Word: hersh
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Fantastic Story. When the story finally broke in some detail, it was largely because of the digging of a freelance writer who, to complete his research, had to get a $1,000 grant from a foundation. Seymour M. Hersh, 32, had been a police reporter for Chicago's City News Bureau, a Pentagon reporter for A.P. and a press secretary for Eugene McCarthy. Hersh had written a book on chemical and biological warfare, and he was working on another about the Pentagon when one of his contacts called him in Washington around...
...fantastic story," the source said. "There's a guy down in Benning who is being held on a charge of murdering 70 to 75 Vietnamese civilians." Hersh put aside his book and started tracking down information that led to an interview with Calley on Nov. 9. He wrote the story the next day, and having failed to interest LIFE and Look when he began his research, decided to peddle it through a Washington outfit called Dispatch News Service...
...general manager, and Michael Morrow, its only fulltime staff writer. Obst acknowledges that the service has a left-of-center tone, but he adds: "This is not an antiwar news service, but rather a pro-truth news service." The son of a Los Angeles advertising man, Obst marketed the Hersh story with chip-off-the-old-block hustle. He sat down with a copy of Literary Market Place, which carries the phone numbers of newspaper editors, and started making calls. The approach, Hersh jokingly told him at the time, was somewhat like selling Campbell's soup...
...Hersh and D.N.S. did not have the story entirely to themselves. The daily Alabama Journal in Montgomery (circ. 26,000), which had received a tip on Nov. 4, broke into print in its 2 p.m. edition of Nov. 12. And the New York Times, which got wind of the story around Nov 7, had its own report for Nov. 13. Both lacked the detail of Hersh's piece. Hersh had quotes from Calley ("I know this sounds funny, but I like the Army . . . and I don't want to do anything to hurt it") and from another soldier...
Curiously, some newspapers barely noted the alleged massacre or ignored it completely. Editorial page comment was even slower to develop. The best reporting continued from Hersh. He interviewed three eyewitnesses for a second D.N.S. story on Nov. 20, and he turned up Paul Meadlo for another numbing account last week. D.N.S. passed Meadlo on to CBS for a television interview with Mike Wallace, for which D.N.S. received $10,000 and Meadlo got traveling expenses. For yet another story this week, again sold by D.N.S., Hersh has talked to a returned soldier who describes the killing of a Vietnamese woman...