MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Whistleblowers and confidential journalistic sources are essential to transparency in government. (Photo: Steven Depolo)

The Truthout Progressive Pick of book this week is The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, by famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh makes a very persuasive case that the official version of how bin Laden was found and killed was filled more with drama than fact. The White House manufactured a version of the event that was like a Hollywood script, which it actually became in the film Zero Dark Thirty. For outing the fallacies in the White House tale of the bin Laden killing, Hersh was ostracized by both the office of the president and other government agencies, as well as mainstream media reporters and outlets.

Why? Because if Hersh and his sources were correct in how the US came to find bin Laden's location and conduct the operation to assassinate him, then it meant that all the other media outlets who swallowed the official story whole were negligent in investigating the details surrounding the raid.

My first question to Hersh, and his answer -- which will appear in an interview with him on Truthout this Sunday -- reveals why confidential sources and whistleblowers are so important at a time when government narratives crafted for entertainment-driven news outlets go unchallenged:

Mark Karlin: I found your narrative based on research and informants very persuasive. Your version of how Osama bin Laden came to be killed was ridiculed by the White House, the intelligence communities and the military. Why do you think the mainstream press – and even The Guardian – marginalized your sourced account as conspiratorialist?

Seymour Hersh: The mainstream press relies on access. The reporters covering beats – most notably national security beats – must be able to get calls returned and interviews when needed. This does not mean that the reporters on those beats are incompetent or in the hands of the White House – it is just a fact of life that those who cross boundaries, as defined by the White House, do not get the same treatment as those who faithfully reflect the view of the President and his minions.

It is especially so when it comes to crisis reporting – an airplane tragedy, a battlefield victory or defeat. Thus, the White House controlled all details of the story from the moment President Obama announced the kill, and it did all – as White Houses will – to glorify the President’s action and shape the story in ways that would help in Obama’s re-election the next year. The major media lined up for information, and begged and pleaded for any scraps that could be labeled exclusive. Once the narrative was set, any significant change in the story had to be resisted by the White House, and especially by those who wrote the initial stories.

The scapegoat in my revisionist approach to the bin Laden killing was my reliance on anonymous sources, as if anyone on the inside who deviated from the official script could survive in their job if their name became known. Most journalists, especially those in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, where I worked with a lot of prize-winning success in the 1970s, were especially angered at my reporting. Their position, in my view, defies common sense – their view was that there was nothing more to learn, even years later, about an event as dramatic and complicated as the bin Laden raid once the White House put an end to its forced feeding of the media.

In short, once the script is written, the government and the media that depend on it consider someone who offers revisions -- in other words, new facts -- a disruptive interloper.

The Obama administration leaks information regularly to the press, and of course, that information favors the White House. It is often delivered through high-ranking unnamed sources. Meanwhile, as Hersh points out, his own sources are contradicting the US government narrative on the bin Laden killing, and rightfully fear going on record with their names. After all, as the Washington Blog reports:

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

This administration has also obtained much longer jail sentences against whistleblowers than previous presidents.

ACLU legislative counsel Gabe Rottman noted last October: "The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution."

Edward Snowden and Julian Assange may be the most notable whistleblowers on the White House target list for prosecution and jail, but there are many truthtellers who are or have been incarcerated. Chelsea Manning is currently one of them, as was John Kiriakou, who spoke out about CIA torture. Many other names of jailed whistleblowers are barely known.

Journalist Andrew O'Hehir of Salon asked a pertinent question earlier this year on Salon about the Obama administration:

It’s one of the enduring mysteries of Barack Obama’s presidency, as it sinks toward the sunset: How did this suave and intelligent guy, with the cosmopolitan demeanor, the sardonic sense of humor and the instinct for an irresistible photo-op, end up running the most hidden, most clandestine and most secrecy-obsessed administration in American history?

However, even by the end of his article the answer remains elusive.

What we do know is that Hersh is the last of a generation of journalists who revere the truth over participating in a joint government/media storyline that is dramatic, jingoistic and generates reader and viewer interest.

Whistleblowers and confidential sources, who the White House has also vigorously pursued if they get in the way of a White House storyline, know that in the current presidential administration -- and with the precedent now probably set for future ones --they risk a great deal in revealing what the government is covering up.

Seymour Hersh's The Killing of Osama Bin Laden reminds us that there are still some venerable journalists who are not willing to be spoon-fed dramatic fictional accounts by the White House. The fact that Hersh's sources must worry about potential prosecution should alarm us all.

Not to be reposted without the permission of Truthout.