Born alongside a twin brother, Seymour Hersh grew up in a middle-class family, his father operating a dry-cleaning plant, and being joined by older sisters who were also twins. He pursued higher education at the University of Chicago, only to later be hired by the Chicago City News Bureau for a modest salary of $35 a week after failing to meet the academic requirements for law school.
It was in 1969 that Hersh's exceptional journalistic skills earned him international recognition, as he exposed the My Lai massacre and its subsequent cover-up during the Vietnam War, an achievement that garnered him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
Subsequently, Hersh took on various roles, including serving as a correspondent for United Press International in South Dakota, correspondent for the Associated Press, and a reporter for The New York Times Washington Bureau. His book, 'The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House', earned him the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Throughout his illustrious career, Hersh has authored a total of eight books, regularly contributing to The New Yorker on matters related to military and security. His work has consistently sparked controversy, with a 2004 article investigating how Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bypassed the CIA in their pursuit of invading Iraq, and another article featuring Richard Perle, who labelled Hersh the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".
In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles detailing and illustrating, through photographs, the torture inflicted by US military police on prisoners at the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, a shocking exposé that further cemented his reputation as a fearless and influential investigative journalist.
