Seymour Hersh reflects on a career of exposing government secrets in Cover-Up

Netflix's documentary Cover-Up offers a rare portrait of Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist known for unearthing government cover-ups. Directed by Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras, the film traces Hersh's decades-long career across the American press—first at the Associated Press, then the New York Times and The New Yorker—focusing on the stories that exposed attempts to hide what happened in Vietnam and Iraq. The documentary also follows Hersh as he steps back from his Substack newsletter for years of reporting files, while his editors, fact-checkers, and co-writers weigh in on his meticulous process. It includes material that Hersh has never publicly shared before and spotlights the vital, often fraught relationship between source and reporter that underpins investigative work.

Falling in love with journalism A Chicago native, Hersh grew up helping his father run a laundry and dry-cleaning business. While enrolled at a two-year college, an English teacher urged him to apply to the University of Chicago. As an undergraduate, he discovered City News, a campus outlet where he started in the mailroom, then moved to police reporting and quickly found that he was “in love with being a reporter.” He says the experience—navigating a city’s crime beat, the mob scene, and the police force—proved crucial training for covering cover-ups, because tyranny, he argues, is often visible at close range. The film portrays how those early days helped shape his insistence on firsthand verification, corroboration, and relentless pursuit of information even when sources were reluctant to talk.

Hersh’s story is inseparable from the wars and conflicts that defined late 20th-century American foreign policy. The film highlights his 1969 Dispatch News Service investigation that exposed the My Lai Massacre, where U.S. troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians and the Army tried to conceal the extent of the killings. The investigative work galvanized opposition to the war and earned Hersh the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. The film also revisits his 1974 New York Times investigation into the CIA’s domestic spying, which helped spur the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee to reveal the agency’s secret operations. While Woodward and Bernstein remain emblematic of Watergate coverage, the documentary notes Hersh’s role in showing how the burglary and the broader operation reached into the White House and the political apparatus, with sources indicating that participants were paid even after indictments.

Hersh’s reporting approach repeatedly relied on tip lines, cold calls, and roaming the halls of the Pentagon. As a Times reporter, he often spoke with young officers who might speak more freely once a rapport had been established. The documentary underscores that his Army Reserve background shaped his distrust of unverified official narratives and underscored the need to protect sources who might fear reprisal or exposure. Co-director Laura Poitras emphasizes that Hersh’s success depended on building trust with individuals willing to share information—an especially sensitive dynamic when the subject concerns state secrecy. The film includes moments where Hersh’s willingness to pursue a lead ran up against the practical reality of protecting sources, a tension that remains central to investigative reporting.

Hersh’s willingness to confront danger for the truth is illustrated by another well-known case the documentary revisits: a retired soldier who provided photographs from Abu Ghraib, which showed abuse of detainees. The film includes the anonymous source Camille Lo Sapio, who showed Hersh the photographs in a restaurant booth. Sapio recalls being hesitant at first, but Hersh’s insistence on exposing the truth persuaded her to share the material. “If there hadn’t been photographs, no story,” Hersh says, reflecting on how images can be essential to corroborating allegations and signaling the scale of abuse. The documentary presents this moment not as sensationalism but as a watershed example of how evidence, context, and moral urgency intersect in reporting that challenges official narratives.

His support system The film also delves into Hersh’s personal anchor—the partnership with his wife, Elizabeth Klein, a psychoanalyst he met at the University of Chicago. While Klein is not interviewed in the documentary, Hersh speaks openly about how she steadied him through some of his most harrowing assignments. He recounts a moment when, after a particularly devastating call about a troubling assignment, he cried into a payphone and she reassured him that the story’s moral imperative did not reflect on his family. “I married the right person who can calm me down and keep me from going into total despair because I was writing such terrible stuff,” he says. The film connects his private resilience to his professional persistence, showing how personal support can be a crucial element in sustaining investigative work over decades.

The takeaway and ongoing mission Cover-Up culminates with Hersh articulating a stark rationale for his career: a belief that a country cannot function when the truth is obscured or willfully ignored. “You can’t have a country that does that,” he asserts, describing his continued work with an editor and a fact-checker at Substack to pursue new leads and verify claims. In the current media landscape, where accusations of misinformation and fake news circulate, the filmmakers argue that investigative reporting remains essential to a healthy democracy. They hope the documentary will remind audiences and funders of journalism’s value, encouraging support for investigative teams and for the kind of skeptical reporting that refuses to accept the official record as gospel.

The film also seeks to inspire the next generation of reporters to ask tough questions and to develop the kinds of source relationships that can withstand pressure and retribution. Obenhaus describes Cover-Up as a meditation on the importance of investigative journalism and on a “skeptical journalistic class that does not take the official record as gospel and is willing to dig deeper and discover truths that perhaps are being covered up.” In that sense, Hersh’s career—documented across decades of coverage—serves as a blueprint for how journalists can pursue accountability even in the face of intimidation or bureaucratic inertia.

The documentary frames Hersh’s life not only as a catalog of landmark stories but as a case study in the discipline, craft, and courage required to publish sensitive information. By weaving together early career milestones, landmark investigations, and intimate reflections on the risks of reporting, Cover-Up presents Hersh as a model of persistence in the public interest. The film’s release on Netflix on December 26 positions Hersh’s work within a broader conversation about journalism’s role in scrutinizing power, demanding accountability, and safeguarding democratic processes. The filmmakers hope that viewers come away with a clearer understanding of how investigative reporting operates, why it matters, and how editors, fact-checkers, and sources collaborate to bring difficult truths to light. In an era of rapid news cycles and shifting media incentives, Cover-Up argues that rigorous, evidence-based reporting remains indispensable to a well-informed public and a government that is answerable to its citizens.