The headlines are shocking and the denials emphatic. The implications are enormous and the source reliable, but some stories are best summarized by the international headlines they produce:
“Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion” (The New York Post). “Did Biden order an attack on Russia’s Nord Stream Pipelines? What we know” (Newsweek) “White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion ‘utterly false'” “Norway denies Hersh Report” (Reuters) “White House rejects Seymour Hersh Report that US was behind Nord Stream Sabotage” (South China News). From Europe: “US behind Nord Stream bombing: veteran journalist” (Nuova Europa). “White House rejects report that US was behind Nord Stream Sabotage” France 24. “Nord Stream blasts done by CIA says investigative journalist” (Business Standard). “White House dismisses claims US caused Nord Stream pipeline explosions” (Sky News). Finally, “White House is forced to deny sending frogmen to destroy Russia’s stranglehold on European gas following bombshell from Pulitzer Seymour Hersh” (UK Daily Mail).
Very interesting headlines …
On September 26th, 2022 three out four international natural gas undersea pipelines known as Nord Stream were blown up beneath the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany. Seymour Hersh in a February 8th, 2023 Substack online article reports that the demolition operation was coordinated at the US Navy Diving & Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida — and carried out with the active participation of the CIA and the government of Norway.
Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, has presented a series of internationally significant reports over the years, but he has also been faulted for an over-reliance on anonymous sources. His reporting has been contentious and provocative starting with his first book on the Vietnam War, “Coverup: The Army’s secret investigation of the massacre at My Lai,” and continuing into the Watergate era with “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House,” through a highly popular yet polarizing JFK book “The Dark Side of Camelot” and “The Sampson Option, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.”
Many observers object to his anonymous sources, for instance in his questioning of the official narrative in Syria’s use of chemical weapon or the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. As an investigative journalist Hersh is well respected, and his reputation for credibility falls somewhere between the late Mae Brussell and Bob Woodward.
Like many of those previous Hersh investigative scenarios, the Nord Stream sabotage story has both its strengths and weaknesses. The Substack report has an impeccable internal logic, and a very believable narrative — but it lacks named sources or documentation for it’s most shocking conclusions.
According to Hersh, the United States government had serious concerns and reservations about the lucrative ‘Russia to Germany’ natural gas energy pipeline before and during it’s construction, as the Nord Stream project would enrich Putin’s heavily sanctioned Russia by supplying nearly 50% of Germany’s natural gas needs. According to Hersh, in December 2021 a few months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan brought together a secret task force from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the US Treasury and members of Biden’s PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) in order to hash out possible US responses to Vladimir Putin’s looming attack on Ukraine. The group was informed that it was President Biden’s desire that the Russian pipelines to Germany be destroyed, Hersh states. Joe Biden, appearing with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in February 2022 said, “If Russia invades, there will no longer be a Nord Stream Two. We will bring it to an end.” Similarly US State Department Undersecretary Victoria Nuland said in a briefing, “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream Two will not move forward.”
According to Hersh these public announcements surprised the secret CIA / Navy team planners, but also gave them cover, as they developed a theory that the sabotage was now official policy and so it need not be reported to the joint intelligence oversight Congressional leadership, the ‘group of eight.’
“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,” Hersh reported.
Meanwhile, NATO member Norway was selected by the CIA / Navy team as the local staging area. Norway, Hersh says, is heavily interlocked and indebted to the USA for it’s military, naval and air force support, as the Scandinavian country hosts American airbases and secret submarine bases in the Baltic near Norway’s historic adversary, Russia.
According to the blockbuster Seymour Hersh article on Substack, Norway assisted in the technical US Navy dive operation during the annual June 2022 NATO Baltic Sea training operation known as Baltic Operations 2022, or BALTOPS22.
At first the plan was to detonate the underseas C-4 explosives just four days after the NATO wargames ended, Hersh says. But the White House and NSC decided that the proximity in time was too obvious and they asked the Navy Dive team, the CIA and Norwegians to figure out a way to delay the demolition blast to a later date. It was technically possible, and the time delayed C-4 unit was planted by US Frogmen during the June NATO Baltic war games, he said, citing anonymous first hand sources.
“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 Two and then on to Nord Stream One — a few hours later the high powered C-4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were out out of commission,” Hersh asserted in his Substack article. The White House, CIA and Norway have all officially denied the accusations.
(While SUBSTACK is patron-paid online news and author’s website, HNN was able to access and read the Seymour Hersh Nord Stream sabotage article for free. You may be required to give a name and email address to get temporarily behind the SUBSTACK paywall. Please read the original Seymour Hersh story on substack.com)