[Doomburg] Back when the media establishment was against war and distrusted the US intelligence apparatus, Seymour Hersh was considered a top-tier investigative journalist. He routinely reported on scandals within the upper branches of the US government, winning just about every prestigious journalism award along the way. In 1974, Hersh broke the story that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was spying on domestic anti-war activists, behavior that was in direct violation of the law. The resulting howls of outrage were loud, and the nation was captivated by the congressional hearings that followed.Of course, that was 50 years ago, and much has changed since then. Our leaders have become alarmingly comfortable harnessing the near-limitless powers of the intelligence community for raw political purposes, and being anti-war has somehow morphed into an "alt-right" or "pro-Putin" position. Perhaps uncoincidentally, Hersh’s reporting came to be seen as a bit of a nuisance, and his reputation as a journalist was put under assault. In 2015, Hersh wrote skeptically about the Obama administration’s narrative surrounding the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and an orgy of attack pieces was unleashed in traditional media outlets. Here’s how Trevor Timm described the ugly affair in the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review (emphasis added throughout):