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Seymour Hersh on the killing of Osama bin Laden

Joining us for the U.S. launch of his groundbreaking and controversial report, The Killing of Osama bin Laden, is iconic investigative Journalist, Seymour Hersh.

Seymour Hersh has written for the New Yorker and the London Review of Books, as well as serving as a Washington correspondent for the New York Times. He established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism more than four decades ago with an exposé of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Since then he has uncovered stories such as Kissingers role in extending the Vietnam War as well as the military torture regime at Abu Ghraib prison. He has won the George Polk prize five times, the National Magazine Award for Public Interest twice, the LA Times Book Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obamas first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden.

At the same time, the full story of the United States involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkeys involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria.

This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obamas time in office. Was it an era of change we can believe in or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bushs misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of Americas forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?