Cover-Up

Seymour Hersh is one of the preeminent investigative journalists of the last seventy-five years, with a legacy stretching from the War in Vietnam to the present day. In Cover-Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus peel back the curtain a bit on this secretive and, not without reason, mistrustful man. The film, as much about the search for truth as it is an examination of a life and career, was more than twenty years in the making. While Obenhaus had worked with before, Poitras had wanted to interview Hersh as he met with sources, an idea he refused because of how it would compromise those individuals.

Courtesy Netflix

This should give one an idea of Hersh, a man of seeming great integrity, who cares about truth but also the safety and security of his sources. Because of Obenhaus’s connection to Hersh over a proposed work on Hersh’s coverage of the My Lai massacre, Poitras was able to convince Hersh, finally, to agree to a very different kind of documentary, one where his sources were not compromised. That said, one moment in the film does show Hersh becoming angry and ready to halt the entire production because he feels the makers are not abiding by the agreements regarding confidentiality with which he was comfortable.

The film itself is a mixture of such moments, alongside Hersh talking about his life and career, as well as archival footage and audio of and about him. One terrific moment in the film has Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger discussion Hersh, who had been given a line of flattery by the Secretary of State that Hersh saw for what it was. Others include his reticence to discuss the way in which his John F. Kennedy book got away from him because of dubious sources, and how he struggled during the early to mid-2000’s to get anyone to listen to him about the crimes at Abu Ghraib.

Courtesy Netflix

These examples show both his tenacity but also some hubris. They show the way in which journalism has changed over the decades and how Hersh himself has been, often, a singular voice. Nowhere was this truer than in the story that made his career, the My Lai massacre. Hersh spent years working the story, following it through to the bitter end, something he would repeat with both Watergate and the Operation CHAOS coverup, where the CIA spied on civilians within the United States.

What emerges, finally, is the portrait of a man who has perhaps too often had to, by the very nature of his work, be bellicose, suspicious and secretive. Yet, he has been married for six decades, with children and grandchildren. He has, more often than not, been employed by one publication or another, at least as a recurring freelancer. There are not, it would appear, many left in the same mold.

Courtesy Netflix

This is a film that, much like Citizen Four and All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, demonstrates the passion and urgency of Poitras as a documentarian. She knows how to convey important themes in ways that do not feel like moralizing lectures. Instead, this work, as with those, comes across more as something to consider and to prevent from recurring. It is almost a form of activism. Poitras and Obenhaus know what they are doing here, with the selections of footage and how they edit materials. Never does the film feel as though it is out of control of its makers. This is history and present as alive as ever. There is a vitality and necessity to the proceedings. It is one of the year’s absolute best documentaries and something you should not miss.

Cover-Up is now streaming on Netflix.