Hi, this is Bob Garfield with the special podcast edition of On the Media.

Over the weekend, investigative reporter Seymour Hirsch, he of Milai, Abu Ghraib, and many other

stunning exposés, broke another jaw dropper.

His 10,000 word piece in the London Review of Books, alleged that the 2011 Special Forces

Operation that took the life of Osama bin Laden was not at all what the Obama

administration has portrayed it to be. First, he said, bin Laden's whereabouts in an

Abadabad-Pakistan compound were not uncovered by painstaking CIA sleuthing

about the movements of a bin Laden courier. Rather, the story stated,

al-Qaeda's leader was dimed out by a Pakistani military intelligence officer

who walked into the CIA with the information and got $25 million for his trouble.

The officer told the CIA that bin Laden had been essentially under house arrest in Abbottabad for years.

Another lie, Hirsch maintains, is the Obama administration's claim that it acted alone in the raid without the knowledge of the Pakistanis.

Hirsch reported that, on the contrary, Navy SEAL Team 6 was escorted through the compound by a Pakistani operative.

Most of Hershey's sources are anonymous.

One key exception is retired Pakistani General Assad Durrani, who retired

from the inter-services intelligence agency, the ISI, in 1992. That sourcing is one reason the big

scoop has been met not only with skepticism, but derision from other journalists.

His conclusions have been dismissed as illogical.

Jack Schaefer in Politico said Hirsch was, quote, lost in the wilderness.

Max Fisher, writing in Vox, said,

Hirsch had gone off the rails.

We caught up with Seymour Hirsch Wednesday afternoon to talk about his story and the reaction to it.

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