'Not one word of it is true'

Eckehard Schulz / AP Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

In the aftermath of the 2011 raid on a compound in Pakistan in which U.S. Navy Seals killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the official statements of American officials amounted to “one big lie,” veteran journalist Seymour Hersh claimed

“Not one word of it is true,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer told the Guardian in an interview. Hersh is currently working on a book about national security, which reportedly includes a chapter on the bin Laden raid. Hersh hinted at revelations to come in his book.

“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious,” Hersh said of the American media. “They are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama].”

Update: On Oct. 1 the Guardian published a correction to the article here, saying that Hersh “was in no way suggesting that Osama bin Laden was not killed in Pakistan on the president’s authority: he was saying that it was in the aftermath that the lying began.” The Guardian correction did not clarify Hersh’s comments further.

[The Guardian]