Blogger accuses Seymour Hersh of 'plagiarism' for bin Laden raid story

In the day following the publication of Seymour Hersh’s scandalous alternative account of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the prize-winning investigative journalist has been pilloried as a fabulist, a fool, and even a fibber.

But one national security expert has a new insult to throw into the mix: plagiarist.


R.J. Hillhouse, a national security blogger and former college professor, wrote on her blog, “The Spy Who Billed Me” that she had accused the Obama administration of fabricating accounts of its raid that killed Osama bin Laden back in August 2011. Hersh’s story, published in the London Review of Books on Sunday, is “either plagiarism or unoriginal,” wrote Hillhouse.

The blog post Hillhouse is referring to dates back to August 7, 2011, only a few months after Osama bin Laden’s death. In it Hillhouse wrote, like Hersh, that the informant who led the CIA to bin Laden was a walk-in seeking financial compensation, that Pakistani officials were keeping bin Laden under house arrest with Saudi financial support, and that Pakistani officials had cooperated with the clandestine U.S. operation that killed him.

Further, Hillhouse notes that her blog post identified the same two top Pakistani generals, Chief of Military staff Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani and ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha, that Hersh claims were co-conspirators.

“At the time [of my post],” Hillhouse wrote, “American media largely ignored the story.”

“The Hersh story makes all of the points described in my 2011 pieces,” she added. “If it’s a work of fiction, a love-child of the ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Homeland,’ I hold the rights. However, not only did both of these shows debut well after I broke the story, so did Hersh’s version.”

Since Hersh’s story was published, the U.S. national security establishment, as well as several former top officials, have rushed to dispute it.

Hillhouse stands by the account, though. “I trust my sources — which were clearly different than his,” she writes. “I am, however, profoundly disappointed that he has not given credit to the one who originally broke the story.”