Sy Hersh Slams ‘Stupid’ NYT Story on ‘Ukrainian’ Trace Behind Nord Stream Blasts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.03.2023
The veteran investigative journalist best known for blowing the lid off major US government lies, from Watergate and the My Lai Massacre to the Syrian gas attacks, penned a series of explosive Substack pieces last month revealing direct US complicity in the Nord Stream pipeline attacks.
Seymour Hersh says he has even more details corroborating the Biden administration’s involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage attacks, but cannot share them for fear of outing his sources.
“Biden authorized the blast. And the people involved know what he did. You know what orders came. I know a lot more about this than I want to say. But I have to protect the people who talk to me,” Hersh said in an interview with Austrian media.
“I know what I wrote is true. I know that it is right. I know the meetings I have described and the details of what happened in Norway. I’ve been involved with the intelligence community for 50 years,” the 85-year-old veteran journalist said, addressing the smear campaign being run against him by the legacy media in the wake of his bombshell Nord Stream-related publications.
Commenting on the story put out by The New York Times and German media earlier this month claiming that a “pro-Ukrainian group” without links to any state blew up the pipelines using a rented commercial yacht, Hersh called this version “stupid,” “unbelievable,” and a “crazy story with no sources.”
The veteran investigative journalist, one of the few in the contemporary US media landscape who still believes in the media’s role as the fourth estate, also took aim at the legacy media for ignoring his story in fealty to power. “If 90 percent of editors were fired, we’d be much better off, because they’re so afraid to write anything critical of Biden, thinking they’re going to put a Republican back in the White House,” he said.
Hersh said the attack on Nord Stream was a “signal” to the Western Europeans from Biden – that if they didn’t “want to go all the way” in the conflict with Russia, the US would cut them off. “He did it. And the price for that will be very high in Europe. Europe will not have the gas it needs and you will have to pay more for it,” he said.
Hersh, a sympathizer of the Democratic Party when it comes to social, environmental, and immigration issues, characterized Biden’s foreign policy as a disaster, with Washington’s badmouthing of China and Russia ultimately helping to “weld the two of them together.” As for the crisis in Ukraine, the journalist expects the NATO proxy conflict to fail. “Russia is going to win this war,” he said.
Seymour Hersh published his first piece on the Nord Stream attacks on February 8, detailing how US Navy divers laid the explosives that blew up the pipelines in June 2022 under the cover of NATO’s BALTOPS drills, with a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance aircraft triggering them to explode three months later. Hersh subsequently wrote several follow-up stories with additional information and historical context.
US and German media rolled out their own stories this month, citing intelligence officials, claiming that a “pro-Ukrainian group” without any ties to Kiev blew up the pipelines independently using a rented yacht. Moscow dismissed these stories as “disinformation” designed to divert attention from the real perpetrators, and repeated long-standing calls for thorough and transparent probes into the acts of terror.
US ‘obviously’ blew up Nord Stream – French politician
RT | March 17, 2023
French political party leader Florian Philippot believes it has long been obvious that the United States was behind last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe.
“Even before the war in Ukraine, the US for years fought against Nord Stream, it was a permanent part of their policy,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview published on Friday.
“In early February 2022, [US President Joe] Biden said the Americans could make it so that the pipeline was no more. That’s what happened. And it was in the interest of the Americans,” according to Philippot, who heads the right-wing The Patriots party in France.
Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Biden personally ordered the bombing of the pipelines, and that Norway assisted in the sabotage. He cited an unnamed source and supported his case using some of the same arguments as Philippot.
Biden remarked that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in early February 2022. Hersh also claimed that Biden allowed US special services to classify the operation in a way that justified not informing the US Congress about it beforehand.
Nord Stream 2 is the name of the second, newer pipeline, which was meant to greatly expand the capacity of the original Nord Stream, but was never operational. Both were disabled by sabotage.
Philippot said he considered US culpability “obvious” even before Hersh’s revelations, but was not sure about Norway’s role. He reasoned that Oslo had a motive since it “competes with Russia in gas trade, and many European nations replaced the Russian gas with Norwegian.” Both the US and Norway have denied any responsibility.
Philippot also urged France to leave NATO, saying the military alliance “needs to be disbanded because it has no reason to exist.”
“We have to stop this agenda of world war against Russia and China, it is absolutely insane,” he told the Russian news outlet, blaming the US for increasing global tensions.
He also called French President Emmanuel Macron a deceitful leader. His government “prioritizes the US, and not its own people,” Philippot stated.
He cited Macron’s decision to send billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to Kiev, even as he is pushing through an unpopular pension reform, claiming a lack of money to fund social programs.
China comments on ‘Ukrainian theory’ of Nord Stream sabotage

RT | March 15, 2023
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin found it unusual that major outlets in the West uncritically embraced the claim by unnamed US officials that a “pro-Ukrainian group” was responsible for the bombing of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines.
At the press briefing on Wednesday, Wang described the pipelines as “vital cross-border infrastructure projects,” whose destruction had a “serious impact on the global energy market and ecological environment.” China wants “an objective, impartial and professional investigation” into the bombing and those responsible held to account, the sooner the better, he added.
Asked to comment on the so-called “Ukrainian theory,” first put forth by anonymous US officials in the New York Times last week, Wang noted the sudden change of behavior by Western media, after they spent a month ignoring the report by journalist Seymour Hersh that blamed the US and Norway.
“We have noted that some Western media have been mysteriously quiet after Hersh reported that the US was behind the Nord Stream blast. But now these media are unusually simultaneous in making their voice heard. How would the US account for such abnormality? Is there anything hidden behind the scene?” Wang said.
Nord Stream 1 and 2, pipelines built under the Baltic Sea to carry Russian natural gas to Germany and onward to Western Europe, were damaged in a series of explosions in September 2022.
In early February, Hersh published a report detailing how Washington had the pipelines destroyed, describing how US divers planted the explosives and a Norwegian airplane sent the detonation signal. The US government denied all accusations, labeling Hersh’s report “utterly false and complete fiction,” while Russia and China called for an independent and transparent investigation.
The Times report quoted unnamed US officials who suggested that the saboteurs were “most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two,” citing unspecified new intelligence. The anonymous officials insisted no US or British nationals were involved, and that there was no evidence President Vladimir Zelensky or any other Ukrainian official directed the attack, either. Kiev has officially denied any responsibility for the Nord Stream blasts.
When he was shown the Times article during an interview, Hersh laughed and asked “Are they that stupid?” referring to the outlet’s anonymous sources. Nonetheless, the story was dutifully repeated by all major Western outlets.
Russian president Vladimir Putin was likewise unconvinced. During an interview with Rossiya-1 on Tuesday, he dismissed as “complete nonsense” the notion that non-state actors could be behind the complex act of sabotage. The attacks could have only been “carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state possessing certain technologies,” he said.
Germans’ Support for Kiev May Wane Amid ‘Contrived’ Nord Stream Reports, Ex-US Official Says
Sputnik – 15.03.2023
Chancellor Olaf Scholz may fail to maintain public support in Germany for arming Kiev amid hardly credible reports blaming Ukraine for the Nord Stream attack, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
In early February, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that US navy divers planted explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines. Just a few days after Scholz held talks with President Joe Biden at the White House on March 3, American and German media reports surfaced placing the blame for the attack on a pro-Ukraine group.
In an interview aired earlier on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the version of the involvement of Ukrainian activists in the explosion at Nord Stream “complete nonsense.” Putin told the Rossiya 1 broadcaster that the explosion was carried out by specialists supported by all the might of a state with certain technologies.
Kwiatkowski suggested Germans opposed to continued war aid could use the stories to blame Ukraine for Germany’s economic challenges, or they could use the “contrived” story as another example of US and NATO lies.
“Overall, the ‘story’ is an insult to the intelligence of the average German, and as such it will both weaken German support for [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, and increasingly show German voters that Scholz himself is a tool of Washington, DC, putting US desires for war on the continent above the needs and the sovereignty of actual Germans,” Kwiatkowski said.
“That support has been declining due to cost, economic turmoil in Germany, and the pressure and stress of hosting and supporting over a million Ukrainians, most of whom intend to stay there.”
The amateur statesmen and spymasters in Washington, Kwiatkowski added, barely conceived of this story in time for Scholz’s visit, she said.
“And it appears they may have needed the German Chancellor’s advice and consent, before providing the unsubstantiated and vague storyline to friendly media,” the former Pentagon analyst said.
If the report itself were more believable, Kwiatkowski explained, or was accompanied by arrests, actual evidence and data, it perhaps would not be as damaging.
Kwiatkowski said it is unlikely that German intelligence has not known the basic facts of the pipeline attacks for many months, but until Hersh’s reporting Scholz and his party could simply remain silent, “as they did.”
The pipeline sabotage was an act of war by the United States, Kwiatkowski argued, as documented by Hersh, but it remains to be seen whether this was an act of war against Russia, against Germany, “or horrifyingly, both.”
“It is most certainly a ploy to shift the focus, because if an act of war were to be committed by the dominant NATO member against the next strongest NATO member, the entire NATO construct would collapse,” she added. “This possibility must not only be denied, it must be suppressed and eliminated.”
Former CIA station chief and analyst Phil Giraldi told Sputnik the new reports do not seem credible versus what Hersh revealed from sources involved in the actual destruction of Nord Stream. He also said the timing of the new narrative is suspicious coming after the “nothing-happened” meeting between Biden and Scholz.
Eurasia Group Vice President Earl Rasmussen said the stories emerging in the wake of Scholz’s visit to Washington are obviously no coincidence and the entire embarrassing affair will diminish Germany’s respect world-wide.
Nord Stream blasts staged by a state-level actor – Putin
RT | March 14, 2023
Russian president Vladimir Putin has dismissed as “nonsense” recent claims that the attack on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines might have been carried by “Ukrainian activists.” The president made the remarks on Tuesday during his visit to an aircraft plant in the capital city of Russia’s Buryatia republic, Ulan-Ude.
“I’m sure this is complete nonsense. An explosion of this kind – of such power, at such depth, can only be carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state, posessing certain technologies,” Putin told reporters.
Media reports, suggesting that a shadowy “pro-Ukrainian group” might have been behind the blasts on the pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, emerged last week. The New York Times cited its anonymous sources saying that “no American or British nationals were involved” in the operation.
Separately, multiple German outlets reported that the country’s investigators probing the blasts had found a yacht, allegedly used for the attack, which belonged to a Polish-based firm but was “apparently owned by two Ukrainians.”
The yacht reports emerged shortly after a bombshell investigation by veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, who said US President Joe Biden’s administration had staged the attack on the pipelines with assistance from Norway.
According to his sources, the explosives were planted by US Navy divers last June under the guise of a NATO exercise and detonated remotely in September. The White House was quick to dismiss the allegations by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, branding them “utterly false and complete fiction.”
The Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism
Strategic Culture Foundation | March 10, 2023
The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.
Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.
In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.
The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.
Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.
One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.
The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.
Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.
The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.
The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.
Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.
The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.
There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.
Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?
Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.
The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.
Moscow to expose Nord Stream stonewalling – official
RT | March 10, 2023
Russia intends to share with the UN Security Council the exchanges it had with Germany, Denmark, and Sweden regarding the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, a senior Russian diplomat has revealed. Moscow is seeking to press its case for an impartial, UN-backed investigation of the incident.
Dmitry Polyansky, the deputy head of the Russian mission to the UN, told US political commentator Jackson Hinkle on Thursday that Moscow is not participating in investigations conducted by the three European countries, “not because we don’t want to, but because they keep us at bay.”
The diplomat claimed that, in a nutshell, the message from the three nations was: “We are doing what we are doing, mind your own business.” The Russian mission will distribute the exchanges among members of the UN Security Council in an effort to initiate an “independent, unbiased international investigation with all parties concerned,” Polyansky added.
Moscow wants the UNSC to authorize Secretary General Antonio Guterres to launch a probe into the attack on the undersea energy links, which were built to pump Russian natural gas directly to Germany. Three of the four pipes were ruptured by explosions in September last year in the territorial waters of Denmark and Sweden. According to Polyansky, Russia intends to put its proposal to a vote by the end of March, although Western powers will inevitably object.
Veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported last month that the sabotage was a clandestine US-Norwegian operation meant to prevent Germany from straying from the American-led campaign of sanctions against Russia. Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, called the revelation “more than a smoking gun.”
The US and Norway have denied Hersh’s allegations. A series of publications in American and German media suggested this week that a Ukrainian oligarch had sponsored the operation, which was said to have been conducted by a small team of private divers from a rented yacht. Polyansky claimed the reports were an obvious attempt to distract the public.
The diplomat insisted that the Nord Stream incident was “an extreme act of sabotage” and that the perpetrators should face accountability. Should that not happen, it would open a dangerous new chapter in international relations where attacks on civilian infrastructure are condoned, Polyansky argued.
Lavrov Warns West If Nord Stream Probe Blocked, Response Will Follow
Sputnik – 10.03.2023
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cautioned on Friday that if the Nord Stream investigation gets stonewalled, then Moscow will contemplate how to respond to the West for its direct attack on Russian property.
“This gross terrorist attack will not remain uninvestigated. If an investigation — an objective, impartial, which will be transparent, of course — is blocked, we will think about how to respond to the West on this direct attack, a direct attack on our property,” Lavrov said.
Earlier in the day, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov vowed that Moscow won’t let the international investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage be swept under the rug, and the US must stop undermining the probe.
“The road taken here is to cover this all up. But we will not allow what is happening to be swept under the rug, we call on the United States and its European satellites to stop sabotaging what is overdue, namely the launch of an independent international investigation of this event,” Ryabkov insisted.
Ryabkov added that the responsibility for the Nord Stream blasts lies squarely with the United States and castigated the media leaks as a ploy to put the probe on the wrong track.
On March 7, US media reported, citing US officials, that new intelligence suggested involvement of a “pro-Ukrainian group” in the Nord Stream incidents. At the same time, US officials reportedly said there was no proof of the Ukrainian leadership being involved in the operation.
The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, have been out of action since they were hit by explosions last September. Nord Stream’s operator, Nord Stream AG, said that the damage was unprecedented and it was impossible to estimate the time repairs might take.
Russia deems the explosions of the two pipelines to be an act of international terrorism. There are no official results of the investigation yet, but Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report in February 2023 saying that US Navy divers, operating under the cover of NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise last summer, planted remotely triggered explosives which Norway activated a few months later. The report added that US President Joe Biden had decided to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines after more than nine months of secret discussions with his national security team.
Did US raise a false flag on Nord Stream blasts?
BY BRADLEY K. MARTIN | ASIA TIMES | MARCH 9, 2023
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said an odd thing on March 7 when TASS asked him to compare his version of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline explosions (US Navy divers did it, he had reported February 8) with a newly released version from the New York Times and German media that points to non-governmental Ukrainians as culprits.
“I don’t want to get into it,” Hersh replied to the Russian wire service. “You should decide for yourself. It’s up to you.” The TASS reporter persisted, asking if Hersh thought the New York Times account had come in response to Hersh’s own investigation. He gave the same reply, saying people should come to their own conclusions.
That was pretty clever. Read both versions and you may conclude that they could fit together to point to a plausible account of how, as war raged over Ukraine, three pipelines supplying Germany’s gas supply from Russia were blown up before Vladimir Putin could use their existence to try to lure Germany out of the pro-Ukraine camp. Before the war, over half of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia.
Assemble a whole from the two versions and you might come up with this: On US President Joe Biden’s orders, US government covert types put together and with Norwegian help carried out the operation (that’s Hersh’s story); to avoid detection, they left some clues pointing elsewhere, to Ukrainians or “pro-Ukrainians” – the main clue mentioned so far being that the yacht from which the divers worked could be traced back to a yacht-rental company in Poland, a company owned by Ukrainians.
The German media account
What you might end up suspecting is a false flag.
Die Zeit, a leading German newspaper that is part of a media investigative consortium that talked with officials in several countries to put together its narrative, acknowledges the possibility thusly: “Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the investigators have not yet been able to find out who commissioned the suspected group of perpetrators. In international security circles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag operation.”
The paper hastens to add that investigators “have apparently not found evidence that confirms such a scenario.” But “the nationalities of the perpetrators are apparently unclear” since they used “professionally forged passports.”
Die Zeit narrows the gang down to “a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman.” Functionally, they were “a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor.”
Like the New York Times, the German media outlets suggest that the demolition crew consisted of Ukrainian civilians from a non-governmental “commando” force opposed to the Russian invasion.
There’s no point in asking for a smoking gun at this point. His critics point out that Hersh – who has acknowledged he opposed NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union and who is not known to be a fan of allied efforts to help Ukraine fight the war – based his own account on a single unnamed US government source. Likewise, the German media organizations that make up the investigative consortium name no sources.
Die Zeit reports that “a Western secret service is said to have sent a tip to European partner services in the autumn, shortly after the destruction,” talking about Ukrainian commando responsibility for the destruction. “After that, there are said to have been further intelligence indications that a pro-Ukrainian group could be responsible.”
A Kremlin spokesperson on March 8 was having none of it, telling journalists that “Western media reports which exonerate NATO state actors from involvement in the explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines have the hallmarks of a synchronized misinformation campaign.”
The Hersh version
Hersh’s version is that US Navy divers, “operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
Remarkable for its detail, the Hersh account claims that “Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back-and-forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.”
The debate and preparations proceeded from December 2021 when Russia was marshaling its troops, preparing to strike Ukraine from Belarus and Crimea, Hersh writes. “As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia,” he notes.
The interagency task force thus assembled “was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation,” Hersh writes.
“‘It would be a goat fuck,’ the agency was told. Throughout ‘all of this scheming,’ the source said, ‘some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”’
“Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s interagency group: ‘We have a way to blow up the pipelines.’ What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, ‘If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a similar warning, Hersh says, and lower-ranking officials were concerned by what they viewed as their seniors’ indiscretion.
The operation was headquartered in Norway, whose navy, Hersh says,
was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta-class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.
As cover, Hersh writes, the Americans had Sixth Fleet planners add to the annual naval maneuvers, already scheduled for that time and place, a research and development exercise involving “NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them… The C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22.”
After a decent interval of three months,
on September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission…
In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House – but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution… No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.
Fact-checkers and Hersh
Critics found what they said were some errors in Hersh’s version. Here is Wikipedia on that:
Hersh wrote that NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg had been cooperating with US intelligence services since the Vietnam War and has been cleared ever since. At the time the Vietnam War ended, Stoltenberg was 16 years old, and he had participated during the peak of the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in Norway. In 1985, Stoltenberg was part of the Workers’ Youth League in Norway, when the Labor Party was working to withdraw Norway from NATO.
Hersh’s article said the US divers who planted the explosives had operated from a Norwegian Alta-class minesweeper. The Norwegian Defence Forces said no Norwegian Alta-class mine sweepers had participated in BALTOPS 22 and were not in the vicinity of the explosions during the exercise.
Regarding Hersh’s allegations against the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, Lieutenant Colonel Vegard Norstad Finberg of the Norwegian armed forces said the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane is a brand new plane that has never been in an operational operation, and has only flown test flights in Norwegian airspace, and has never been over the Baltic Sea…
In the German Bundestag, members of parliament from the government disputed Hersh’s credibility and urged that public discussion of the topic be minimized for security reasons; opposition members of parliament from AfD and Die Linke initiated a parliamentary debate on February 10 about Hersh’s allegations, with Die Linke MP Sevim Dağdelen arguing that the government seemed uninterested in clarifying the truth about the bombings.
If the divers’ platform wasn’t an Alta-class minesweeper, then was it a yacht rented from a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland – the vessel the German media/European intel account mentions?
The German account tells us that the saboteurs on their rented yacht proceeded to the dive location on September 6, 2022, from the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock after loading their equipment aboard there from a delivery truck. Rostok’s a long day’s sail (325 nautical miles) from Gdynia, the major Polish port on the Baltic (in case that’s where, in Poland, the Ukrainian-owned yacht rental company is situated).
The New York Times
Disclaimer here: In my 54 years in the news business, I have generally avoided asking spooks for help. I have nothing against them and realize they are colleagues of sorts, but I can recall only a couple of cases when I sought their help. They have their jobs and I have mine. I certainly don’t rush to get their version of events whenever something happens. I assume their version is whatever their agencies have told them should be their version so I prefer to spend my time getting my own version from more direct sources.
That may help to explain why the New York Times piece bothers me. The reporters – maybe the spooks are their beat and they have to get along, or else? – seem overeager to peddle Washington’s version:
Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.
I’d advise checking your wallet if you hear from your pipe-smoking spook source that “officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals or some combination of the two. US officials said no American or British nationals were involved.”
Would you credit “US officials who have reviewed the new intelligence” and who say that “the explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services”?
After all that Seymour Hersh has told you?
Well, at least they have a policy at the New York Times permitting them to emulate Seymour Hersh (born 1937, a real veteran with a record) and stick to anonymous sources:
Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Whew. What a relief.
Bradley K Martin is a veteran foreign correspondent.
In Nord Stream attack, US officials use proxy media to blame proxy Ukraine
One month after Seymour Hersh reported that the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, US regime finds a scapegoat in Ukraine and stenographers in the NYT.
By Aaron Maté | March 8, 2023
Nearly six months after the Nord Stream pipelines exploded and one month after Seymour Hersh reported that the Biden administration was responsible, US officials have unveiled their defense. According to the New York Times, anonymous government sources claim that “newly collected intelligence” now “suggests” that the Nord Stream bomber was in fact a “pro-Ukrainian group.”
The only confirmed “intelligence” about this supposed “group” is that US officials have none to offer about them.
“U.S. officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations,” The Times reports. The supposed “newly collected” information “does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation.” Despite knowing nothing about them, the Times’ sources nonetheless speculate that “the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two.” They also leave open “the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.” (emphasis added)
When no evidence is produced, anything is of course “possible.” But the Times’ sources are oddly certain on one critical matter: “U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved.” Also, there is “no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.”
Despite failing to obtain any concrete information about the perpetrators, the Times nonetheless declares that the US cover story planted in their pages “amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.”
It is unclear why the Times has deemed their evidence-free “lead” to be “significant”, and not, by contrast, the Hersh story that came four weeks earlier. Not only does Hersh’s reporting predate the Times’, but his story contained extensive detail about how the US planned and executed the Nord Stream explosions.
Tellingly, the Times distorts the basis for Hersh’s reporting. “In making his case,” the Times claims, Hersh merely “cited” President Biden’s “preinvasion threat to ‘bring an end’ to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.” In falsely suggesting that he relied solely on public statements, the Times completely omits that Hersh in fact cited a well-placed source.
By contrast, the Times has no information about its newfound perpetrators or about any other aspect of its “significant” lead.
“U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains,” The Times states. Accordingly, US officials admit that “there are no firm conclusions” to be drawn, and that there are “enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired.” For that apparent reason, “U.S. officials who have been briefed on the intelligence are divided about how much weight to put on the new information.” The Times, by contrast, apparently feels no such evidentiary burden.
In sum, US officials have “much they did not know about the perpetrators” – i.e. everything; “enormous gaps” in their awareness of how the (unknown) “pro-Ukraine group” purportedly carried out a deep-sea bombing; uncertainty over “how much weight to put on” their “intelligence”; and even “no firm conclusions” to offer. Moreover, all of this supposed US “intelligence” happens to have been “newly collected” — after one of the most accomplished journalists in history published a detailed report on how US intelligence plotted and conducted the bombing.
Given the absence of evidence and curious timing, a reasonable conclusion is not that a Ukrainian “proxy force” was the culprit, but that the US is now using its Ukrainian proxy as a scapegoat.
As the standard bearer of establishment US media, the Times’ “reporting” is perfectly in character. Days after the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Times noted that “much of the speculation about responsibility has focused on Russia” – just as US officials would certainly hope. The narrative was echoed by former CIA Director John Brennan, who opined that “Russia certainly is the most likely suspect,” in the Nord Stream attack. Citing anonymous “Western intelligence officials”, CNN claimed that “European security officials observed Russian Navy ships in vicinity of Nord Stream pipeline leaks,” thus casting “further suspicion on Russia,” which is seen by “European and US officials as the only actor in the region believed to have both the capability and motivation to deliberately damage the pipelines.”
With the story that Russia blew up its own pipelines no longer tenable, the Times’ new narrative asks us to believe that some unnamed “pro-Ukraine group”, which “did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services” somehow managed to obtain the unique capability to plant multiple explosives on a heavily sealed pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
That narrative is already being laundered through the German media. Hours after the Times story broke, the German outlet Die Zeit came out with a story, sourced to German officials, that claims the bombing operation was carried out by a group of six people, including just “two divers.” These supposed perpetrators, we are told, arrived at the crime scene via a yacht “apparently owned by two Ukrainians” that departed Germany. How a yacht managed to carry the equipment and explosives needed for the operation is left unexplained.
The saboteurs somehow possessed the capability to carry out a deep-sea bombing, but not the awareness to properly clean up their floating crime scene. According to Die Zeit, the boat was “returned to the owner in an uncleaned condition,” which allowed “investigators” to discover “traces of explosives on the table in the cabin.” Should this lean “pro-Ukraine” crack team of naval commandos conduct another act of deep-sea sabotage, they will only need to hire a cleaning professional to get away with it.
As for motivation, we are somehow also asked to forget that Biden administration officials not only expressed the motivation, but the post-facto satisfaction. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,” senior US official Victoria Nuland vowed in January 2022. President Biden added the following month that “if Russia invades… there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” After the Nord Stream pipelines were bombed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken greeted the news as a “tremendous strategic opportunity.” Just days before Hersh’s story was published, Nuland informed Congress that both she and the White House are “very gratified” that Nord Stream is “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
Not only are global audiences asked to ignore the public statements of Biden administration principals, but their blanket refusal to answer any questions. This was put on display in Washington this past weekend, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz paid Biden a White House visit. Unlike Scholz’s last DC trip, there was no joint news conference. This was understandable: the last time they appeared together, Biden blurted out that he would “bring an end” to Nord Stream, leaving Scholz to stand next to him in awkward silence. This time around, the two briefly sat before a group of reporters who were quickly shooed out of the room, much to Biden’s apparent glee.
Inadvertently, the Times’ account exposes new holes in the failed attempts to refute Hersh’s story.
Members of the NATO state-funded website Bellingcat, falsely presented to NATO state audiences as an independent investigative outlet, have attempted to cast doubt on Hersh’s claims by arguing that open-source tracking at the time of the bombing fails to detect the vessels he reported on. But as the Times story notes, investigators are seeking information about ships “whose location transponders were not on or were not working when they passed through the area, possibly to cloak their movements.” Hersh has made this same point in interviews, noting that when Biden flew into Poland before his visit to Kiev last month, his “plane switched off its transponder” to avoid detection, as the Associated Press reported. Unfortunately for self-styled digital sherlocks, major international crimes – particularly those involving intelligence agencies – cannot be solved from their laptops.
Hersh was also pilloried for citing a single anonymous source. The Times’ story, by contrast, relies on multiple anonymous sources, who, unlike Hersh, have no tangible information to offer. After ignoring Hersh’s story for a full month, the Times’ news section was forced to acknowledge it for the first time. And the best that its anonymous sources could come up with is not only an evidence-free, caveat-filled narrative, but a story that does not challenge a single aspect of Hersh’s detailed account.
In another contrast, Hersh is one of the most accomplished and impactful journalists in the history of the profession. Two of the journalists on the Times story, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman, have bylined multiple stories that spread demonstrable falsehoods sourced to anonymous US officials.
In the summer of 2020, Barnes and Goldman were among the Times journalists who laundered CIA disinformation that Russia was paying bounties for dead US troops in Afghanistan. When the Biden administration was forced to acknowledge that the allegation was baseless, the Times tried to water down its initial claims in an attempt to save face.
In January, Barnes co-wrote a Times story which claimed, citing unnamed “U.S. officials” more than a dozen times, that “Russian military intelligence officers” were behind “a recent letter bomb campaign in Spain whose most prominent targets were the prime minister, the defense minister and foreign diplomats.” But days later, as the Washington Post reported, Spanish authorities arrested “a 74-year-old Spaniard who opposed his country’s support for Ukraine but appears to have acted alone.” (Moon of Alabama is one the few voices to have called out the Times’ fraudulent reporting).
That same month, Goldman shared a byline, alongside fellow “Russian bounties” stenographer Charlie Savage, on a Times story which argued that Special Counsel John Durham has “failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry,” even though Durham’s findings have yet to be released. As I reported for Real Clear Investigations, the Times made its case by omitting countervailing information and distorting the available facts – as is the norm for establishment media coverage of Russiagate.
The US officials behind the Times’ latest Nord Stream tale presumably believe that they have offered the best counter to Hersh that they could. That it is devoid of concrete information, and written by Times staffers with a track record of parroting US intelligence-furnished propaganda, ultimately has the opposite effect.
The Times’ narrative can only be seen as further confirmation that Hersh found the Nord Stream bomber in Washington. That explains why anonymous US officials are now using proxies in establishment media to scapegoat their proxy in Ukraine.
Watch or listen to my recent interview with Seymour Hersh here.
It’s Zugzwang for Biden in Ukraine
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 8, 2023
There is a cardinal difference between the Washington Post report of June 18, 1972 by Alfred Lewis breaking the news of the Watergate burglary and the sensational claim by the New York Times on Tuesday — per a CNN report — that “intelligence suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group” sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The WaPo reported on Watergate several months after Richard Nixon’s thumping victory for a second term as president, while the Times’ claim has been advanced even before Joe Biden has announced his candidacy for the November 2024 election.
A common thread, though, could be that while the Lewis story was followed up a day later by two young Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Times report also hopes to be a developing story but with a contrarian purpose.
If Watergate wiretapping forced Nixon to resign eventually, the big question is whether the Nord Stream sabotage will also be the undoing of the Biden presidency?
These are early days. But the reverberations of the Times’ claim are already being felt in Europe — Ukraine and Germany — although the report was carefully worded to keep Ukrainian leaders outside its purview.
But the bottom line is the caveat that the Times report was not made with high confidence and is apparently not the predominant view of the US intelligence community, and that the Biden Administration has not yet identified a culprit for the attack — succinctly put, this isn’t necessarily the last word on the subject!
That’s smart thinking — with an eye on Seymour Hersh, perhaps? Meanwhile, Ukraine has flatly denied involvement and German media reports stressed that there’s no proof that Ukrainian authorities ordered the attack or were involved in it. Evidently, Kiev and Berlin (and Washington) prioritise that the business of war must continue as before. And neither is in a position to hit back in defence.
But Moscow is plainly derisive. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti, “Clearly, the authors of the terrorist attack want to distract attention. Obviously, this is a coordinated stuffing in the media.”
Indeed, when asked about the Times report, the highly opinionated US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby referred questions to investigating European authorities and excused himself saying he was “not going to get ahead of that investigative work.” Kirby played it safe.
So, as Lenin would have asked: ‘Who stands to gain?’ To be sure, what we have here is a high level leak planted in the Times by the US intelligence, which is non-attributable but probably serves as kite flying to see how far it will travel, especially in Europe, or, equally, it could just be, as Peskov put it, the stuff of an “obvious misinformation campaign coordinated by the media.”
Either way, someone high up in the Biden Administration is playing for high stakes. This is taking place at a time when Biden himself has been implicated by Seymour Hersh for ordering the destruction of Nord Stream — an act of international terrorism — and of course Biden is yet to announce his candidacy for the 2024 election.
As things stand, candidate Biden will not want the Nord Stream scandal to be another Albatross around his neck. The point is, if he stands for election, which he likely intends to, Biden can be sure that the scandalous Ukraine stories concerning him and his son Hunter Biden, dating back to his time as vice-president, will roar back to centrestage.
The questioning that the US ambassador to Estonia Senator George Kent was subjected to by Senator Tom Cruz at the hearings on his appointment in Tallinn in December suggested that the Republicans have a lot of dope on Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine and are waiting for the right moment to strike.
Kent, a career diplomat and former deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs with three stints in Kiev — the second time as DCM from 2015 to 2018 and the third as Charge d’Affaires a.i, in 2021 during Biden presidency— is in Senator Cruz’s crosshairs.
Last week, again, Sen. Cruz returned to the topic. This time around, he tore into attorney general Merrick Garland accusing the Justice Department of leaking uncontrollably in a calibrated bid to save Biden’s reputation.
Conceivably, the implication by the Times report that a “pro-Ukrainian group” may have been behind the Nord Stream attack can be seen as a veiled threat to the powers that be in Kiev to understand which side of their bread is buttered if push comes to the shove.
So far, Zelensky has played ball. Biden is bending over backward to appease Zelensky, if the manner in which the move to sack the Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, a close ally of the president, was summarily shelved is any indication.
The western media was copiously reporting on a purge under way in Kiev but when the trail came to Reznikov and Zelensky dug in, the US inspectors deputed from Washington to investigate the corruption scandal in the defence ministry simply disappeared.
Indeed, Biden must willy-nilly remain in power beyond 2024 or else he becomes extremely vulnerable. Therefore, Biden desperately needs a second term. He cannot be too sure even if some other Democratic candidate wins in 2024. God forbid, if the Republicans seize the presidency, Biden and his family members will be fighting with their backs against the wall.
But there is also the flip side. Biden’s candidacy will bring Nord Stream, Hunter Biden, Ukraine war, et al, to the centre stage of the election campaign. Is it worth the risk?
Frankly, it is a ‘zugzwang’ for Biden. It is his turn to move, but all of his moves are so bad that having to move can lose the game — and in chess, there is nothing like “pass,” either.
The sabotage of the Nord Stream forms part of the Ukraine issue. Whoever destroyed that pipeline did it with the intention to eliminate any residual prospect left of a revival of the post-cold war Russian-German alliance in Europe built around the two countries’ energy cooperation and interdependency.
The Biden team in sheer naïveté thought that sabotage of the Nord Stream would be a geopolitical masterstroke to humiliate Germany and make it a vassal state, destroy all bridges leading from Russia to Europe, and consolidate the US’ transatlantic leadership. They overlooked, out of sheer hubris, that it still remained a cowardly criminal act.
To compound matters, the war in Ukraine flowed out of Biden’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream (which, according to Hersh, dated back to September 2021.) Today, Biden cannot easily end his war as he is also beholden to Zelensky (who knows far too much about Hunter Biden’s escapades in Kiev.)
Will Biden Administration succeed in hushing up the Nord Stream scandal? Hersh is sure to revisit the topic. Biden cannot walk away from the crime now. But it doesn’t cease to be a crime.
Biden’s remaining option may be to announce he’s going to contest the 2024 election because Build Back Better Framework is still a work in progress.
