Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
This thing is having a harder time than usual getting kickstarted this week. Very few of the “happenings” in the world right now seem to require any comment from me. The State of the Union address? A ridiculous, not to mention meaningless, un-American bit of pageantry where we all pretend we have a king with magical powers. I guess it did need comment, after all. I couldn’t agree more with the growing number of voices advocating shutting the whole thing down forever. The Constitution requires the President to give Congress an update on the state of the union once a year, and so he should.
The old-fashioned way: by writing a letter.
There was a bombshell story that came out this week, and it provides a few lessons on how to read and to think critically.
Seymour Hersh has been an investigative journalist for fifty-some years, starting with his 1969 exposé on the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. He has since made a career of exposing governmental cover-ups.
This week he published another one: “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” It is a doozy.
He claims to have uncovered a secret U.S. Government operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in the North Atlantic and, more than that, claims to prove that the Americans are the ones who actually did it. This would be eye-opening and very alarming because not only would it be an act of war against Russia, but an act of war against our own ally: Germany. But is it true? Is it plausible? Does Hersh supply any evidence that this happened?
I grant that he tells a thrilling narrative, full of secret meetings and intrigue. In fact, it seems a bit too thrilling, by which I mean it could have been written by any number of thriller fiction writers: Brad Thor, Daniel Silva, Jack Carr, Lee Childs—take your pick. So how does an unsuspecting reader tell whether one is reading thriller fiction or a news report? I will take you through my approach and thought process.
First, pay close attention to Mr. Hersh’s sources for his information. And there you’ll discover the first problem. There are no “source(s).” There is a single source: “according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” Hersh then goes on for more than five thousand words, weaving in all sorts of details and circumstances and maps and various facts in the public record. It has the appearance of a remarkably well-researched exposé, but at bottom it isn’t well-researched or sourced at all. One unnamed guy who claims to have direct knowledge of the operational planning is, throughout the entire essay, the sole source of information. It would be one thing if, on that sole basis, Hersh alleged this conspiracy; it is quite another to simply assert it as fact based on such a flimsy thread. It could have been Brad Thor on the other end of the line having some fun, for all we know.
Or, more plausibly, it could be an Alex Jones-loving conspiracy nut sitting in his mother’s basement wearing his pajamas. But surely, you say, a seasoned journalist wouldn’t be taken in by such a fraud, would he? I give you … Dan Rather, who was once given typed documents by some crackpot in a trench coat and then aired their (indubitably fraudulent) contents to try to influence a Presidential election. It happens.
Next, ask yourself why such a bombshell story appears … on Seymour Hersh’s Substack? Because no reputable newspaper or magazine would run such a story based on one unnamed guy who claims knowledge of operational planning. Think what you will about mainstream news organizations, but they are not entirely incompetent at their jobs. “I know you got a Pulitzer Prize fifty years ago and all, but you’re going to need some, um, corroborating evidence, Sir.”
Then there are other very strange red flags. Hersh claims that the U.S. Government specifically used regular Navy divers instead of Special Operators (SEALs) because they wanted to avoid having to tell Congressional oversight committees. Now, I am no expert on government oversight of military operations, but this strikes me as absurd. Regular Navy divers have, well, a lot of oversight and a very long chain of command. They do their jobs in the bright light of day. When the government wants to do secret things, say, relating to underwater diving and explosives, they call guys from places like the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU). Hersh makes no attempt to explain how using regular Navy guys somehow escapes oversight. It seems prima facie ridiculous.
But from the 30,000-foot view, there’s an even bigger problem. I was pleased to see that I shared Jim Geraghty’s exact initial reaction over at National Review: Joe Biden!? When a friend first alerted me to this story, I replied that Joe Biden is a—well, it wasn’t an altogether polite term, but it communicated that Joe Biden is the very last person who would go out on a limb like this. If we were to believe Seymour Hersh, we would have to believe, as Geraghty puts it:
The man who opposed the raid on Osama bin Laden because it was too risky, who said Russia might not be held accountable if there was only a “minor incursion” into Ukraine, and who has hemmed and hawed about sending various weapons systems to Ukraine, suddenly wanted to blow up a pipeline between Germany and Russia? The same Joe Biden who oversaw the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was itching to launch a unilateral attack against Russian critical infrastructure?
I don’t think it fits a basic plausibility test.
But this does serve as an interesting exercise and case study for reading critically. Far too many people are taken in by crackpot conspiracies, and it looks for all the world to me like Seymour Hersh, after a lifetime of looking for conspiracies, is pretty gifted at finding them when he wants to and then writing them up into what appear to be meticulously researched reports.
I can certainly believe that America could have blown up the pipeline—we’ve got the capabilities. But I’ll need more than Mr. Hersh’s Substack novella to convince me.
Thanks for reading this week’s Square Inch Newsletter. Have a wonderful weekend.
You only wrote that because They told you to write it.