‘SY’ is short for Seymour Hersh, the indefatigably curious journalist. He’s a news digger; a scoop scavenger. The type we call ‘investigative.’ This New Yorker fella loves saucy, spicy stories and has never been shy of broadcasting the brine to the world around.

His latest yeller on the safety of our nukes and the Pakistan military giving the US access to our arsenal has pulled him back in our political stratosphere once again. Welcome back Sy. We missed you sorely. And now that you’ve gone and interviewed Musharraf who spattered his successor with mega slime, I fear those deadly spores will not get wiped out. Like Anthrax, your latest New Yorker 7000-word article and spilling Musharraf’s incendiary invectives for Zardari will cause some casualties.

I met Seymour Hersh in New York four years ago. He was 68 years old then. I did a full column with photos of the occasion on these pages under the title: ‘Watch out for a nuke traffic jam.’ In those days the friendship between Bush and Musharraf was ‘tight’ in the words of the US president himself.

‘If I were a Pakistani, I would worry… there are frightening times ahead,’ Seymour Hersh warned. ‘You guys are next after Iran,’ he told me when I asked about American designs on our nukes. ‘Your nuclear programme is the target.’ Well wired with intelligence sources, not just in the American CIA, but the Mossad in Israel, RAW in India and the ISI in Pakistan; the Pulitzer Prize winner operates via sources crawling around these intelligence agencies who have over the years gladly handed him classified information.

‘If Musharraf was to go down south (exit),’ Hersh said four years ago, ‘there’ll be a traffic jam! There’ll be the CIA, Mossad and RAW jumping in to grab your nuclear facilities. It will be a free-for-all. The ISI and the Pakhtoons are terribly concerned.’ Earlier, he alleged in a November 2001 New Yorker article that Al Qaida was founded at a 1988 meeting in Peshawar. He quoted a former Pakistani diplomat who said, ‘If you go through the officers’ list, almost all of the ISI regulars would say of the Taliban, ‘They are my boys.’’

I pressed on with my questions on Pakistan’s security issues vis-à-vis Iran and India. How would a nearly nuclear armed Iran react if India and Pakistan were to go to war? In his typical New York accent, he answered, ‘Iran is not making nuclear weapons. It’s Israel you should be worrying about. With 600 nukes bristling under its arm, Tel Aviv is the greatest threat to the regional security. Other than Pakistan, there’s no Muslim country with a bomb.’

Castigating the New York Times, Hersh continued, ‘I throw a challenge to the Times to do a critical piece on Israel’s foreign policy and how it influences America. We must separate ourselves from Israeli interests and stop Israel from confusing the issue.’

Except for two walkouts, the rest of the audience, a 1000-strong, clap and cheer when he speaks of Israeli lobbyists infiltrating the power corridors in America to successfully mind-control policy-makers.

‘Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation nor is it threatening our security one iota! Why then are the NYT and Washington Post pursuing the Israeli storyline? Israeli agents have infiltrated the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in Vienna. ‘Muslims are not terrorists, as Israel alleges.’

Scott Ritter, another voice of dissent against US attacking Iraq, is the next forceful speaker. He was the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq. Ritter tells the audience that he is not a Jew-hating anti-Semitic.

‘I have spent four years with the Israeli intelligence against Iraq. I know how they work. It’s a small little country and will cease to exist should they get hit by a nuclear bomb. There’s no margin of error. Therefore it has no tolerance for nuclear enrichment technology presently underway in Iran. What Israel tells the US is faith-based and not fact-based. This is very dangerous for America as Israel is pushing us towards a military option on Iran. Bush has told Iran that it’s for Iran to prove they don’t have nuclear weapons. How does one prove a negative?’

Hersh’s prediction is spine-chilling for Americans: ‘Iran (when it does have the nukes) will bomb one of our cities. Will it be Boston? New York? Miami? You decide!’ he tells the audience.

Sy is notorious in Washington for having a ‘Rolodex that most investigative journalists covet.’

Did the Department of Defence and the intelligence community plant the nuke story?

(The Op-Ed first appeared in Dawn today)