SEYMOUR M. HERSH, David Remnick, and protecting Jacques Chirac. I have written cryptically about this before from Beirut, but now I will name the names. I talked to at least three people in Lebanon who told me about this. A former minister who talked to Hersh on the matter confirmed it to me. Apparently, Seymour Hersh has documentation revealing the history and extent of Rafiq Hariri's funding for Chirac over the years. Under pressure from the US government, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, has refused to run the story. Chirac, as is well known, has a well-known fondness for Arab cash (not for Arab causes, you naive). In fact, yesterday on the plane coming to the US, I read the account of Saddam's chief of protocol in which he recounts trips to Paris to shower Chirac with gifts, since the days when he was mayor. At one point, when he took shipments of gifts to Mrs. Chirac, she exclaimed: "Monsieur Saddam overwhelms us with gifts." (Whayyib, Haytham Rashid, Fi Dhill Saddam (In the Shadow of Saddam), (Damascus: Ward, 2004), p. 72).