Who are people’s heroes besides their family members? Many would say a cool actor or actress they want to be. Others would way maybe someone like Martin Luther King Jr. or Jane Addams, social crusaders. Perhaps a president or two? For me, Jon Stewart and John Oliver would pop to the top of my list: comedians who make horrifying news stories more digestible to the average viewer, helping to inform and entertain. Those guys? It would be people like Laura Poitras, the director of Cover-Up, and Seymour Hersh, Cover-Up’s main subject. After watching this incredible documentary, you might add them to your hero list too.
Poitras has been asking Seymour Hersh to do a documentary about him since 2004. The justifiably untrusting Hersh said no repeatedly, probably waiting for Poitras to prove she would do the story truthfully. Well, when you are one of the two journalists Edward Snowden believes is worthy of the NSA leaked documents, that probably put her on the short list. Eventually, Hersh relented, and Poitras’s doc puts the naturally squirmy investigative journalist front and center, weaving in his incredible history of “speaking truth to power” to the most powerful people and institutions on the planet.
I have nothing but admiration for investigative journalists and the hard work they do to find the truth and bring it to light. I’m also well aware the toll that work can have on a person: there are great movies and documentaries about the consequences. People like Poitras and Hersh are staunchly trained to make sure they are NOT part of the stories they write, so this doc flies counter to their whole way of living. But, both director and subject are even more compelling as a result. For Hersh, you get the sense that maybe he feels his time is coming to an end, and he wants someone he can trust to do justice to who he is and why he did what he did through his life. Laura Poitras (only heard, not seen) is equally compelling here: Hersh’s heir apparent gets a glimpse into the future of the life she has currently chosen, and some insights into what will happen to her psyche as she ages. It’s morally clear, but personally a quixotic quagmire, as any slip up send you careening on a path to discreditation or even worse, personal harm by very powerful people.
The very reason Seymour Hersh is an incredible documentary subject. Interwoven with Hersh discussing the last journalism piece on Gaza is American History through an entirely new lens for the audience. Hersh has been a thorn in the US’s political institutions since the Vietnam War. Constantly threatening that type of power has made Hersh paranoid of others, now basically core to his personality. Poitras maintains that energy throughout the doc though having Hersh describe his process that leads to the prize winning journalism he’s done for decades. What follows is detailed discussion of Sy’s great feats of truth: the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Watergate assistance for Woodward and Bernstein, Operation CHAOS to spy on American citizens, Chilean regime change, Abu Ghraib prison torture in the Iraq War, the list goes on and on. Each story shows the slippery process Hersh had to go through to deliver these pieces, using anonymous sources he couldn’t reveal, which the government and corporations would use to try and discredit him. After a while, you can tell Sy Hersh started to feel like all of that power was colluding into one mass system, threatening people like him trying to stop that machine from continuing, including sometimes places he himself was working at like The New York Times. Cover-Up feels like a celebration of a great man and a sobering reminder that absolute power corrupts absolutely, resulting in history repeating itself, over and over.
Despite the downer ending, Cover-Up is still a victory. It’s a celebration of investigative journalism at the highest level, and one of the best in the world to do it, Seymour Hersh. I hope he can rest a little easier knowing he’s found Poitras, a kindred spirit and beacon to all that he believes in, and how that spirit is still alive today. I hope the curious kids of the world watch this movie, and get inspired to find the truths in their lives that need to be revealed; the world needs you.