Cover-Up Review
This career-spanning documentary of acclaimed journalist Seymour Hersh, from similarly acclaimed documentarian Laura Poitras, champions speaking truth to power and persevering to find the hidden story. This doggedness is strangely absent from the doc itself.
A tense hum pervades the archive footage, which tells the story of a horrifying nerve gas leak covered up by the US Army. A young Seymour Hersh smiles on a talk show: “No one’s willing to say on record that the army’s lying through its teeth.”
It sets the tone for the documentary, which starts by delving into Hersh’s discovery of US Army cover-ups during the Vietnam War – first and foremost the My Lai massacre. It’s horrifying stuff, incidents that have not faded in their depravity or shockingness over the more than 55 years since.
Archive footage is masterfully woven into the story, combined with images of Hersh’s original AP telegrams and interviews with the man in the present day. There’s also excellent audio of White House conversations between Nixon and Kissinger – ”The son of a bitch is a son of a bitch, but he’s usually right, isn’t he,” Nixon sighs.
Hersh has a great presence on screen. He’s confident, sure of himself, pushes back against the interviewers behind the camera. “It’s complicated to know who to trust. I barely trust you guys,” he tells them.
It takes 40 minutes for Hersh’s own life to be the focus of the piece. He recounts his own family history, the distance he felt from his father – a holocaust survivor – and alludes to a challenged relationship with his mother. “My mum never talked about anything, and if she did she didn’t tell the truth,” he notes.
His siblings, wife and children are mentioned only in passing, and aside from a few shots of Hersh cooking and driving, there’s a distance from the personal here. “I was very happy not talking about myself,” he says at one point. He’s succeeded, in many ways, in keeping his own life close to his chest – protecting his sources.
The impact of reporting on atrocities is touched on briefly, but how Hersh actually dealt – and deals – with the burden is unexplored. “Each day was another 30 days of life on my shoulders. That’s how it felt. A couple of times I couldn’t take it anymore,” Hersh tells the camera. Then we move on, assuming that his solution was just to suck it up and keep working. It’s a shame, especially when there’s so much focus now on journalists’ mental safety and wellbeing, that the theme isn’t explored. How does Hersh view current safeguarding practices? Would they have helped or hindered him in the past?
Although, it’s consistently obvious that Hersh wants to keep this kind of reflection out of it. “I don’t psychoanalyse those who talk to me, just like I don’t psychoanalyse myself – thank God,” he jokes early on in the piece.
The whole film feels like a long, unexpected conversation, something which is both a strength and a weakness. The filmmakers rarely challenge Hersh on camera, making the documentary more a thoroughly-told story than an interrogation into the life and career of a fascinating figure – “complicated and unpredictable”, as the NYT’s Jeff Gerth says of his work.
When asked about reporting mistakes, Hersh appears stubborn and a little tetchy. Pushed a little further, it turns into something of a tantrum. Perhaps this is the way the film is cut together, but he comes across as somewhat paranoid and self-important at this point. “You know too much about what I’m doing,” he exclaims, looking at the documents that the crew have put in front of him. He says he wants to quit. After some false jeopardy, shots of an empty desk, he’s back. He isn’t really challenged again – not even on his incorrect reporting that Syria did not have chemical weapons, which he admits was the result of being too close to power.
He’s still working. During the documentary, he receives calls from anonymous sources in Gaza. He speaks to a researcher who has recently returned from the city, a woman who describes how children are being killed.
There are some bleak parallels here with recent comments from war photographer Don McCullin about the never-ending brutality across the world, which continues despite the work of determined journalists.
This reluctance to push the subject weakens the film somewhat, as does the slightly scattergun structure. The initial focus on My Lai is deeply affecting, but as the film goes on to touch on various moments in Hersh’s career that intensity is never quite matched.
Poitras’ skill and Hersh’s storied career make for an engrossing, at times frustrating piece – one that demands to be watched, no matter its flaws.
★★★
Streaming on Netflix from 26th December | Seymour Hersh | Dir.Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus
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