SY HERSH’S CONNIPTION FIT The Scrapbook admits to having enjoyed watching investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tweak the establishment over the years, even as his critics denounced him as a half-baked hatchet man. After all, when professional Kennedy-family apple-polisher Ted Sorensen decries Hersh’s “Dark Side of Camelot” as “a pathetic collection of wild stories”–well, one would have to have a heart of stone to read that without laughing. But lately we’re wondering if Sorensen was onto something. In an April 26 speech to the Chicago Headline Club (which we found on Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews website), Hersh gave what Chicago magazine called an “often rambling . . . provocative analysis of the American government’s response to 9/11” in which the reporter started “far more sentences than he finished.” Hersh’s strongest criticism was reserved for the U.S. government’s supposed flouting of the Constitution in its treatment of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker.” Calling Moussaoui a “walking dead man” holed up inhumanely in a six-by-six windowless “cage” (also known as “jail”), Hersh claimed the government’s indictment of the self-described “slave to Allah” doesn’t “allege one specific act that means anything. . . . He flew. He was interested in crop dusting, as most professional young pilots are, because crop dusting is the way, once you get a license, you can keep on flying for free. It’s sort of a great first job.” Yeah, right. The government’s indictment quite persuasively notes that the man the award-winning investigative reporter has mistaken for an aspiring cropduster took Boeing 747 flight simulator training, as the hijackers did; was found to possess flight manuals and knives; was wired money orders from Mohamed Atta’s former roommate; and, oh yeah, attended an al Qaeda-affiliated training camp in Afghanistan. Hersh thinks it significant that Moussaoui’s “got a master’s degree in international relations; he’s lived in England; he’s quite an articulate man; he’s not at all dumb.” Why this impresses Hersh, we really don’t want to speculate, but he seems to conclude from Moussaoui’s credentials that this somehow makes him less dangerous and more deserving of jailhouse perks. That would include unfettered access to his lawyers, which the government has limited because of the ongoing threat of terrorism. Hersh is convinced the government is full of malarkey. Because if Moussaoui were so dangerous, he reasons, why was he allowed to rant in open court about the destruction of America? Maybe, just maybe, Moussaoui wasn’t muzzled because the government actually cares for due process. Then too, if Moussaoui hadn’t been allowed his spiel, cranks like Hersh probably would have screamed that the government was censoring him. Hersh’s big applause line was to call Attorney General John Ashcroft “demented.” Sounds to us like the pot calling the kettle cracked. O LITTLE LIES OF BETHLEHEM There was something apocalyptic in all the images of the Church of the Nativity on fire in Bethlehem–which is, of course, the reason we saw so many pictures of it: “When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. . . . Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.” Once the siege of Arafat’s compound ended, the Palestinian gunmen holding the church became the primary media flashpoint in the ongoing war. Indeed, Arafat’s first statement upon his release was to call the Israelis “terrorists, Nazis, and racists” for their actions in Bethlehem. Which is more than a little obscene. But we were particularly amazed by the account from the Washington Post’s correspondent, Doug Struck, who cast in a soft, golden light his interview with a Palestinian construction worker named Abed Rabbo, a Muslim whom the Israelis had allowed to leave the church. “In a soft, calm voice, Abed Rabbo said he felt spiritually buoyed by the experience,” Struck informs us. “‘Physically, it was hard. Spiritually, it was definitely good,’ he said. ‘The month that we stayed in there made me understand how the early Christians made it through the hardships they went through, as well as the early Muslims. Jesus, in history, went through a lot of hardships caused by the Jews. Finally, he won and came out victorious. I think we had the same experience.'” Forget, for a moment, the bad history and theology here, the parody of old-fashioned, vulgar anti-Semitism, and think: In what other situation would the Washington Post allow a writer to quote–as the fruit of spiritual experience–a description of the Jews as Christ killers? HU’S ON FIRST On his first visit to America last week, China’s vice president and next supreme leader, Hu Jintao, lobbied members of Congress to pass the watered-down Export Administration Act. Hu knew his audience. He suggested that efforts to toughen the bill would be read by Beijing as an attempt to frustrate China’s ability to buy high-tech products from the United States and that, in turn, China would find it difficult to buy U.S. agricultural goods. Subtle. Of course, it’s not clear Hu and Beijing have all that much to worry about in any case. Courtesy of Fred Thompson, the admirable senator from Tennessee, we know from a GAO report on the sale of American semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China that controls have already been gutted. In the space of little more than a decade, U.S. exports to China allowed it to go from being generations behind America in “chip” making capabilities to virtually even. China is now able to produce semiconductors that are more advanced than those used in many of our most advanced weapons systems. But, you object, mandatory end-user checks required by law would prevent the Chinese from using the manufacturing equipment for inappropriate purposes. Well, yeah–if any had ever been conducted. However, according to the GAO report, U.S. officials assigned this job have not conducted any of these checks in the last five years. Okay, but couldn’t China have obtained the goods from other countries? Well, maybe. But the Commerce Department hasn’t done a “foreign availability” assessment since the mid-1980s. Why lawmakers are even bothering to rewrite the law is unclear. SLANDERING CAPTAIN KELLY Former Republican congressman and full-time Israelophobe Pete McCloskey spoke on April 28 at a “Rescue Mideast Policy” conference in Washington, sponsored by the so-called Council for the National Interest. (U.S. policy needs rescuing from the “awesome power of the American pro-Israeli lobby,” as McCloskey put it.) All in all, it was a fairly routine sort of pro-PLO propaganda festival, except for this part of McCloskey’s speech, which was called to our attention and can be found on the website www.rescuemideastpolicy.com. “The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the Israelis’ heavy-handed repression of Palestinians makes a growing number of Arab and Muslim youngsters ‘willing to commit suicide.’ [McCloskey] noted that suicide attacks are not unique to the Arab world; one of the early American heroes of World War II was pilot Colin Kelly who made a suicide dive into a Japanese battleship.” Wrong. Kelly was one of the first heroes of World War II, but the idea that he carried out a suicide attack is fictional. He was the captain of a B-17 bomber fired on by the Japanese as it returned to Clark Field in the Philippines, on December 10, 1941. With his plane on fire from enemy attack, he ordered his crew to bail. The rest of the men escaped by parachute, and in guiding the plane so they could get out, Kelly died. His body was found in the wreckage, and he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The comparison with suicide bombers is appalling on every level. Kelly’s target was a Japanese navy ship, not a sushi bar filled with kids. A decorated Korean War veteran, McCloskey dishonored himself when he dragged the heroic memory of Colin Kelly into the discussion of Palestinian terrorism.
