The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist typically is the one posing the questions. Now, the tables have turned: the 88-year-old is the subject of an interview in the Netflix documentary Cover-Up, set to release on December 26.

Helmed by Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras, the film highlights key moments from Hersh’s career at the Associated Press, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, centering on stories that uncovered spanning the Vietnam War to the Iraq War. Hersh paused work on his Substack newsletter to share years of reporting files with the filmmakers, while his co-writers, editors, and fact-checkers discuss his reporting methods.

Here’s what to keep in mind about the documentary.

“Falling in love” with journalism

A native of Chicago, Hersh spent his childhood assisting his father with a laundry and dry-cleaning business.

During his time at a two-year college, an English instructor recognized Hersh’s writing talent and urged him to apply to the University of Chicago.

As an undergrad at UChicago, he discovered the now-defunct City News. After starting as a mailroom worker there, he transitioned to a police reporter role and “fell in love with being a reporter,” he states in the documentary.

Hersh argues that covering Chicago’s mob scene and police force served as valuable training for investigating cover-ups: “I saw tyranny up close.”

Examples of his influence

Hersh gained recognition with a 1969 Dispatch News Service investigation that uncovered the , an incident where U.S. Army troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians (which the military attempted to cover up). Myrtle Meadlo of New Goshen, Indiana—mother of Paul Meadlo, who participated in the killings—told Hersh: “I sent them a good boy, and they made him a murderer.” The story energized the anti-war movement and earned him the 1970 for international reporting.

His 1974 New York Times probe into the s role in spying on student groups spurred the creation of the Rockefeller Commission and the , which revealed the agency’s secret, illegal domestic operations.

The Washington Post’s and are household names for their Watergate coverage, but Hersh was also deeply involved. As co-director Mark Obenhaus notes, his reporting uncovered that “the burglars—the plumbers, as they were called—were in fact being paid, and even once they were indicted, they were still getting paid. So they were on the payroll of someone, and the implication was that it was the . And so that story really brought the , the Watergate burglary, into the White House and into the .”

Hersh’s sources

Some of Hersh’s most significant stories—like his investigation into the —originated from cold call tips and during his time at the Associated Press. As a former Army Reserve member, he’d chat with young officers about just to help them feel comfortable opening up to him. He started exploring U.S. military cover-ups after these servicemen described the branch as “murder incorporated.”

In the documentary, Hersh occasionally loses his patience when he thinks the crew is getting too close to a document with a source’s identity. “He was still very nervous every step of the way because he had to protect his sources,” says co-director Laura Poitras. “For me as a filmmaker, that also just reveals the importance of that source-journalist relationship and how serious it is.”

Viewers will hear for the first time from one of Hersh’s previously anonymous sources: Camille Lo Sapio, who provided him with photographs from Abu Ghraib prison where Americans were torturing inmates. She showed Hersh the photos in a restaurant booth on a laptop her daughter used while deployed. Her daughter wasn’t involved in the torture but had received the images. When Hersh asked for a copy, she recalls: “I was reluctant because I was afraid. But I wanted the facts to be exposed. I wanted the truth to be exposed.”

Sapio says Hersh convinced her to share the photos by emphasizing how important it was for the world to see them. “If there hadn’t been photographs, no story,” Hersh says in the documentary.

His support system

Hersh met his wife Elizabeth Klein (a psychoanalyst) at the University of Chicago. While she isn’t interviewed in the documentary, Hersh talks about how she helped him get through some of his toughest stories.

“I married the right person who can calm me down and keep me from going into total despair because I was writing such terrible stuff,” he says in the doc.

Reporting on the My Lai massacre and the torture of toddlers made him think of his own two-year-old; at one point, he called Liz and told her he couldn’t do the story.

As he cried into a payphone, she reassured him the story had nothing to do with his family. “I was very lucky to marry her.”

The takeaway

The documentary ends with Hersh explaining why he’s still doggedly pursuing cover-ups at 88 (working with an editor and fact-checker at Substack): “You can’t have a country that does that. That’s why I’ve been on a war path ever since. If there’s any mantra to what I do, that is it.”

In an era where journalists are falsely accused of spreading fake news, the filmmakers hope Cover-Up inspires the public and journalism funders to recognize the value of investigative work—and motivates the next generation of journalists to keep asking tough questions.

As Obenhaus puts it, the film is about “the importance of investigative journalism and the importance of a skeptical journalistic class that does not take the official record as gospel and is willing to dig deeper and discover truths that perhaps are being covered up.”