Seymour Hersh, the Knights of Malta and the Military Elite

The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh exposed the abuses at Abu Ghraib and has won nearly every journalism award, including a Pulitzer for uncovering the My Lai massacre. But he is also known to peddle in gossip and innuendo. Is this one of those times? At a speaking engagement in Qatar, where the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service has a branch campus, Hersh unloaded some strange theories about the Knights of Malta and members of the Joint Special Operations Command.

"...Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community."

The Knights of Malta became a religious and military organization during the First Crusade, with the mission to defend the Holy Land from Islamic forces. Of course,  who knows if Hersh was just riffing. He once reportedly said "If the standard for being fired was being wrong on a story, I would have been fired long ago." So maybe he is not all that worried about people listening.