A word of caution about Seymour Hersh’s latest

By now, you may have already read Seymour Hersh’s latest magnum opus, this time about the Bush administration’s alleged "support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations" in order to stir up trouble for Iran. Hersh later explains that one such organization is Jundallah, a Sunni fundamentalist group in Baluchistan near the Pakistan border. "According to [former CIA case officer Robert] Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support," Hersh writes.

One of those press reports is probably this blog post from The Blotter, the ABC News blog that got in such trouble for employing Alexis Debat, a French counterterrorism analyst who misrepresented his resume and faked interviews with Barack Obama and several other public figures. ABC News insists that its reporting was solid, but as journalist Laura Rozen found, that’s at least open to question. Pakistan, for one, sharply denied the ABC News story about Jundallah. I’m not sure what other reporting Hersh is citing, but let’s just say that it’s far from certain the United States is doing what he claims.

UPDATE: Rozen comments at length. She’s skeptical, too.