Seymour Hersh said Monday that it was "silly" of him to think that the Washington Post would have accepted his recently published story about the Obama administration's case for war with Syria.
Writing in the London Review of Books, Hersh asserted that the White House had "cherry-picked" intelligence surrounding a chemical weapons attack so that it could point the finger at Bashar al-Assad's government, even though it knew rival forces also had the capacity to carry out the attack.
Hersh's story was supposed to appear in the Washington Post, but, as HuffPost's Michael Calderone reported on Sunday night, the Post passed on the story, saying it did not meet its standards. Hersh's usual outlet, the New Yorker, also passed on the story.
Speaking on "Democracy Now" on Monday, Hersh repeated his charge that intelligence had been twisted.
"The narrative was, 'Bashar did it,' and it was bought by the mainstream press," he said, adding, "This is why creepy troublemakers like me stay in business," he said.
Host Amy Goodman asked him about his difficulties with the Post. Hersh said he respected the paper's decision.
"Sometimes you get tired of reporters coming in and saying the sky's always black," he said. "Investigative reporters have a very short shelf life."
Later, though, he said it had been a mistake to believe the Post would have published such a provocative story.
"Why did I think a mainstream press paper would want to go so hard against, you know, from a freelancer?" he said. "It was silly of me. I should have just gone to the London Review very quickly. My mistake."
Watch Part 1 of the conversation above. Part 2 is below.
Note: Hersh's son, Joshua, is a reporter for HuffPost.