I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however.…
Unfortunately, it's also standard for planted false stories.
It's notable that Hersh won the Nobel prize for producing photographic evidence of war crimes.
None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true