Editors note: This post has been updated to reflect recent developments and new reporting.

On Sunday The London Review Of Books published a 10,000-word story written by New Yorker staff writer Seymour Hersh, asserting one simple fact: Everything the White House says about the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden is false.

In a single paragraph, Hersh lays it on the table:

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden's whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration's account were false.

— The Killing of Osama bin Laden (The London Review of Books)

At the very least, the revelations nullify the entire plot of Zero Dark Thirty. At most, they confirm the suspicions of Alex Jones and anyone else who has shouted the words "false flag." And who wouldn't trust Hersh's reporting — as dangerously sparse as it is? Hersh won a Pulitzer in 1970 for exposing the My Lai Massacre, and drew even more critical acclaim for his reporting on Abu Ghraib. Surely, someone who is a New Yorker staff writer would be above pursuing crackpot conspiracy theories?

Not so, argues Vox's Max Fischer. A cursory glance at the numbers — 10,000 words, two sources, one unnamed — raises a red flag.

Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies. The story simply does not hold up to scrutiny — and, sadly, is in line with Hersh's recent turn away from the investigative reporting that made him famous into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

— The many problems with Seymour Hersh's Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory (Vox)

The Wall Street Journal's Michael Kugelman echoes Fischer's analysis of thin sourcing, and adds two more wrinkles to Hersh's narrative:

Mr. Hersh's account features voluminous, sometimes paragraphs-long quotations. Some are suspect for logical reasons; among the skepticism expressed online, for example, was a point on social media that the way in which a "former Seal commander" reportedly spoke about SEAL missions is unrealistic. Other remarks appear absurd or, at the least, ill-informed.

[…]

In early 2011, U.S.-Pakistan relations were in deep crisis thanks in part to Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who was arrested after killing two people at a crowded intersection in Lahore. […] Unless the crisis in relations was an elaborate cover, it beggars belief to assume such close intelligence cooperation.

— 3 Reasons to Be Skeptical of Seymour Hersh's Account of the Bin Laden Raid (The Wall Street Journal)

In an effort to understand Hersh's slide into a conspiracy nut, New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman examines why Hersh published his story in the London Review of Books, and not The New Yorker, where he's been a staff writer since 1971.

In fact, the article's stunning claims put Hersh on the wrong side of his longtime journalistic home. In August 2011, The New Yorker published a highly detailed recounting of the raid by staff writer Nicholas Schmidle that hewed closely to the Obama White House's line. Was New Yorker editor David Remnick's decision not to publish Hersh's piece a sign that Hersh's account couldn't be trusted?

[…]

"David said, 'Do a blog,'" Hersh recalled. "I said, 'I don't want to do a blog.' It's about money. I get paid a lot more writing a piece for The New Yorker [magazine] … I'm old and cranky." (Remnick declined to comment).

— Why Seymour Hersh's 'Alternative' bin Laden History Did Not Appear in The New Yorker (New York Magazine)

And yet, despite Hersh's questionable sourcing, conflicting accounts, inconsistencies, and his own employer wanting next to nothing to do with the story, little shreds of corroboration have surfaced.

The first comes from an NBC News story published a day after Hersh's feature, reporting that the Pakistani government did indeed know where Osama bin Laden was hiding:

Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a "walk in" asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

[…]

The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency's operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission.

— Pakistanis Knew Where Osama Bin Laden Was, U.S. Sources Say (NBC News)

To put simply, NBC's reporting supports Hersh's claim that Pakistan intelligence knew about bin Laden's whereabouts, but refutes the claim that the ISI knew about the US raid, much less cooperated in staging the entire event.

UPDATE: NBC added the following note to their coverage of Pakistan's involvement in the bin Laden raid which seriously calls into question just how much Pakistan intelligence knew about bin Laden's whereabouts:

Editor's Note: This story has been updated since it was first published. The original version of this story said that a Pakistani asset told the U.S. where bin Laden was hiding. Sources say that while the asset provided information vital to the hunt for bin Laden, he was not the source of his whereabouts.

What's more, The Intercept's Unofficial Sources blog points to R.J. Hillhouse, a national security reporter, who, in 2011 published similar revelations to her blog, The Spy Who Billed Me citing separate, albeit unnamed sources:

Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. Three months later, on August 7, Hillhouse posted a story on her blog "The Spy Who Billed Me" stating that (1) the U.S. did not learn about bin Laden's location from tracking an al Qaeda courier, but from a member of the Pakistani intelligence service who wanted to collect the $25 million reward the U.S. had offered for bin Laden; (2) Saudi Arabia was paying Pakistan to keep bin Laden under the equivalent of house arrest; (3) Pakistan was pressured by the U.S. to stand down its military to allow the U.S. raid to proceed unhindered; and (4) the U.S. had planned to claim that bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but was forced to abandon this when one of the Navy SEAL helicopters crashed.

— Claim: Sy Hersh's Bin Laden Story Is True — But Old News (The Intercept)

UPDATE: Three days after the initial publication of Hersh's story, Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqqani responded to the allegations:

To this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan — though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help from Pakistani intelligence, why didn't the cooperating Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin Laden in order to mitigate the bad press for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S. government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration would risk telling a lie this massive?

— What Pakistan Knew About the Bin Laden Raid (Foreign Policy)

Those looking for a simple answer to whether to believe Hersh's reporting will probably be disappointed. We are all reasonably free people in a free society, and are thus free to read multiple sources of information and free to draw our own conclusions.