Cover-Up, the 2025 documentary film streaming on Netflix, brings to light the exceptionally commendable work of Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist who has been behind the publishing of numerous shocking stories in the United States of America. In his career, spanning more than 50 years, Hersh has repeatedly questioned the American government and administration, particularly with regard to the numerous internal and external failures, and has been quite instrumental in the shocking revelations that have uncovered the real truth about the self-righteous country. Cover-Up makes for a brilliantly informative and entertaining watch and manages to show both perspectives on its subject, instead of sticking to a perfect image of the investigative journalist.
Who is Seymour Hersh?
Cover-Up has Seymour Hersh introduce himself before laying down a family line of sorts to trace his roots back to Eastern Europe. His father, Isador Hershowitz, had immigrated to the United States of America from his native Lithuania back in the 1920s, when Yiddish-speaking Jews like him were already starting to be persecuted. As someone who built an astounding career as an investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh’s only remorse is that neither of his parents, Isador or Dorothy, ever told him or his siblings about the difficult times the Jews had to face in Europe, always keeping them insulated from these matters instead. Dorothy was more concerned with dressing up her twin sons, Seymour and Allan, to make them look alike, while Isador turned to alcohol to forget his woes. Born in 1937, Seymour had a fairly normal childhood, and he recalls how he survived on books, both for education and entertainment, from a very young age.
Seymour also started helping out in his father’s laundry shop from a considerably young age, and despite decent academic performances in school, he was ultimately stopped from attending university. By this time, his father had developed lung and brain cancer, and he very passionately wanted Seymour to run the family business instead of pursuing further education. Isador passed away some time later, giving the teenager some freedom to start attending a junior college under the University of Illinois, and he soon impressed the teachers with his essay comparing a British and an American novel. He was immediately called up by the college authorities and allowed admission into the University of Chicago with grants and scholarships. The new life as a university student suddenly gave him a lot of exposure and different perspectives on life, and Seymour absolutely loved all of it.
He talks about the manner in which he happened to come across the profession of journalism as an absolute miracle, something that he had not planned at all. One night at a bar, he befriended a man who happened to be a reporter at City News, a name Seymour had not even heard till then. But he was instantly fascinated by the world of newspapers, to the extent that he started working at City News soon after, as he had already dropped out of university by this time. His initial job was to make copies of a story and send them to the various departments before he finally got a lucky break and was assigned to the position of a police reporter. This was when Seymour fell in love with the job and with writing news stories that would simply inform the people of the truth, and this love has only kept growing throughout his life. While working very closely with the Chicago PD, the young man also realized that every institution or body of authority in society, including the ones considered to be on the ‘good side,’ has its own set of ways to flout rules and get involved in illegal activities. This lesson evidently helped him see the world from a different perspective later on, and question everyone, including the government, about matters of concern. After some time working as the police reporter, he directly wrote a letter to the managing editor of the New York Times, A.M. Rosenthal, asking for a job. Although he was not directly given a job as he had hoped, the young man became a freelance reporter. Thus began the journalistic career of Seymour Hersh, and the biggest breakthrough of his career came in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War.
How was the incident at My Lai uncovered?
Quite early into his journalistic career, Seymour Hersh developed a habit of reporting on matters that were usually ignored by others, most of whom considered these theories to be conspiracies. A bright example was when Seymour did a report on the mysterious deaths of ranch sheep in Dugway, clearly mentioning in the article that the American government most definitely had some connection to the bizarre incident. Although he was ridiculed, which even made Seymour leave his job at AP, it was soon confirmed that a US Army aerial test to deploy VX nerve agent had gone wrong, because of which the animals had been poisoned to death. Similarly, when he received an anonymous call about some atrocity that had seemingly been covered up in Vietnam, Seymour was immediately interested in pursuing the story.
The only information he got at first was that a G.I. in Vietnam had shot and killed numerous Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai, and the army was trying hard to keep the matter a secret. Using his extraordinary skills to pursue a story and convince people to open up to him, Seymour uncovered that a G.I. named William Calley had killed 22 unarmed villagers without any provocation, and found out after speaking to him that there were babies among his victims as well. Surprisingly, Calley told the journalist that he and many others had been asked by higher officials to kill Vietnamese civilians, just to hurt the Viet Cong soldiers in an indirect manner. The fact that nobody had spoken up about the matter in three long months also made it clear to Seymour that it was a fairly common practice in Vietnam at the time, all of which he mentioned in his articles.
Ultimately, the US Army was forced to acknowledge the incident at My Lai, although they obviously treated it as a one-off tragedy perpetrated by a soldier who had lost his mental stability. After weak charges like failure to report were brought against a few of the perpetrators (for there had been multiple), William Calley was court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison. However, with the publishing of numerous articles in all the leading newspapers in the country, it was evident to the people that the higher-ranked army officials had ordered such atrocious acts on the villagers, and they were now making Calley the scapegoat. There were protests from all sides of society, and Calley was ultimately released after just a few months in prison. The government, meanwhile, realized that Seymour Hersh would continue to raise questions against them, and there are even recordings of the president directly mentioning his name to state what a menace he was.
How did Seymour rattle the government repeatedly through his reporting?
Despite the ridicule and sometimes public hatred that Seymour received for his reports, he continued to dedicatedly pursue his profession, and his brilliant work on the My Lai incident earned him a job at the New York Times. Here, he wrote an investigative article about how the CIA had made up a ludicrous cover story involving the business magnate Howard Hughes’ personal boat, just to recover a lost Russian submarine that was believed to have a codebook on board. In Cover-Up, Seymour and others who worked with the NY Times at the time recall how the prestigious newspaper had a constant urge to publish breaking stories, but how the administration also feared retaliation for too controversial topics. Therefore, the NY Times refused to publish Seymour’s article on this CIA mission for the next two years, seemingly under pressure from the influential Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
Then came the Watergate scandal in 1974, when five men were caught breaking into and placing surveillance systems inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. It did not take long for solid evidence to come out about how the men had been hired by the President’s office to ensure that Nixon won the reelection and continued to serve as the leader of the country. While the government still tried to find routes to escape the allegations, Seymour’s report was once again instrumental, as he sat down to speak with one of the perpetrators and then published an article mentioning how 4 of the men were still being paid for their efforts, which confirmed that really influential people were involved. The scandal ultimately resulted in President Nixon facing impeachment and his eventual resignation.
Seymour Hersh also uncovered how the CIA, under close consultation with Henry Kissinger, had been involved in numerous political assassinations inside and outside the USA, including that of the Chilean president, Salvador Allende. He exposed the agency’s top-secret Operation CHAOS to the world, in which the CIA had placed undercover agents among student bodies during the Vietnam War out of concern that the student protests were being funded by communists. This was strictly against the code and purpose of the CIA, since the agency was not supposed to surveil American citizens, having been created specifically for international security. Only some time later, Seymour also uncovered how the chief of the counterintelligence department of the CIA, James Angleton, had created a special file called Family Jewels, which had crucial information on every illegal measure that the agency had taken over a span of many years.
Why did Seymour resign from his post at the New York Times?
After uncovering numerous secrets and failures of the American government, Seymour tried exploring other avenues of investigative journalism and quickly found a lot of interest in taking closer looks into American corporations and private empires. One such corporation that piqued his interest was Gulf and Western, more popularly known as G+W. The increasingly influential industrial company kept buying out any competitors before venturing into Hollywood by buying Paramount, and their investments made their real intentions seem quite suspicious. As he had expected, Seymour and his team found evidence of gross financial fraud and corruption, and he soon prepared a detailed journalistic report. However, the higher-ups at the New York Times absolutely refused to publish anything of this nature, particularly targeted against corporate companies.
After all, the New York Times was and continues to be a private corporation as well, and when one of Seymour’s team members started looking into the finances of his own company, he found similar acts of fraud and misconduct there as well. One of Seymour’s closest figures in the NY Times administration was found to have received money from the board to buy a penthouse for himself, which is technically against the law. When confronted, the man simply stated that his lawyer had assured him it would be alright, which, according to Seymour, was exactly what all criminals said to defend themselves. This was the moment when Seymour decided to quit his well-settled position at the New York Times, and among other matters, the inability to report against the corrupt nature of American corporations played a major role in his decision.
Why is Seymour’s credibility sometimes questioned?
Despite his achievements and revered position in the field of investigative journalism, Seymour Hersh is also sometimes questioned, and Cover-Up does a commendable job presenting this side of the story as well. The journalist has not been correct with his hunches every time, and while nobody can be perfect with each of their theories, the high-stakes nature of Seymour’s job and the recognition bring him under further scrutiny. One of the most public failures on his part was with regard to the alleged affair between Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy. He believed that he had secured old letters between the two that confirmed their affair, and although Seymour hadn’t yet written any articles on the matter, he had told his friends and colleagues about the same.
However, the letters were soon found to have been fakes, and the fact that Seymour had been taking them so seriously was instantly used to question his credibility. Another reason why the journalist’s abilities are still questioned sometimes is because of his habit of writing articles based on information gathered from a single source, which is generally considered untrustworthy, as there is no way to verify it. But he continues to defend this habit in the documentary, stating that it would be extremely unwise to avoid stories only because they have not been verified by multiple sources, as this is not always practical, especially in wartime situations.
How did the journalist play a role in bringing Abu Ghraib to public knowledge?
Much later, in the early 2000s, Seymour once again returned to the limelight when he pursued a story that he first heard from an officer of the Iraqi Air Force, according to which atrocities were being committed at the army camp/prison of Abu Ghraib. Reports started to circulate about how American soldiers and CIA officials were torturing, humiliating, and abusing Iraqi prisoners, many of whom had nothing to do with war or terrorism, and one prisoner had even been killed. Seymour pursued the story and eventually managed to get his hands on photographs taken at the prison by some American soldiers. He published these photographs along with a detailed article about how the American intelligence agency and military wings were committing disgusting war crimes in Iraq. The real brutal and power-hungry, to the extent of being perverse, nature of the United States of America was once again exposed to the world, and Seymour once more played a crucial role in it.
Where is Seymour Hersh now?
Towards the end of Cover-Up, and in some scenes towards the middle of the film, Seymour Hersh is seen in conversation with an anonymous source in Gaza, who informs him about the real situation in war-torn Palestine. Continuing with his habit of questioning the American government’s involvement in global matters that absolutely should not be meddled with, Seymour is seen looking into the Israel-Palestine conflict towards the end of the documentary. By now, he has indeed published numerous detailed articles about the conflict and particularly about how Israel has been targeting civilians with complete knowledge and every intention to carry out an unofficial genocide on the general population in Palestine. At present, Seymour Hersh continues to work as a freelance investigative journalist and also as a social and political commentator because of his expertise on the matters. He currently lives with his wife, Elizabeth Klein, with whom he has 3 children, in Washington, D.C.
