Cover-Up

A powerful portrait of the relentless US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (b. 1937), who has been a thorn in the side of the US government for six decades. The Pulitzer Prize winner’s exposés include a massacre carried out by US soldiers in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, CIA espionage activities, and torture in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Hersh repeatedly encounters a powerful opponent in the government, but at times in his employers as well. To protect his sources, he takes no risks: it took filmmaker Laura Poitras (known for her 2014 Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour about the whistleblower Edward Snowden) 20 years to convince him to participate in this film.

Accompanied by an impressive quantity of archival material, Hersh, seated in his office amid piles of paper, yellow notepads, and boxes labeled “Bin Laden” or “War on Terror”, recounts the bizarre forms of obstruction he has faced. The result is a frightening picture of the omnipotent government and the increasingly precarious position of the free press.