Hersh Claims Bombings Were Political Moves

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh spoke to an audience of about 70 last night at Harvard Law School about the military attacks ordered by President Clinton in August on sites linked to alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Hersh, who recently published an article on the subject in The New Yorker, was hosted by the Harvard Law School Forum.

In his talk, titled "The Missiles of August," Hersh explained why he thought the bombing of the sites in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20 was a mistake.

In August, the White House said the attacks were in retaliation for the Aug. 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which bin Laden was allegedly involved. The American bombs were dropped three days after Clinton's televised apology for his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

"Why would the White House be so keen, why would they be in such a rush that 13 days later [after the embassy bombings] they had to drop the bombs?" asked Hersh. "I think the only answer is that it's political."

According to Hersh, the error made by the administration involved breaches in the decision-making process. Sources have revealed that not all the proper officials were consulted, he said.

Four of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were left out of the decision because the administration believed that they would not approve the bombing, Hersh said.

FBI director Louis Freeh was not consulted because it was believed that he was disloyal. Attorney General Janet Reno advised against the bombings because of weak links between bin Laden and the embassy bombings, Hersh said.

He added that the first bomb was intended to kill bin Laden. The government had received intelligence that he would be at his camp meeting with advisers.

But terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism, Hersh said. The government's mistakes, he charged, are leading people to become terrorists in the same way that similar faulty tactics produced communists during the Vietnam War.

Hersh suggested another motive for Clinton's bombings.

"I honestly think in my soul, the reasons to not do this, the reasons to delay were so profound, that not delaying can only be seen as an issue for the President, that he simply wanted to stand up in Martha's Vineyard and say, `Terrorism is over, bin Laden is dead.'"

Though Hersh's topic was serious, his tone was informal. He entered laden with suitcases, which he dumped in a corner of the room before speaking. He interacted with the audience members, asking them questions of his own after answering theirs.

He also incorporated stories about John F. Kennedy '40 into his speech on the bombings, relating the former president's sex life to Clinton's, and calling both of them "reckless."

Hersh wrote for The New York Times and won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. He is the author of six books, including The Darker Side of Camelot.