Not All WMD Intelligence Is Hype

Was the dean of national security reporters misled by his sources into downplaying a genuine threat?

Back in February, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh looked into the fuzzily-explained bombing by Israeli forces of a target in Syria.

Hersh noted leaked reports that the targeted building was a nuclear reactor under construction with North Korean help; but he also quoted a range of sources (including several in the Syrian regime) who insisted otherwise, claiming it was actually a fertilizer warehouse, or a factory for missiles or chemical weapons. After a good deal of back and forth, Hersh seemed to side with the nuke-skeptics, writing, "Whatever was under construction, with North Korean help, it apparently had little to do with agriculture -- or with nuclear reactors -- but much to do with Syria's defense posture, and its military relationship with North Korea."

Fast-forward to yesterday, when the Bush Administration, in what Time called a "convincing presentation," went public with evidence that the site was indeed a reactor in the making.

Is this another instance of the trend, identified by Slate's Jack Shafer, of Hersh being "consistently off the mark" in his post-9/11 reporting? (Of course, Shafer wrote that while predicting that Hersh would be proven wrong about the absence of WMDs in Iraq. Whoops.)

No, says a New Yorker spokeswoman, because Hersh's story -- despite the passage quoted above -- wasn't meant to be read as debunking the claims of a reactor. "It wasn't a 'gotcha' piece," she says. "He was raising questions, saying 'Here's this mystery, there are contradictions in the various published accounts, what's the real story here?' He didn't come to any big conclusion."