Hersh did say this (it’s on this video tape):
[T]here’s a special unit that does high-value targeting of men that we believe are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities. …
And it’s not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s in a lot of other countries, in the Middle East and in South Asia and North Africa and even central America.
In the early days, many of the names were cleared through Cheney’s office. One of his aides, John Hanna, went on TV and acknowledged that the programme exists, and said killing these people is not murder but an act of war that is justified legally.
The former head of JSOC has just been named the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan, which is very interesting to me.
About Hariri, what I’ve always maintained – I was in the position of seeing and interviewing President Bashar Al Assad on the day Hariri was killed in February 2005 – it seemed clear to me that he knew nothing about it. But I never wrote anything about it, even the fact that I was there, because I had no empirical or factual basis for knowing whether he was involved or not, and I never did. And I decided to wait for the investigations and they have come up with no concrete evidence that Syria did it.