rescue efforts are continuing at the florida international university in miami, where a recently installed pedestrian bridge collapsed onto a busy highway. emergency crews have been working to free people from cars buried in the rubble. officials say four people have died. the us hasjoined france, germany and the uk in a joint statement demanding that russia explain the use of a military grade nerve agent in an attack on a former russian spy in england. moscow denies any involvement. president vladimir putin is said to be considering options in response to us and uk sanctions. in syria, thousands of people are fleeing the rebel—held enclave of eastern ghouta as government forces intensify their offensive. it's the first medical evacuation since a massive assault began nearly a month ago. president assad's forces have now retaken large parts of eastern ghouta now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. 50 years ago, us soldiers committed

a war crime that came to haunt the doomed mission to roll back communism in vietnam. more than 500 men, women and children were systematically slaughtered in the village of my lai. the terrible truth was exposed thanks to the work of my guest today, seymour hersh, whose lifetime of investigative reporting has been punctuated with scoops, prizes, and plentiful confrontation with the powers that be. 50 years on from my lai, are journalists able to tell the truth to power? theme music plays seymour hersh, welcome to hardtalk.

hello. you have always said that key to yourjournalism was this idea you had of being the outsider. where did that mindset come from? you know... i can't psychoanalyse myself, i don't understand it, but... i was an outsider. i grew up in... my parents were immigrants, neither one graduated from high school. the only learning i did, the real pressure i had, was when i was 13, i was getting the book of the month club, which is a non—fiction every month, reading about — sometimes about the perils of communism, but also reading about the habsburg monarchy and the chinese history, so i was always reading on myself. as a journalist, i've learned two things that i think is important, one, you have to read before you write. and then once you get the story, you've really got to get the hell

out of the way of the story and just know enough to tell it, let the words tell it. there's no such thing as a fantastic story, there's a story that becomes fantastic in the telling. so that's. .. those are two things that i kept in mind always. i'm very aware you came of age, you entered the world of work and entered journalism in the 1960s, a time of deeply polarised opinion, a time when many young americans, particularly at university and right after it, were of an anti—war persuasion. was that you? no, i came in in 60,1960. i went to university of chicago, i was an ok student, i went to law school, i hated law school, i dropped out, sold beer, you know, what kids do. i got a job as a police reporter, a crime reporterfor an agency called the city news bureau of chicago, sort of a famous place, front page, that place stems from there. i learned there that the city was yours as long as you... you could be tough on cops as long as you didn't interfere between the cops and the mafia, because the chicago mafia ran

the city and as long as you respected that, so i saw up close, tyranny in a way. let's remember that we're recording this interview at the very time of the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest incidents in the history of the us military and us warfighting, that is the massacre of more than 500 civilians in my lai. that was in march of 1968. we might never know the extent of what happened, the truth of what happened, if it hadn't been for your reporting. how did you dig deep into that story? what brought it to you? well, i ended up working for the associated press in chicago, and then i ended up in washington for them covering the pentagon. and i like military people, and i like people in the intelligence community, as critical as i can be, because there's a lot of very good ones. and at that time, i was very aggressive and energetic, and i wouldn'tjust take briefings, i ran around and talked to people,

like i think one should. i don't want a briefing, i want to know for myself what's going on. and so, i began to get into the cynicism of the officer corps about the war and they — i began to meet officers. america's... like your country, we're a very open society, and before long, they're telling me it's a bloodbath. and so, i knew there was trouble and so when i got a tip... ijust, somebody called up one day and said to me, "hersh, maybe you'll chase it, there's a terrible story." and ijust tried to run it down, it took a little while, i eventually learned the name calley from an officer. that's important because this gentleman, william calley, who was a lieutenant, i think, leading a platoon, c company, charlie company, in this particular offensive operation which ended up in the village of my lai, he was at the centre of your story. but you found him when he was back in the united states in 1969, after this terrible event.

how did you find him? you know, i wasn't told his name, i was told there was something bad had happened and i'd gone nowhere, i looked and looked. the military... i was in the army, i understood in the army you can't hide anybody. there's always... it's a big combine, a big machine. and one day i'm walking and i see a young officer i hadn't seen before, he's a colonel, and he was limping. i'm just chasing a story, i didn't know — it was a month of not finding anything, i was doing other things, i had a book contract, and i bumped into him and he'djust came back and he was limping and i knew him well because he was a very good guy when i had been at the pentagon, this was two years later. i said, what the hell are you doing here? he said, "i just got shot in vietnam." and he said, "i just made general." i said, "oh my god, you took a bullet to make general?" you know, black humour works. i said, "what are you doing now?" he said, "i'm working

for the chief of the army, general westmoreland." is ' i said, "tell me about this massacre." this very nice guy, i'm thinking just telling me something incidental, then he started hitting his bad knee, he got shot in the knee. nobody higher than that. this kid just murdered everybody, this calley. i said, calley? he says, yeah, he just shot everybody, there's no story there. it's the perfect mesh, here's an officer being responsible and here's me saying, oh my god, he'sjust dropped a dime on me and of course i'm playing cool, i don't want anybody to know. from there, once i had the name, i found out there was a calley who had been in the army, i found a lawyer, i flew out to see the lawyer, he was a seniorjudge and calley‘s lawyer, he was a mormon in salt lake city. so the point really that we need to get to is your confrontation with calley. you found him, he was still in fort benning, georgia, presumably still wearing his military uniform and you went down there? well, i didn't know where to go. i knew he had come

into fort benning. we don't have so much time, so i want to cut to the chase if i may. let's cut to the chase. i just want to know, when you finally locate him, you agree to meet him, he agrees to see you, he knows you're a journalist, what was that moment like when you met a guy, whom you knew by then was intimately involved in the massacre of hundreds of vietnamese women and children, as well as men? i, of course, wanted to hate him because i thought he'd despoiled not only what he's done to the vietnamese, but also america, i thought he had done something heinous and he turned out to be this very slight, nervous, frightened, he said to me quickly and casually, "my lawyers told me you'd find me," i looked for him for 15 hours. i went to where he was living, he gave me a beer, he had translucent skin, you could see his veins, and he talked about it as if it had been a big battle. which, i... it was just a massacre

and i knew that already, but at one point he went to thejohn, he said i had to go to the john, and the door was ajar and i could see he threw up arterial blood, which meant he had an ulcer. i knew this guy was dying. eventually he didn't want me to go away, he kept me there for half a night, i didn't get to him until about 11pm and 6am i'm still there. he wanted me to have dinner, he picked up a nurse he knew, he tried to be normal and he ended up telling so many different stories, it was complicated as hell. he really screwed himself with me. was he telling anything like the truth? we now know thanks to the eyewitness testimony of those few people who survived the my lai massacre, we now know more than 100 people were rounded up and put in a drainage ditch and they were just shot down, including infants and women with their children. we know that one child escaped the drainage ditch, he hadn't been killed underneath some of the bodies

and he escaped and then, as i understand it, calley ordered one of his men to get that child, bring him back and then shoot him down. did calley confess? he told different stories. initially, he said it was just a battle and later he said, i had orders. and, he... no. the answer is he did not confess, he did not say it was murder, what he said is there may have been a lot of unfortunate deaths in between, we had a firefight and people were there. he told a complicated story that didn't make sense. i want you to watch with me a piece of tape, which is a hardtalk interview from 2004, an extraordinary interview done with hugh thompson. he was an army pilot, flying a helicopter... i know about him. he was in a helicopter, he came down over my lai, he saw what was going on in the village during the massacre, he landed his chopper and he put it in front of us troops who were trying to get to a makeshift bunker where a dozen vietnamese villagers were sheltering, trying to escape from the violence, and he said to those us troops, he said, "if you try and attack

these villagers, i'm going to get my gunners to fire at you." now that was heroism. let's just look at his recollection of my lai, because you've talked about it, let's see a man on the ground remember it. they were lined up, marched down in a ditch, some of them, 170 of them, and hands above their head and executed. that's not war, that's not what a soldier from any country does. these are murderers. these were not soldiers. these were hoodlums and terrorists disguised like soldiers. no soldier is taught to do that. i know the pain and suffering that they inflicted for no reason, no reason whatsoever, there was no threat. it's amazing looking at that even

now, he says these men, the us soldiers, were not soldiers, they were hoodlums and terrorists. and hugh thompson, i think it's fair to say, was never really the same man again. he took to drink, he died early and he died, in some ways, a broken man. you were not in my lai at the time, but you wrote about it and you thought about it and it's been a shadow in your life ever since. has it affected you? oh my god, i would cry. there are things i didn't write about, digging live babies, throwing ‘em up and catching them with bayonets. the raping that went on. and i had a two—year—old child. i get teary now. you cry thinking about it. i would call home. and i would... i don't know whether i was crying for myself, or my country, or those kids. i ended up writing a couple of books about it and i ended up by saying that those kids that did the killing in a way

were the victims, in a way, as much as those they killed. there was a sense they had no idea they had been allowed to become animals by the lack of leadership. there was a complete breakdown in leadership across the board. thompson suffered immediately, by the way. he went back that day, you have no idea how extraordinary it is to land a chopper. and it's a chopper with two machine—guns, a guy named larry colburn was there and i got to know him very well. the kids at my lai, i saw them a year later, they were all working nightjobs with no people around. they were broken, in a way. the us soldiers who came back were broken men? those who killed and those who didn't kill, because those who didn't kill because they were afraid of getting a bullet too. thompson came back and by the afternoon, every officer was on his ass, if you will. don't report this, we will give you a break, we won't court—martial you for this.

he was doing the right thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, i guess. i don't think he did, i think he did the right thing in the right place but they went nuts trying to stop him from carrying on. you are a reporter now in your 81st year, i think i'm right in saying, and you've seen a lot of warfare, you've seen a lot of conflict, you've studied what happens to men in the most stressful, the most violent situations, and you, for example, leaving aside vietnam, are famed for your reporting of what the americans did in iraq after the invasion, including the torture and abuses in abu ghraib. what are your conclusions about what can happen to soldiers in the most extreme circumstances, even american soldiers, who are supposed to be upholding the values of freedom and democracy and everything else, what happens when they are in these situations? it depends on leadership. it depends on what you call small unit leadership. if you are a young

captain and you have 100 boys under your command, you really are a local parent. when the system fails from the top on, that is what happens. it was a option from the top down. —— corruption. there was a famous line of the general at the time saying that the vietnamese don't mind dying like we do, it is not as much of trauma for them. he actually said that in a famous documentary. and so... it is a little scary to think about how awful it can be in the military, not just american, you guys have your problems too. do you believe in evil, that is partly what i am thinking. you know, i don't think it matters what i believe in or what i think, it matters more what i do, in a sense. i think there is evil. that is a terrible question, i don't want to answer it in a funny way because i know so much about evil, i see

how quickly you can get to evil and i grew up in a world where we thought the germans and japanese, world war ii, were the evil. to find out that we don't fight wars any better was very traumatic. i am wondering if you feel, from your reporting from vietnam, including my lai, and other reporting including abu ghraib and the iraqi invasion and its aftermath, do you believe yourjournalism has made a difference? sure. absolutely. i am not walking around as if i am mount olympus brushing snow from my mantle because i am working hard, of course it did, i am aware of that. also, there are things it didn't do. it didn't end vietnam's war, it doesn't end of the brutality in combat. you could argue lessons learned in vietnam's were quickly forgotten, that's one reason why the united dates found itself invading iraqi in the 20005. you could argue that things like the surveillance of the intelligence agencies in the 19705, that didn't teach america very month, much because look what happened in

the last decade with edward snowden and revelations around that. you could say that actually, the work you have done over 50 years hasn't really made any difference at all. you can certainly say this, that the notion of an american general presidents learning from history, come on, give me a break. there is no... it is all tablorisa. i don't understand why every general that gets to be the chairman of the joint chiefs doesn't remember how bad war can be. you can say that but i would punch you if you did, i don't think you mean it, of course it made a difference and of course journalism is very important. it is very important that journalists get it right and do you think your credibility was fundamentally undermined by the times you got things wrong? i could list a few of them. for example, believing in the papers

that reported to show that marilyn monroe was blackmailing jfk, wasn't true but you believed those papers were real. you accused the us ambassador in chile of knowing about a cia plot to topple the leader. that wasn't true and you had to apologise for it. 0bama would say that you completely misconstrued the killing of some of 0sama bin laden, his white house saying that you wrote utter nonsense about that. your credibility is an issue too. it is funny you say that. i believed the papers. the monroe papers. i am held to a very high standard. and you have let yourself down sometimes. in that case i would say to you that the job of a investigative reporter is always be open—minded. i believed in them and found out they were fake. took me six or seven months but i certainly believed in them. i chased and worked hard but they weren't good.

they never showed up anywhere. you are honest about that, why haven't you been honest about, for example, about the story you put in the london review of books about the assassination of bin laden? 0bama and all sorts of evil in the military said that seymuor hersch just got that plain wrong. well, they are wrong, period. i am not afraid to go one—on—one with the president. right now we have a problem because we have this 24/7 hour news cycle where the white house can dominate. you think there is a crisis in journalism today? absolutely. there is fake news everywhere. fake news is a term people used to disrespect information they don't like. now you have the new york times and washington post, major newspapers, excellent newspapers, who had it wrong on the election and both had

to write letters of apologyjust as they did about the iraqis having weapons of mass destruction. the times had to write an apology to its readers and we led you to think she was going to win the whole time and we had it wrong. we also had information that they suppressed about the polling and didn't acknowledge all of that. i'm friendly with alot of people at the times. in a way, you are intriguing because you have seen through much of your life to conclude that all president lie, all deceive, and here we have a president, donald trump, accused by many in the so—called mainstream media of telling more lies more consistently than any president we have known in history and yet you seem to be saying that 0bama was a liar, clinton was a liar, bush sr was a liar. do you see anything different today and particular in relation to this president and the media? different from anything we have seen before? i think there is, look on it would have been betterfor an awful lot of people in america if trump had not been elected. what i am getting at is that under

the trump administration, with donald trump's particulate take on the media, do you think the relationship between power, particularly in washington, and the media is more toxic now than it has ever been? yes, of course. it's not a question of what i think, it is a fact. it's terribly toxic. i also think, in a funny way, he is a circuit breaker. he is completely different. that doesn't mean he is a junkyard dog and doesn't read or know anything. but he is a circuit breaker and it is sort of interesting. look, i didn't vote to him, it doesn't matter who i voted for, i wouldn't in a million years, but now that we have him as president and i think the hostility towards him verges on insanity in the major newspapers, they are unable to look at anything in an objective way. we have fox news who looks at the press with askins,

putting it mildly, and we have the new york times and washington post, paper i have respect for, i think going way over, there is nothing he can do to make anybody happy. it seems like various media outlets in the united states today take sides. it is all partisan and is all opinion and polemic rather than fact—based, evidence—based. do you still believe, in truth, in an objective truth in journalism? you know, i had ajob, one of my editors at the times asked me to come right about vietnam in 1972. i sat, writing the stories and he would walk into the newsroom behind me and give me a rub, like the bill murray rub. if you have watched saturday night live. and he would say how is my little commie today and he would say what do you have for me? he was very conservative.

forget the politics, i don't check my dentist to check whether he is conservative or not, i want a good dentist. he realised that even though i was an democrat and open to the war, i was not going to write a story to the best of my ability that wasn't true and he could always ask me and i would always tell him the sources. that is one of the things, even at the london review, the same checking went on at the new yorker. the editors know for whom i write and so when i say when the london review writes a 10,000 word story going against everything that has been set from the white house about the killing of bin laden. not that he didn't die. they have checked that as hard as any other story in the world. you still believe in fact checking. yes or no because i want to finish. if you were setting out today, given the climate you have described, that we've talked about in journalism today, would you still want to be a journalist in this 24/7 digital, fake news era that we live in today? i would probably want to be

something i never thought i wanted to be — an editor. i thought they were nuts, it's more to run around. you can sit, some people at the bbc are having a lot of fun and are working hard. i would want to push myself to be an editor, so i could change things because it awful. it is not good. it is just not good, it is toxic, as you say. i hadn't thought of that word. perfect word. it is toxic. we have to let the guy, let my president go see the fellow wacko in north korea, who knows? you just don't know. the hostility towards everything he says is a little over the top. i don't like him, i don't want him as president, but so what? i wish the press would get out of that a little more. we have to end it there. seymour hersch, thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello. some of us will escape with a fine friday, even mild in some places but by the weekend it's much colder.

you won't have a fine friday close to this weather front, north—east england into eastern scotland, cloudy, wet, outbreaks of rain, some snow in the scottish hills and that snow level lowering later in the day. this is your cloudy, wet zone throughout the day. also got this area of cloud and rain nudging northwards from the midlands, wales, into parts of north—west england and fringing into northern ireland. to the south of that we see some sunshine coming through, but you may catch a shower, could be heavy and possibly thundery, not everybody will. it's here you have temperatures in double figures but it is a turning colder day through eastern scotland and north—east england, going into the evening and night, that snow level lowering and maybe into lower levels you could see a light covering into places going into saturday morning and a few of these wintry showers drifting westwards overnight and a developing and getting stronger eastern wind. a much colder start on saturday morning and temperatures are not going up very far on saturday.

throughout the weekend, we have got high pressure in scandinavia pumping bitterly cold air our way and a strong wind too, so wind chill will be a factor and on that flow of air, some snow around too. some snow scattered about eastern parts of the uk through saturday, there will be some accumulations in places. many north and western areas could avoid them and stay dry, some with sunny spells. it is all about the feel of the weather, though. significantly colder compared with friday and i have mentioned the strength of the wind, making it feel like it is well below freezing for many of us on saturday into sunday. it's going to be a bit of a shock to the system after what we have had in recent days. watching saturday night, we could see a longer spell of snow into sunday morning and again that risk of disruption, ice in places with a frosty start on sunday.

that gradually edges away westwards, we see a risk of further snow showers coming into eastern parts, not everybody will see those and still, that brisk and very cold easterly wind making for a significant wind chill as well. so winter is roaring back this weekend. gradually turning milder again next week. but for the weekend, much colder, that bitter wind with a significant wind chill and yes, some of us will see some snow and there will be some disruption in places because of it too. this is the briefing. i'm david eades. our top story: britain waits for russia's response. with support from key allies over the nerve agent attack on a former spy, the uk prepares for what moscow says will be a ‘fitting' and ‘symmetrical‘ reaction to the expulsion of 23 diplomats. i'm lucy hockings in moscow, and as the diplomatic row continues, the people of russia are preparing to vote in sunday's presidential election, with vladimir putin hoping to win his fourth term in office two other main stories.

a brand—new pedestrian bridge across a motorway in miami collapses, killing four people. we'll have the latest from the scene. and in a special report we speak to civilians in syria who escaped the conflict in eastern ghouta.