tension Around Leaks and Accountability (35:09–36:34)
  • Michael Olinger interrogates Higby on whether this approach undermines the basic function of adversarial journalism.
  • Higby accuses legacy media of bias and being "out to get" the Trump administration, while contending he's honest about his own bias.

Michael Olinger (35:55):
"But if we only report what the Pentagon press secretary is saying to you, or we only report news that has been fed to us by specially curated spokespeople...then we have no way of calling out their lies."

• Banter and Friction (41:52–43:29)
  • There’s pointed debate around the ethics of reporting, bias in journalism, and the standards for what constitutes a scandal (e.g., the double-strike, potential war crimes). Higby repeatedly rejects media’s framing, defending the Trump administration and dismissing the war crime allegations.

5. Lessons From the Past: Seymour Hersh and Investigative Journalism

• The Golden Age of Pentagon Reporting (45:30–53:22)
  • The episode pivots to the work of Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and later torture at Abu Ghraib, through relentless cultivation of sources inside the military, often in opposition to official channels.

Seymour Hersh (46:13):
"Instead of going to lunch with my colleagues, I would go find the young officers...Eventually, army guys would start saying, well, you know, it's Murder Incorporated there."

• Laura Poitras’ New Documentary "Cover Up" (47:20–65:02)
  • Laura Poitras discusses the making of her Hersh documentary, emphasizing the centrality of adversarial journalism, source protection, and institutional risks. She also explores Hersh's fallibility and the need for self-scrutiny.

Laura Poitras (65:02):
"The erosion of trust in the media is because the public often feels lied to. They feel lied to by their government and they feel that the press is also part of the lying."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you're asking me to sign up front, an agreement that says I will not solicit information...that could be virtually anything."
  — Dan Lamoth (12:56)

• "They're pumped. When these new rules were first announced, people like Tim Pool essentially said, you know, we're not investigative reporters."
  — Anna Merlan (19:48)

• "You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories."
  — Secretary Pete Hegseth, paraphrased by Michael Olinger (01:00 & 04:31)

• "Legacy media chose to self-deport from this building..."
  — Kingsley Wilson, quoted by Anna Merlan (23:01)

• "Journalists are willing to fight for the truth. The question I have is about the institutional support for that work and the willingness to take on the government when they come after you."
  — Laura Poitras (63:05)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:01–04:31 — Breakdown of the Pentagon strike scandal and escalating attacks on the press.
• 06:15–14:27 — Dan Lamoth describes the consequences of new press restrictions.
• 16:47–18:08; 19:48–22:42 — Analysis of the new, influencer-heavy, right-wing Pentagon press corps.
• 23:34–27:52 — Examples of press briefings and the rhetorical, non-investigative direction of questions.
• 31:45–43:59 — Extended, combative interview with Cam Higby about journalistic purpose, bias, and standards.
• 45:30–46:32 — Seymour Hersh recounts his approach to Pentagon reporting.
• 47:20–65:02 — Laura Poitras on Hersh, her new documentary, and the lessons for journalism.
• 65:02–end — Summation of the stakes for adversarial journalism and institutional responsibilities.

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Tone and Language

• The episode maintains a skeptical, adversarial tone, especially in interviews, reflecting the show’s mission to examine how “the media sausage is made.”
• Interviewees like Dan Lamoth and Anna Merlan maintain calm factuality; Cam Higby exhibits combative defensiveness and overt bias; Laura Poitras is reflective and committed to journalistic ethics.

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Summary Takeaways

• The Pentagon under the Trump administration has dramatically restricted access for traditional reporters, with most of the old press corps walking out rather than agree to new constraints.
• A new press corps, composed largely of ideologically aligned influencers, has been credentialed, but many openly disavow investigative journalism and receive little of substance in briefings.
• Critics in the episode warn of growing government secrecy and diminished adversarial reporting at precisely the moment when potential war crimes and coverups demand scrutiny.
• The contrast with past investigative reporters—exemplified by Seymour Hersh—is stark: Hersh’s relentless pursuit of the truth shines as a model for adversarial journalism, while today's environment is fraught with institutional challenges and threats to source protection.
• Ultimately, the episode offers a cautionary message: a healthy democracy relies on journalistic independence and the courage to question power, especially in times of crisis.

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Transcript

[Michael Olinger]

In the wake of reporting about potential war crimes at sea, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lobbed shots at the messenger. You sit in your air conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody. From WNYC in New York, this is on the Media. I'm Michael Olinger. The bombshell story came out just as a brand new Pentagon press corps showed up for work.

[Anna Merlan]

They're pumped, Tim Pool said, you know, we're not investigative reporters. So just essentially signaling right from the start that they didn't intend to do investigative journalism.

[Michael Olinger]

Plus, a new documentary about Seymour Hersh, whose lurking in the Pentagon hallways during the Vietnam War led to the scoop of a lifetime.

[Seymour Hersh]

Instead of going to lunch with my colleagues, I would go find the young officers. Eventually, army guys just start saying, well, you know, it's murder incorporated there.

[Michael Olinger]

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the Media. Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Michael Olinger. On Thursday morning, the New York Times announced that it's suing the Pentagon.

[Cam Higby]

The lawsuit names the Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth and chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell as the defendants.

[Anna Merlan]

The lawsuit seeks to repeal the new.

[Laura Poitras]

Press policy, with the New York Times calling it a violation of free press's right to seek information under their first.

[Anna Merlan]

And Fifth Amendment rights.

[Michael Olinger]

The crackdown on the Pentagon press comes after almost a year of reports about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's fumbles and missteps. Most recently, a bombshell story surrounding the White House's deadly strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats.

[Cam Higby]

The Washington Post has an exclusive.

[Seymour Hersh]

They say that Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to, quote, kill everybody in the first strike on suspected drug boats.

[Cam Higby]

In the Caribbean back in September.

[Michael Olinger]

Now, after an initial strike on the vessel left two people alive and clinging.

[Dan Lamoth]

To the burning wreckage of the boat.

[Michael Olinger]

A second strike on the stricken vessel was taken in order to carry out Hegseth's wishes. Since that first strike in Early September, the US has carried out at least 21 more, killing more than 80 people. There are serious questions about whether these attacks fall within the rules governing armed conflicts. But this second strike, which some are calling a double tap ra, raises yet more questions. Now, the Post's article contains analysis from a former military lawyer named Todd Huntley, who says, quote, even if the US Were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat's occupants if they were no longer able to fight would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be.

[Dan Lamoth]

A war crime, end quote.

[Seymour Hersh]

And it gives me no pleasure to say what I'm about to say because I worked with Pete he for seven.

[Michael Olinger]

Or eight years at Fox News.

[Seymour Hersh]

This is an act of a war.

[Michael Olinger]

CR Former Fox talking head Andrew Napolitano speaking on the pro Trump Newsmax ordering.

[Seymour Hersh]

Survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered. There's absolutely no legal basis for it.

[Michael Olinger]

The White House's response has been muddled. The day of the attack back in September, President Trump posted a video of the boat being struck the first time the second strike had been redacted and made it sound like he was all over it.

[Seymour Hersh]

We just over the last few minutes literally shot out a boat.

[Michael Olinger]

A day later, Defense Secretary Hegseth sounded equally in the know.

[Dan Lamoth]

I watched it live.

[Michael Olinger]

We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing then. The Washington Post published its story on November 28. Last Sunday, when asked about the story, President Trump told reporters we'll look into it. But no, I wouldn't have wanted that.

[Laura Poitras]

Not a second strike.

[Michael Olinger]

The first strike was very lethal.

[Laura Poitras]

It was fine and if there were two people around.

[Michael Olinger]

But Pete said that didn't happen. On Monday, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt drew attention to another guy with respect to.

[Anna Merlan]

The strikes in question. On September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.

[Michael Olinger]

To clarify, Admiral Bradley was the one who gave that order for a second.

[Anna Merlan]

Strike and he was well within his.

[Laura Poitras]

Authority to do so.

[Michael Olinger]

So it sounds like there was a second strike, but was Admiral Bradley following Hegseth's instructions when he gave that order and who knew about it? Pete didn't know about second attack having.

[Dan Lamoth]

To do with two people.

[Michael Olinger]

President Trump at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday alongside Pete Hegseth later in that same meeting, Hegseth himself indicated he actually did know about the strike. He said that after watching the first one live, he left the room. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. So you didn't see any survivors. To be clear, after that first strike, I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. There's this is called the fog of war, which those reporters would understand if they just stepped outside once in a while. You sit in your air conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill. And you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. On Thursday, a handful of lawmakers saw the full video of the strike, including the portion where the two surviving men were killed. Democratic Congressman Jim Himes. What I saw in that room was.

[Cam Higby]

One of the most troubling things I've.

[Michael Olinger]

Seen in my time in public service.

[Cam Higby]

You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a.

[Michael Olinger]

Destroyed vessel who are killed by the United States. Dan Lamoth is one of those nitpicking journalists Pete Hegseth was berating this week. He contributed to the Washington Post reporting on the second strike. And until recently, he had a desk at the headquarters of the Department of Defense where he covered the US Military and the Pentagon. In October, he and most of the press corps walked out. Dan, welcome to the show.

[Dan Lamoth]

Thanks, appreciate it.

[Michael Olinger]

You spent 12 years as a member of the Pentagon press corps, meaning that you had a desk in the Pentagon. You were credentialed to go to Pentagon press briefings and to and to speak with federal workers there. But you, alongside every other news organization in the building, other than one America News Network, were kicked out in mid October after you refused to sign an agreement that would restrict the kinds of reporting that you could do there. I want to ask you about that agreement and your decision not to sign it in a minute. But first, tell me about your last day at the Pentagon. How did it feel to just leave it all behind?

[Dan Lamoth]

It had a kind of a surreal feel. And for me, it kind of came in waves this year. Back in March, they revoked the specific desk that the Washington Post had, along with several other outlets. So I cleaned out my desk way back then. But my last day was actually the day before. You saw a lot of the other reporters walk out, ironically, because I was asked to go up to New York City for a press freedom dinner with some other Washington Post people. So, yeah, I had to turn in my badge, say my goodbyes. I took a photograph in front of the steps in the Department of Defense sign that was up at the time. And yeah, I haven't been back in the Pentagon since October 14th, 15th.

[Michael Olinger]

The rules around reporting there have been changing for a while. There were already areas of the building that you couldn't visit without an escort.

[Cam Higby]

Right.

[Michael Olinger]

I'd heard that maybe the McDonald's was off limits.

[Dan Lamoth]

There have always been parts of the building that were off limits. The hallways are kind of common spaces. And then There are locks on many rooms in the building. And then there are places where we are openly welcome and invited. It would not be uncommon for me to walk 10 minutes to get to the army because, you know, the building's that big and drop in on army public affairs or walk across the hallway and go see the Joint Staff. Like there were places that had been sort of welcoming and accepted spots that the media would go over time. This year, they had restricted those spaces basically down to the office space specifically where the press sat, the adjacent office where the public affairs officers specifically for Hegseth's team sat, and the briefing room when it was actually unlocked, which was rare. Cause they didn't really brief. So you're kind of restricted down to 5%, 10% of the building. And as recently as a year ago, we probably had access to 70% of the footprint, something like that.

[Michael Olinger]

Why do you think they had been shutting off your physical access to so many of these spaces?

[Dan Lamoth]

For a lot of years we had people running the Pentagon from both parties who kind of often had spent time around it previously. There's sort of an expertise there. There's sort of a lived experience there where you're like, all right, I'm used to seeing a reporter around the corner when I'm in the hallway. And I think this team came in with a different set of experiences. They had not been around the Pentagon nearly as much. And they seem to take exception right away to the idea that the media would be so co located with them. And then I think on top of that, there have been really since the day Secretary Hegseth was first nominated and going forward, there were so many stories that were frustrating to him. And that goes back to the confirmation period where his own sexual assault allegations came up, his infidelity came up, his past drinking came up. And that all gets pushed into the limelight because you've been nominated for a cabinet position. You have to vet these people. He took the job quite angry at the media writ large and in particular the media that had covered his confirmation. By March, you're dealing with Signalgate. By April, you're dealing with several staff members that he fired, accused of leaking. All these months later. There's no actual sense that they leaked classified information, which is what the allegation was publicly on television. And then you move into this weird spot of numerous people getting fired. All of those stories create churn. And then more recently, you're dealing with these strikes which are obviously contentious in their own right. So it's just a whole calendar year at this point of challenging difficult stories, the media is not the one that picks those stories. Those are events that are happening all in front of us and it would be derelict for the media not to be covering those things.

[Michael Olinger]

But of course, shooting the messenger is just so easy. During your time at the Pentagon, how often would you get a good story, a good scoop, a good lead from just walking around and talking to people? Did that access translate to good journalism?

[Dan Lamoth]

Being in the building was helpful for building relationships which come in really handy on these contentious stories. By the way, when you actually know somebody and have talked about their kids playing Little League and now you got to deal with a difficult story the following day, that helps. But rarely do you ever get pulled aside in a hallway and some big secret is spilled to you. There's times where they'll be like, hey, I might have something for you tomorrow. Just by virtue of being in the building, you're in the loop on things that they're already planning to roll out. But it's way more of that than it is state secrets getting handed out in line at the McDonald's.

[Michael Olinger]

Since you've all left the Pentagon, a crop of right wing influencers have replaced you. The new so called Pentagon press corps. And of course these influencers signed that agreement from the Pentagon limiting their access to different parts of the building, limiting their ability to do certain kinds of reporting in exchange for access to press briefings. Give me a little bit more information about what exactly they've agreed to.

[Dan Lamoth]

The new restrictions that were presented to the traditional press corps came somewhat out of left field. There had been some thought that they might crack down again after the earlier restrictions on how freely you could walk in the unclassified spaces in the building. But when it actually came to us, for me, the challenge was, if you're asking me to sign up front, an agreement that says I will not solicit information, and not only classified information, but basically anything nebulously stated as defense information.

That could be virtually anything. It could be arbitrarily applied. It struck me as problematic ethically and otherwise as a journalist.

[Michael Olinger]

Basically this said that if you solicited information from a Pentagon worker who was not authorized to speak, or information that was not authorized to be released, then you could lose access to the facilities.

[Dan Lamoth]

You could lose access. There was also vague language in there that felt pretty threatening to sources as well. Which is to say if they spoke to you even about unclassified matters, let's say front office knife fights between the Hegseth team, like there was a lot of that sort of stuff this year as well. That could potentially get someone fired, prosecuted, disciplined. The concern was at least there that they were going to go after people that were just trying to explain what's actually happening. So I saw that as a concern. And I think the issue that wasn't lost on me as we looked at this, if you're going to tell me I can only get information that is coming through certain people authorized to speak, and then the people authorized to speak, never brief, never answer a question with any kind of substance. Where's that leave us?

[Michael Olinger]

What's the point?

[Dan Lamoth]

With all that said, the job this year already had shifted a great deal. I spend more time on my phone in the evenings than I ever have. Because you're catching people when they're available. Tradecraft matters a great deal right now. I think you have to be careful with how you're speaking to people and protect your sources. You know, you soldier on. You deal with the job as it is.

[Michael Olinger]

What's it been like for you watching a group of Internet famous right wing influencers sit in your seat begin calling themselves the Pentagon Press corps after signing that agreement that you refused to sign?

[Dan Lamoth]

I think the only thing that was surreal, to the point of it being kind of a viral meme this week was multiple members of this new press corps, all claiming to have the Washington Post desk.

[Michael Olinger]

Your old desk.

[Dan Lamoth]

Right. And as I mentioned, I cleaned that desk out months ago.

[Michael Olinger]

Who said they had your desk?

[Dan Lamoth]

I mean, Laura Loomer was the one that was probably most widely seen, but I mean, several other people all posted photographs saying they were sitting in the Washington Post desk.

[Michael Olinger]

So they were all assigned. They were all assigned the same desk. I don't understand.

[Dan Lamoth]

I didn't really understand it either. I mean, I took it kind of as mockery or an attempt at trolling. It's cool. I'm doing my job. They want to spike the football? They can, but that's where we are.

[Michael Olinger]

You're working now outside the Pentagon. How has that affected the ability to do your job?

[Dan Lamoth]

There are people who have specifically come to us this year, come to me this year and said, I don't talk to the media, but I can't believe what I'm seeing. And I want to talk to you about this specific subject. It's a unique moment where more people are inspired or inclined to speak up than normal. It used to be common to kind of see the media going back and forth on issues of the day on camera a couple times a week. It's not the be all end all. But it's a baseline, it's a starting point for what's happening. How a trillion dollar department with a couple million people on the taxpayer dime are doing their jobs. These operations can be dangerous. People do die in accidents, in firefights and aircraft crash. So only talking about what they want to is never really going to be the answer, I think for the majority of the media.

[Michael Olinger]

Dan, thank you very much.

[Dan Lamoth]

Thank you.

[Michael Olinger]

Dan Lamoth covers the US Military and the Pentagon for the Washington Post.

Coming up, we meet the new Pentagon press corps. This is on the media.

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[Michael Olinger]

I'm Brian Reed. When I created s town I looked at how secrets lies and the stories we tell shape a small rural town. Now on my podcast question everything I'm going bigger. Hi, this message is for Senator Lindsey Graham. I'm hoping I head to Washington to take on a law that gives tech.

[Cam Higby]

Companies sweeping immunity is how these companies have gotten rich.

[Michael Olinger]

Join me as I go after big tech on question everything from placement theory and KCRW out Thursdays. Wherever you get your podcasts, this is on the media. I'm Michael Olinger. On Monday, the Pentagon hosted an onboarding day for the brand new press corps. The new group of about 70 credentialed press, including Laura Loomer, a far right activist known to consort closely with the president James o', Keefe, founder of the far right sting operation Project Veritas. Matt Gaetz, the Disgraced lawmaker and former Attorney general candidate accused of soliciting underage girls. Tim Pool, a far right vlogger who inadvertently accepted Russian funding for his YouTube content. And outlets like Lindell TV, owned by the My Pillow guy, Mike Lindell, who lost a lawsuit brought by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems for defamation over the 2020 election. And Gateway Pundit, a far right conspiracy outlet also still being sued by that same former Dominion employee. Anna Merlyn covers extremism and conspiracy peddlers as a senior reporter at Mother Jones. So she's bored the than familiar with a lot of those people. She told me that just about everyone present in the Pentagon briefing room had happily agreed to the Defense Department's new policies.

[Anna Merlan]

They're pumped. When these new rules were first announced, people like Tim Pool, he essentially said, you know, we're not investigative reporters. So just essentially signaling right from the start that they didn't intend to do investigative journalism about the Pentagon or the Department of Defense. Others have said, you know, that these rules are reasonable and that, you know, the previous media in the building wouldn't agree to them just because they were biased against the President. It's what you would expect, of course.

[Michael Olinger]

The reason we're speaking is that this is the week that the new press corps was welcomed to the Pentagon. The Pentagon's deputy press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, was the person who fielded questions from the new Pentagon corps. You reported on Wilson herself earlier this year, calling her a quote, overt Internet troll with a long history of bigoted, xenophobic, and deliberately provocative shitposting. What did you mean by that?

[Anna Merlan]

Yeah, Wilson is an interesting figure. She's the daughter of Steve Cortez, a longtime Trump Advisor. She was 26 years old when she took the job. She's had a lot of different roles in the sort of MAGA Internet ecosystem, and she spent a lot of time tweeting a lot of tweets, excluding immigrants and trans people, advocating for what she called, quote, zero immigration and mass deportations, bemoaning the, quote, death of the west, the term that is often used by far right activists. She has also made even more wild and bigoted claims. For instance, repeating debunked lies about the lynching death of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched and murdered in 1915 by a mob in Georgia.

[Michael Olinger]

She claimed that Frank was guilty for the murder that put him behind bars, something that most modern historians agree was a wrongful conviction. Just to. Just to sit on that for a moment, the fact that she's tweeted about this multiple times just raises for me the question, like, what waters is she swimming in that? This is the stuff that occupies her attention.

[Anna Merlan]

It's pretty extraordinary. Claims specifically about Leo Frank are part of some of the sort of deepest and most obscure pool of specifically anti Semitic conspiracy theories. They are absolutely rancid and they've been used to justify violence against Jewish communities, which is specifically pretty extraordinary because the Trump administration has cast themselves as a friend to the Jewish people, has put a lot of energy into supposed investigations of anti Semitism on college campuses. So to install a press secretary in the Pentagon who had made these statements was in and of itself pretty wild. And then I and other news outlets and even some elected officials, you know, called on the Pentagon to respond to these comments and they never did.

[Michael Olinger]

Nothing happened in 2024, she tweeted. The great replacement isn't a right wing conspiracy theory, it's reality. And she posted this over a screenshot of a Bloomberg article about the growth of the US Hispanic population. And here's a bit from her opening remarks for Tuesday's presser.

[Anna Merlan]

Legacy media chose to self deport from this building. And if you look at the numbers, it's pretty clear why no one followed them. National trust in these mainstream media outlets has cratered to 28%, the lowest ever recorded. The American people don't trust these propagandists because they stopped telling the truth.

Yeah. Using the phrase self deport, which is of course a politically incredibly charged phrase that refers to the Trump administration's kind of ongoing practices of mass deportation, is. Yeah, again, a choice.

[Michael Olinger]

Tell me about the question that Matt Gaetz, former member of Congress, asked in the briefing.

[Anna Merlan]

His question is a really good sort of indication of what this new press corps means to do and his presence.

[Michael Olinger]

Kingsley, if Nicolas Maduro leaves Venezuela today, what role will the Department of War.

[Cam Higby]

Have in, in a post Maduro, Venezuela?

[Anna Merlan]

It was a question about regime change positioned in a really supportive way.

[Michael Olinger]

And what sort of response did he, did he get?

[Anna Merlan]

Well, so what was funny is he actually didn't get a particularly substantive response. Kingsley Wilson said, quote, the department has a contingency plan for everything. We are a planning organization. So with all the access these folks have, you know, and with all the ideological similarities they have to the people running the Pentagon right now, they're still actually not able to get substantive or newsworthy answers to some of these questions.

[Michael Olinger]

I want to ask you about the question from Laura Loomer because it was quite interesting. She asked about the conflicting plans to, on one hand, cozy up to Qatar at the same time that the Trump administration is attempting to label the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization.

[Laura Poitras]

Now that the President has started the process of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign Islamic terrorist organization, will the Department of War still proceed with selling F15 fighter jets to Qatar? And how will they be able to train Qatari pilots at their air base in Idaho if Qatar is included in the designation?

[Michael Olinger]

It's not a bad question. I mean, Right.

[Anna Merlan]

Yeah. No, I mean, specifically, Loomer's role is going to be the most interesting one in the new Pentagon press corps. Loomer is a very longtime anti Muslim activist. She is extremely vocal about that, often in the most inflammatory of ways. And she is well known to be a pretty key presence unofficially in the White House. You know, there is a verb loomed, which means someone getting thrown out of their job in the administration because Laura Loomer calls for it. And this has happened several times. Right. So if there is any kind of oppositional force within the new Pentagon press corps, it might be her, but it's going to be her in the service of promoting conspiracy theories and anti Muslim sentiments.

[Michael Olinger]

James o', Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, you said that he's at the helm of a new independent outlet bearing his name. Tell me about how he used his opportunity in the spotlight earlier this week.

[Anna Merlan]

So James o' Keefe separated from Project Veritas in a pretty ugly divorce, if you will, and now runs a company called o' Keeffe Media Group.

[Michael Olinger]

And his question was, Nicholas Terza, branch chief here at the Pentagon, was caught on a video in the spring stating, quote, trump is illegitimate. We're going to resist him, quote, everything he does. We know there are other people like.

[Dan Lamoth]

This that work here.

[Michael Olinger]

My question is, what steps is the Department of War taking to identify and address personnel who are in the self described resistance movement?

[Anna Merlan]

So basically, that's o' Keefe asking how they're going to ferret out perceived disloyalty within the Defense Department.

[Michael Olinger]

Yes. Purging government employees for, I guess, constitutionally protected speech about the government.

[Anna Merlan]

Project Veritas used selectively edited undercover videos to present unflattering portrayals of, for instance, people who work for Planned Parenthood, people who worked in the Biden administration. O' Keeffe has spent a lot of time trying to show that people involved in democratic politics, involved in things like George Soros's Open Society foundation, are in some way working against the interests of the American people. I think would be the safest way to put that.

[Michael Olinger]

A couple More new names that we might be hearing from the Pentagon. Wade Searle, who covers media for LifeSite News, a Canadian far right Catholic advocacy outlet, asked this question.

[Cam Higby]

So you were speaking earlier about the Washington Post report concerning the Secretary of War and Admiral Bradley. And my question is, does, does the Department of War plan on pursuing any sort of legal action against the Washington Post? And what consequences will there be for lying to the American people?

[Anna Merlan]

Yeah, again, it was a very warm and fuzzy exchange between the members of the new press corps and the Pentagon designed to set up, you know, monologues about attacking the previous administration and traditional news outlets like the Washington Post. But in a way, the press conference itself was kind of beside the point. It didn't produce a lot of news. It was actually remarkably boring. What a lot of these folks did with most of their first day in the Pentagon was take pictures of themselves at desks that were previously occupied by mainstream news outlets. It seemed kind of clear that that was the point. Declaring themselves kind of victorious over the old media, and that was it.

[Michael Olinger]

All of these outlets and personalities that now have credentials, these are people who have built brands over many years around conspiracy theories about, you know, shadowy government plots. It is sort of tying my brain in knots watching these people, in exchange for access to press briefings, agree to not attempt to uncover government secrets. Like, isn't that their bread and butter that we're being lied to?

[Anna Merlan]

Yeah, it is super interesting, especially for people who are part of, you know, what I would call like the conspiracy media ecosystem. For years, they have set themselves up as adversarial to the US Government, have suggested, you know, that there is a deep state within the government that is working against the American people. You know, that might be depending on how far in the deep end of the pool. They are like, actively trying to kill all of us in various ways. And, you know, here they are praising the Pentagon, praising the presidential administration and, yeah, agreeing to sign these rules that most reasonable people read and interpreted as agreements not to do investigative work. And so for me, there is a real question about how their audiences will respond. You know, people who are distrustful of government, people who might be distrustful of politicians in general, how they're going to feel about these outsider media outlets agreeing to take on a really, really, really different role. I'm super curious if this works for them to maintain their audience.

[Michael Olinger]

You've been tracking a lot of these conspiracy theorists, far right content creators, some of these people who are now asking and answering questions in the Pentagon. For you, somebody on this beat how does it make you feel?

[Anna Merlan]

Oh, I think it's great. I think it's super normal. No, I'm sorry.

No. So I have a few questions. For instance, I am very curious if they continue showing up to work when.

[Michael Olinger]

The thrill wears off, like, do they really want to do this job?

[Anna Merlan]

Yeah, I mean, it can be, you know, quite boring. I think any journalist who's ever sat through a press conference, you know, a public meeting, like, it's, it's hard work. And so, yeah, I'm super curious that they keep showing up. I'm super curious how they figure out how to define themselves in relation to the Trump administration. So many of these people and these outlets have positioned themselves as explicitly pro Trump, have depicted him as a heroic outsider who's coming back to save America. And these great disclosures and these huge changes and these consequential secrets that they are claiming are going to be revealed. You know, presumably it's all going to come out now. So I'm curious what holding the Trump administration accountable looks like for them.

[Michael Olinger]

Anna, thank you so much.

[Anna Merlan]

Thanks for having me.

[Michael Olinger]

Anna Merlin is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, covering disinformation, tech and extremism. Another member of the new press corps is Cam Higby, representing his independent outlet, Fearless Media. He has over 750,000 followers on TikTok and over 400,000 on Instagram, where he posts videos of himself debating college students in the style of Charlie Kirk or, say, railing against immigration.

[Cam Higby]

And I'm talking about illegal immigration. I'm talking about all immigration. It's not racist to not want that. I don't care if you're coming from Europe. I don't care if your skin is whiter than mine. I don't care what you look like. We've got who we've got. Now we're full. It's not racist to not want that.

[Michael Olinger]

Higbee celebrated his new role by taking photos at a desk that he and others erroneously claimed had been occupied by the Washington Post. Higbee posted, quote, mainstream media is out and new media is in. Cam, welcome to the show.

[Cam Higby]

Thank you for having me.

[Michael Olinger]

What do you think is the job of the Pentagon press corps, and how do you see your new role?

[Cam Higby]

The primary role is to be the conduit between the United States government, the military portion of the government specifically, and the American people also, of course, to push the government on hard issues, especially when they might be misstepping. But what I don't think it is is to wander about the most classified building in the United States and harass every employee you see with the express purpose of extracting state secrets.

[Michael Olinger]

Harassing employees? What are you referring to?

[Cam Higby]

I don't have specific names of people who are doing this, but from what I understand, speaking to lots of people within the Pentagon, DOW employees, is that a very hostile work environment created within the Pentagon by journalists who would walk about the building, camp outside of offices, harass people who leave their offices, burst their way into new into offices that they were outside of when somebody would open the door with their card, et cetera?

[Michael Olinger]

I believe you're referring to something that Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said to you about a hostile work environment. Did you ask her for evidence that journalists created a hostile work environment in the Pentagon?

[Cam Higby]

Sure. She gave me one anecdotal example of them camping outside of her office and just perpetually ringing her bell to get answers about certain things. But the question I asked Kingsley was actually specifically predicated on conversations that I had with a lot of different people at the Pentagon.

[Michael Olinger]

I've never heard of some kind of chaos where journalists are hiding around every corner pouncing on people.

[Cam Higby]

Well, of course you haven't, because the people that were inside the building before were the people doing it. So of course you haven't heard about that. And that's the main freedom, by the way, that's drawn back in the new agreement. You can't go into this part of the Pentagon without an escort. It's really just a freedom thing. It's not. It has nothing to do with information sharing.

[Michael Olinger]

The agreement clearly says that if reporters attempt to solicit classified information, they will be assessed for being a, quote, security or safety risk. The agreement defines soliciting information as, quote, direct communications with DoD personnel or public advertisements or calls for tips encouraging D O W employees to share non public DOW information. A lot of this sounds like very basic aspects of the news gathering process.

[Cam Higby]

I explicitly asked the Pentagon about this and I was informed that these have always been the rules for the Pentagon press corps, that you are allowed to ask members of the Dow for information related to ongoing issues, but what you are not allowed to do is, is expressly badger non authorized employees to give you information that is not public. But there's a difference between information that is, that is okay to be public, that the government is okay to give out information that isn't because it can literally get people killed. We're journalists, not Chinese spies.

[Michael Olinger]

That's a pretty absurd way of describing something that's very common in the American press, which is trying to give the American public a view of what their government is doing even when the government doesn't want them to know about it. Is that not a fundamental part of investigative journalism?

[Cam Higby]

Well, it can be. It depends on what the information is. If the information is related specifically to some kind of attack on the American people, then sure. But if it's, how do you know that these boats are smuggling drugs? How do you know that these are actually narco terrorists on those boats? Why would the Pentagon ever give you that information? Because if they tell you that information, then the bad guys know the information too, and they know how to evade the Pentagon.

[Michael Olinger]

But if we only report what the Pentagon press secretary is saying to you, or we only report news that has been fed to us by specially curated spokespeople, if we don't do the work of walking around the Pentagon trying to develop sources and trying to get a deeper understanding and into what our government is doing with our tax dollars, then we have no way of calling out their lies.

[Cam Higby]

I didn't say that you should never publish non public information. What I simply said is a, the people within the Pentagon should know you're a journalist. They have to wear press badges now. They didn't have to before. They wore D O W employee badges, which is completely different.

[Michael Olinger]

Here's the thing, Cam. This is the line they use every single time there's any kind of classified information they don't want us to report. Should the New York Times have published the Pentagon Papers? That's what they said at the time.

[Cam Higby]

Are you, are you like, dense if you pass by and pretend as if there are not situations where you could publish classified information that can get people hurt or killed? That's not my problem. That's probably why you're not in the Pentagon.

[Michael Olinger]

You know what this really seems like? It really seems like this administration is very, very frustrated with the large number of people who are leaking to the press.

[Cam Higby]

I actually don't think they're concerned about that at all. So the signal gate thing, I don't think they're concerned about, about at all. The double tap thing, I don't think they're concerned about it all. Actually, having spoken to people at the Pentagon, no, I don't think they're concerned about it at all. In reality, what it seems is like the mainstream media doing what they always do, making things up and trying to attack the Trump administration, which by the way, they didn't care what the Biden admin was doing.

[Michael Olinger]

That's not correct. The New York Times sued the State Department for records related to Hunter Biden and whether his name came up in.

[Cam Higby]

Emails, what, three years after it happened. And Twitter completely banned the story from the platform. Are you talking about that Bloomberg routinely.

[Michael Olinger]

Sued the Biden administration and previous administrations for records that they refused to give out?

[Cam Higby]

They're digging for scandals. That's what they want.

[Michael Olinger]

Do you believe that a potential war crime for bombing survivors of a boat who are defenseless is a scandal? Is that salient information that has been kept secret for two months that journalists have every right to make the American public aware of?

[Cam Higby]

No, I think they're trying to make a scandal just like they're trying to make a scandal out of the new Pentagon press corps by saying things like CNN said very blatantly the other night on air that every member of the new Pentagon press corps is required to have their stories approved by the Pentagon. Which the agreement actually explicitly says the opposite. Right. They are lying, just like they always have. They're gripping on for dear life as their boat sinks.

[Michael Olinger]

You posted on X that unethical conditions are that I can't publish information that's classified cui or in national security interest without permission.

[Cam Higby]

Yeah, so I had been under a misunderstanding actually. I was like brainwashed by the story that the mainstream media was publishing after. I don't even remember if this was before or after my first day in the Pentagon, which was just really basic orientation stuff. And then I went to somebody at the Pentagon and I was explicitly informed this applies only to D O W employees and not to members of the press corps.

[Michael Olinger]

So you are a Pentagon correspondent and you signed an agreement with the Pentagon and you thought that you were not allowed to publish classification.

[Cam Higby]

Well, have you ever been gaslit like so when you read the, that it explicitly says that you don't have to seek approval for anything. And then there's a whole mainstream media firestorm where everyone is telling you that you're not allowed to do this and you haven't had an opportunity because you haven't been in the Pentagon yet to ask people at the Pentagon and you're trying to defend yourself being gaslit by the entire multibillion dollar mainstream media empire. I think, I think it's fair to, to allow a little bit of grace there, don't you think?

[Michael Olinger]

It sounds to me like you didn't read this thing very closely.

[Cam Higby]

I read it extremely closely and I've post posted excerpts from it. The people, a lot of the people attacking me haven't read it. They actually were begging for me to release it despite the fact that it' Publicly available. And maybe I should have, you know, kept my mouth shut until I spoke with the Pentagon. But it's a little hard not to defend yourself when you're receiving thousands of replies on your tweets and several mainstream media empires all closing in on you and attacking you. You laugh at that, but it is the case, and you know it's the case.

[Michael Olinger]

I. I understand that you've been under a lot of scrutiny recently. I'm not following.

[Cam Higby]

I think your audience is going to follow. I think this is going to look foolish for you.

[Michael Olinger]

But here, let's talk about. Let's talk about the press briefings. You spoke with the press secretary. What did you ask her?

[Cam Higby]

I asked about a French foreign military plot to assassinate Candace Owens because. And that seems like a silly question, I understand that. But the fact of the matter is that last night Candace Owens had 147,000 people watching her live stream where she was making these claims. And a lot of American citizens are being brainwashed by claims that is making. Obviously, Kingsley was not aware of any French assassination plot against Candace Owens. And it seems that if there was one, being that it's such a high profile issue that she would have been briefed on it, but she wasn't. And then finally, I asked questions about the second strike from September.

[Michael Olinger]

What do you say to listeners who have seen the partisan work that you do? You sometimes make appearances wearing a MAGA hat. You frequently, on your social media channels, defend the president and the administration. What do you say to people that feel like you can't be an honest broker? You're not gonna ask hard questions in those press briefings.

[Cam Higby]

Well, if you think I haven't criticized the president or the administration, then you're just not familiar with my work at all. But also, the difference between me and the mainstream media is that, like you said, I don't claim to be unbiased, whereas they do. Every human being is biased and every journalist is biased, including you. And you're doing it right now. You obviously have a bias against me, and that's why you were laughing at me earlier.

[Michael Olinger]

Sorry. I apologize for laughing at the Candace Owens thing.

[Cam Higby]

No, you don't have to apologize. It is funny. Right? And I'm just pointing that out.

[Michael Olinger]

Well, I.

[Cam Higby]

Look, because you weren't laughing with me, you were laughing at me, and that's fine, and I don't care and not offended, but you obviously have a bias and you're injecting it into your work as we speak.

[Michael Olinger]

Yes, all journalists have biases, but are you going to hold the Trump administration accountable. Are you going to ask them hard questions?

[Cam Higby]

Yes. On issues that I think they should be held accountable for. Yeah. And that's my bias. Right. The difference between me and the mainstream media is is that they think a second strike, which is standard military practice and has happened in every war, like, it's very obvious that they're just feeding this crap to people who have never seen military action before. Second strikes happen constantly and perpetually in all wars, regardless of who's president. Obama absolutely did it. Bush absolutely did it.

[Michael Olinger]

Okay, you're saying it's not illegal? According to who?

[Cam Higby]

Well, go ahead and cite me. The law that says it's illegal.

[Michael Olinger]

Multiple legal commentators.

[Cam Higby]

I'm going to be looking for. Uniform Code of Military Justice. Go ahead and cite it. Yeah, I don't. I don't care about other people's opinions, Micah. Those aren't relevant. We're talking about me and you right now. I don't care what legal analysts say. They're wrong all the time. Cite me the code. What is it, Micah?

[Michael Olinger]

I don't know the name of the code. But you know full well that non combatants who can't defend themselves are not supposed to be killed. That's what international law says. Am I wrong?

[Cam Higby]

There they are. They are narco terrorists who were transporting drugs that kill people into the United States. They were struck and then they climbed back onto the boat. They are members of a foreign designated terrorist organization that transport materials into the United States that kill people. That's why we're fighting them.

[Michael Olinger]

How do. How do we know that they were transporting drugs?

[Cam Higby]

Again, I can't tell you that because it's classified and I don't know.

[Michael Olinger]

Is it. Isn't that really important? I think it is, actually.

[Cam Higby]

The government is not going to tell me how they identify terrorists, because if I find that out and publish it, the terrorists are going to stop identifying them themselves that way, making it impossible for the government to find them.

[Michael Olinger]

Okay, Cam, I think we've both found this conversation quite frustrating. I appreciate your taking the time to speak with me.

[Cam Higby]

I'm not frustrated. I'm having fun.

[Michael Olinger]

I wish you the best of luck in your reporting in the Pentagon, and I hope that you're able to hold this administration to account, to scrutinize them, to seek sources outside of the narrow channel of spokespeople that the Pentagon will push your way and that you're able to attempt to call out the government when they lie to you.

[Cam Higby]

Thank you. I assure you that that will be the case if I feel I'm being lied to. I will absolutely seek the truth as I have always done. I have a particular gripe with lies and falsehoods. You can call me partisan, whatever. I have a bias, obviously. I don't know if that makes me partisan necessarily, but.

[Michael Olinger]

Okay, Cam, I wish you the best.

[Cam Higby]

Thank you, Micah. I wish you the best as well.

[Michael Olinger]

Cam Higby is a Pentagon correspondent with Fearless Media. Coming up, a new documentary about a journalist who once loomed large in the halls of the Pentagon. This is on the Media. I'm Brian Reed. When I created S Town, I looked at how secrets lies and the stories we tell shape a small rural town. Now on my podcast Question everything, I'm going bigger. Hi, this message is for Senator Lindsey Graham. I head to Washington to take on a law that gives tech companies sweeping.

[Cam Higby]

Immunity is how these companies have gotten rich.

[Michael Olinger]

Join me as I go after big tech on Question every from Placement Theory and KCRW out Thursdays. Wherever you get your podcasts.

This is on the Media. I'm Michael Lemminger to round out this hour about reporting on the US Military and the Department of Defense. We go back in time to the 1960s. It's the height of the Vietnam War, and a young investigative journalist named Seymour Hersh starts attending Pentagon press briefings and finds them pretty Damn silly.

[Seymour Hersh]

Around 10:30, they come and give you a little briefing. You file a little something off that. You know, these guys get paid, you know, an awful lot of money for doing things like listening to the news conference and waiting an hour till the transcript's typed up and then writing a 500 word story off it.

[Michael Olinger]

What Hersh did instead was slip into the hallways of the Pentagon. And that's how he got the scoop of a lifetime.

[Seymour Hersh]

Instead of going to lunch with my colleagues, I would go find the young officers, you know, talk a little football and get to know them. I had been in the army. I was in the Army Reserves. Eventually, army guys would start saying, well, you know, it's Murder Incorporated there.

I said, what do you mean?

[Michael Olinger]

Hersh went on to become one of the most famous, complicated and embattled reporters of the latter half of the 20th century. After exposing several government coverups, earning the begrudging admiration and ire of presidents and their top advisors.

[Seymour Hersh]

Ditzville Hirsch is a son of a bitch.

[Michael Olinger]

President Nixon speaking in his White House.

[Seymour Hersh]

Tapes, well, you know, he's probably a communist agent. Exactly.

[Michael Olinger]

Laura Poitras, an award winning journalist and filmmaker whose documentaries include Citizen 4 and all the Beauty and the Bloodshed Together with her co director Mark Obanhouse and filmed over 100 hours of interviews with Hirsch for a soon to be streaming Netflix documentary called Cover Up. I asked her why she wanted to make a film about Cy Hirsch and why now.

[Laura Poitras]

I first approached Cy in 2005, motivated by some similar concerns that I have today, which is the state of investigative journalism and the importance of investigative journalism to expose government wrongdoing and state power. I made a film about the occupation and war in Iraq. And right before I traveled to Iraq is when Sy published his extraction Extraordinary reporting on Abu Ghraib prison and torture. The source of my film started there. I came back from Iraq, and I was still obsessed with both Sy's reporting and the failure of legacy media in the quote, unquote, war on terror. Sy was really gracious. He invited me to his office. I sort of joke that the Twilight music should have started playing when you walk into his office, because you were like, going back decades in time, and there were, like, stacks of notebooks everywhere and tennis rackets and complete chaos. And he was gracious and wonderful and funny and prickly. He talked to me for a long time, and then he ultimately said, no way, you know, it's not going to happen. So I didn't ever let go of the idea. And we stayed in touch over the years. He followed the reporting I did around NSA surveillance and Edward Snowden, and I think he recognized I was a bit of a kindred spirit, I should say, with Psy like, to his great credit. Once he was in, he was all in, despite his discomfort with some of the process.

[Michael Olinger]

And I definitely want to get into his discomfort with the process. But first I want to kind of dive into who he is as a journalist and how he got his start. One of the earlier scenes in the film is of a much younger Sy Hersh at a Pentagon press conference while he's employed at the Associated Press. During the lunch break, while all the other reporters are, like, socializing, he slips into the hallway and chats up officers. One of them tells him, quote, we are in a stage of open murder in Vietnam. Another says, well, it's Murder Incorporated there. So he says, murder Incorporated. Like, what? Tell me what happens next.

[Laura Poitras]

He just gets a tip, and the tip is that there's someone being court martialed. He doesn't know anything more. And then we start to put the pieces together. He learns then his name is Callie. He meets the lawyer. He tracks him down at Fort Benning and learns about this massacre that we now know as the My Lai massacre, where The US military went into a village of civilians and murdered over 500 people, including babies. And what obsessed Tsai was, how is this possible? And he didn't want to leave the story at just looking at the soldiers, but what was the chain of command? So what he eventually uncovers is that there was a policy to bring body counts. Westmoreland, who was then running this war, needed dead bodies. And so they went and slaughtered this village. It took over a year for the story to break. So a lot of people knew about this massacre. And then Cy got the tip.

[Michael Olinger]

He wonders who else in the press might have known about this and sat on it.

[Laura Poitras]

Yeah, he's convinced that many people knew.

[Michael Olinger]

After he breaks the My Lai story, Hirsch got a job at the New York Times, where he covered Watergate and the CIA's operation of spying on thousands of college students, domestic anti war activists. He began to loom so large in Washington as a sort of muckraker that even Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security Advisor, took notice.

[Seymour Hersh]

I go see him in the White House. And he said, so I'm interested in what your impression was of when you were in Hanoi and all those weeks. I said, well, I can tell you I saw no signs of a lack of morale. And I went like that. 10, 15 minutes of badinage. He said, hold on. And he called his aide on Vietnam, and he said to him, this man knows more about what's going on in Vietnam than the CIA. And I thought to myself, this can't be real. I mean, am I supposed to be flattered by this bullshit? I was just amazed.

[Michael Olinger]

So clearly, whatever sort of magic he was trying to work on Hirsch, it didn't work.

[Laura Poitras]

It didn't work. And, you know, before I showed up, Kissinger was kind of having his way. He would be this anonymous source to the Times. He would feed stories, but not under his name. Sy was having none of it. And I think Kissinger knew that having Sy Hirsch at the New York Times was not gonna be good for him. And it wasn't good for him. I mean, Sy developed an obsession with Kissinger, and he was assigned to do Watergate after Woodward and Bernstein had been running with the story for seven months. And then Cy ended up publishing a lot of stories about Watergate, focusing on Kissinger, but somehow Kissinger always managed to get away with it, right? Nixon has to resign. But, like, Kissinger stayed on. And he was somebody who was managed to stay in power for almost his entire life.

[Michael Olinger]

Sy Hersh is a big reason that the new York Times even started reporting on the Watergate scandal. It seems like he had a great career there. Why did he decide to leave?

[Laura Poitras]

He's somebody who's always had some friction with his editors. He did this big investigative reporting on a corporation, Golf and Western, which is a story he partnered with Jeff Gerth on. And they exposed a lot of corporate wrongdoing. His relationship with his editor shifted that they became very nervous about the story, that all of a sudden, talking about corporate power and money didn't make the Times comfortable. And he got a lot of pushback.

[Michael Olinger]

He said something in your film to the effect of, the New York Times is a part of the corporate world, and it's not comfortable Scrutinizing the corporate world.

[Laura Poitras]

Yeah. And in the course of the reporting, Jeff Gerth decided to look into the financial records of the Times and their corporate filings and discovered that the executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, had gotten a loan to buy an apartment at a discount. And he got it through the board. And so then they had to confront their boss about this favorable loan because they were working on a story that was dealing with executives getting favorable loans. So it kind of created a bit of a blowout. When we were editing, we had a big storyboard because we needed to see, sort of have like, a visual. How do we hold all of Sy's stories in one place? And so we had this big board, and there was oftentimes, like, Syke, Sy, the ap, Sy, the New York Times, Sy. And then at some point, it was like, Sy quits the movie. You know, it's a pattern.

[Michael Olinger]

Another outlet that he worked at for some time and made an impact on was the New Yorker, which was home to his reporting into abu Ghraib after 9 11.

[Laura Poitras]

He wanted to understand, how did this happen?

[Michael Olinger]

How did they not see 911 coming?

[Laura Poitras]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The more that we know, the more of a failure we know it to be, because the CIA knew the hijackers entered the country and didn't inform the FBI. But then the lead up to the Iraq war, and I think that that just really set Sai off because he knew very well that there was no connection between the 911 attacks and Iraq. 911 was being used as a way to get through some policies that the Bush administration had been wanting to do for a long time, which was invade Iraq. So they used this as an excuse to terrible consequences. And Sy gets this tip. He talks to this general, and first learns about Abu Ghraib, and he's being told about torture. And then he gets a second tip from Somebody who was working for 60 Minutes who also is onto this story, and they have evidence of torture. But 60 Minutes is getting pressure from the government not to publish their story. Sai runs with it, and through his reporting, he uncovers the Taguba Report, which was a general was assigned to look into Abu Ghraib and found that torture had happened. And so, yes, Sai broke this story, which reads, redefine this war.

[Michael Olinger]

And part of what helped redefine the war were the pictures that he helped publish in the New Yorker.

[Laura Poitras]

Exactly.

[Michael Olinger]

And there's a remarkable story in your film about how he was able to solicit the source that gave him those pictures. And, you know, not to be too corny about it, but public media plays a role in this. Is that fair to say?

[Laura Poitras]

Yeah, yeah. Two whistleblowers of sources for this. The first one is Joseph Darby, who was in the unit and had access to the photos. After the first story broke, Sy goes onto Diane Rehm's show and says, get.

[Seymour Hersh]

In touch with me. 202-872-0703. Just call, leave a number, I'll get in touch with you.

[Laura Poitras]

And he gets a call that afternoon and a woman says, you need to come see me. He goes and visits her and she says, I have this laptop that my daughter in law came back with a rock and it has photos. And there was additional photos. The use of dogs to torture a prisoner. I mean, they're horrifying photos. And this was somebody who was so terrified of coming forward and speaking to a journalist that she didn't even tell her closest family that she had talked to Sy until actually we started working on the film. She agreed to talk to us. And when we were setting up cameras, she had to pull her husband aside and say, this is why there's cameras here. You know, in 2004, I talked to Sy Hersh.

[Michael Olinger]

This is 20 years later. She had kept this as a secret from her family.

[Laura Poitras]

She was scared about the repercussion, and she was right to be scared. Because what we've learned is that the only people that are often held accountable for abuse of power are people who expose it. You know, Joseph Darby was subjected to horrible retribution, and yet the people who created the framework for this system of torture are allowed to walk.

[Michael Olinger]

You're speaking to the incredible risks taken in some cases by investigative reporters, but most of all by their sources. And of course, the relationship between a reporter and his or her sources is one of the most sacred in journalism. You were able to get a remarkable amount of access to Sy Hersh's notebooks and files. These are yellow notepads we see over and over throughout your film. These are notes taken in the reporting process, in some cases filled with names and numbers of people who, to this day, he has protected. He allowed you to have a deeply intimate look at his life and his professional career. How did you pull that off again?

[Laura Poitras]

He trusted us. I mean, he'd worked with Mark before, the co director. He knew my work. Anything he shared with us we were going to treat with utmost care in terms of source protection. And yet he was still nervous.

[Michael Olinger]

He freaked out.

[Laura Poitras]

He freaked out.

[Michael Olinger]

There's a moment where he sees a notepad that you're handling, and he says.

[Seymour Hersh]

What the fuck is this doing in your hands? You know, this is an FBI guy, but most of them are CIA guys. I don't think we're in a position.

[Michael Olinger]

At any point or we're intending at any point.

[Seymour Hersh]

Well, I'd like to quit. Any of these people, I'd like to quit.

[Michael Olinger]

It sounds like this was not the only time that this happened. How did you bring him back?

[Laura Poitras]

I know what I'm doing in terms of source protection. He came back and trusted us. For me, it was very important to include it in the film because the stakes are real. It's the most sacred thing, the relationship between a journalist and their source.

[Michael Olinger]

You clearly have a lot of respect for him and for his journalism over the years. That said, you did not shy away from a pattern of mistakes that he's made over the years.

[Laura Poitras]

It was important to me that we have to tackle Sai's stories where he got it wrong. For me, it was really important to talk about Syria because I had friends who were tortured in Syria by Assad, and he knows very well that I have criticisms about that reporting.

[Michael Olinger]

You're referring to a 2013 piece in the London Review of Books in which Hirsch scrutinizes the Obama administration's narrative that Bashar al Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. He wrote, barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. Later on, however, it was revealed that Assad's regime was responsible for the attack. And you challenged him about this in the film.

[Seymour Hersh]

I read this stuff now and I say to myself, I really misjudged him. I saw him two or three or four times, and I didn't think he was capable of doing what he did, period. And let's call that wrong? Let's call that very much wrong.

[Laura Poitras]

Is that an example of getting too close to power?

[Seymour Hersh]

Of course. What else is it? I never thought he was Mother Teresa, but I thought he was okay. But if I have made a claim in prior interviews to be perfect, I would now withdraw it. That's all. I wasn't perfect.

[Michael Olinger]

This is hard to wrap my head around as a viewer because you have documented a long career defined by his deep skepticism of power and really lifting up the victims of state violence. So what do you make of this contradiction? How did he fall into this trap?

[Laura Poitras]

I mean, I share exactly your perspective on this. How is it possible, given his body of work and where he's consistently taken a position against power? Again, only SAI can speak to that. Right, But I knew that I needed to ask it in the film.

[Michael Olinger]

Another example of your skepticism of his sourcing was his 2023 bombshell report on Substack about the Nord Stream pipeline. This is the pipeline which had allowed Russia to transport gas to the EU in 2022. There was mysterious explosions that damaged the pipeline and Hersh wrote a piece alleging that the CIA had collaborated with Norway to blow it up. You asked Hersh about his decision to base this piece on a single source. In response to that, he says, so what?

[Seymour Hersh]

So what? I mean, so legitimate criticism. Absolutely. You know. Right.

[Laura Poitras]

Same one.

[Seymour Hersh]

Yeah. What do I. I mean, I mean, it is, but the only point I'm saying is that of course there was. What am I going to do? I can't write about who I know else was brought in from the army of the Air Force because I'm exposing them. Even if there's nine sources, sometimes it's much better just to make it one. I'm sorry to tell you that. Well, because you. No, no, you don't want to talk. You don't want to put sources in the State Department and the CIA both agree.

[Laura Poitras]

What if the source didn't got it wrong and it's a single source?

[Seymour Hersh]

What do you do then? I've got 20 years of working with the guy that I've been wrong on. Time after time, I'm told things that turn out to be right.

[Laura Poitras]

Relying on a single source is very dangerous, and it's something that I feel critical of and felt that this is kind of skepticism that need to be brought into the film. I think there's still a lot we don't know about what happened with the Nordstream sabotage, but there have been a lot of journalists who've reported a very different narrative.

[Michael Olinger]

One thing that fascinated Me about the film is, of course, he's getting called nasty names by Richard Nixon. There are examples of other journalists who are critical of him as a reporter and some of his tactics. Then there's the scrutiny that he gets from the public. We see him on C Span taking callers, and it's clear that throughout his career, there was a segment of the population that didn't support what he was doing, that didn't actually want to see the truth that he was trying to reveal.

[Laura Poitras]

Right. I mean, that's what the film is all about. Right. To ask the hard questions in the moment when the stakes are the highest. He got a lot of pushback because there was a kind of march to war. If you're looking at Vietnam or if you're looking at Iraq, we have a consensus, looking back in history, that both of these wars were catastrophes. Right. But in the moment, that's not the narrative that we were being told and that the legacy media, in large part, we're telling the public. Right. This is what the crux of the whole film is, is that we have to be asking those questions, otherwise we're going to keep repeating these patterns.

[Michael Olinger]

Right now with the Trump administration, we're seeing what I hope is not the beginning of a potential new march to war with Venezuela. The stakes for good national security reporting remain extremely high. At the same time, it's getting harder and harder for legitimate investigative reporters to do their work. Spaces like the Pentagon and the White House that were once more open to journalists to do work. I see you shaking your head.

[Laura Poitras]

I'm gonna push back a little. I don't think the problem is investigative journalists. I think the problem is government lying and institutions not backing investigative journalists. And I don't think journalists are gonna find the truth at Pentagon press briefings. I'm sorry, I just don't think that's where truth is gonna be found. I mean, that's where lies are gonna be. You know, this is so. I believe investigative journalists will continue to fight and continue to actually risk their lives, which is what we're seeing around the world. Journalists going to prison, journalists being assassinated. Journalists are willing to fight for the truth. The question I have is about the institutional support for that work and the willingness to take on the government when they come after you. So currently, I'm very concerned about the capitulation of large media organizations to government pressure. Both the settlement around 60 Minutes and Paramount and ABC not fighting for the First Amendment, I think, is the biggest threat, and that's coming from institutions, not from journalists. Doing their jobs.

[Michael Olinger]

You do believe that in the lead up to some of our wars, mainstream journalists were too credulous.

[Laura Poitras]

They were cheerleading.

[Michael Olinger]

I'd like to know what you think journalists can learn from the film and from reporters like Sy Hersh.

[Seymour Hersh]

Right.

[Laura Poitras]

I mean, I think we need to use the words to describe what we're seeing. I'll go back to Sai's reporting around torture when he reported about Abu Ghraib. There were editorial guidelines and the legacy institutions not to use the word torture to describe CIA torture. Right. That they were supposed to use enhanced interrogation techniques. It's the job of journalists to be adversarial and to report the facts as they see them regardless of the consequences, without fear or favor. What we're seeing in Gaza, I mean, how can we look at a population that's being starved and civilians being bombed for two years and not call it a genocide? I mean, I just think we have to use the words that we know to describe what is happening. The erosion of trust in the media is because the public often feels lied to. They feel lied to by their government and they feel that the press is also part of the line.

[Michael Olinger]

Laura Poitras is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. Her latest film, Cover up, is playing in select theaters and will stream on Netflix later this month.

Laura, thank you very much.

[Laura Poitras]

Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

[Michael Olinger]

That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender and Candice Wong. Travis Manning is our video producer. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering from Jared Paul and Sam Baer. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer and our executive executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Media is produced by wnyc. Brooke Gladstone will be back next week. I'm Michael Ellinger.

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