The Nord Stream Sabotage, Seymour Hersh, and the Mainstream Media Disinterest
As usual, the story and lack of response are very revealing — what are the implications of this bombshell piece?
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During the month of February, American media was off the rails with their coverage of a freaking balloon. Fear-mongering over a “Ch!nese Spy Balloon” dominated the headlines for weeks while Republicans attempted to score cheap political points by claiming America had “never looked weaker.” In response, the US decided to let the UFO speculation run wild as it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars taking out a few more “flying objects” — one apparently being a $12 balloon belonging to a hobby group.
Fast forward a few weeks, and those stories completely crumbled, the US was aware of the “spy balloon” the moment it took off, admitted it probably just blew off course, and said it didn’t get any intel that satellites couldn’t, meaning the entire frenzy was a made up emergency.
The obvious next question is why the coverage of a few balloons was so hyperbolic and insane.
Part of it was maybe due to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s now-canceled trip to Beij!ng, but I also speculated that the entire chaos was probably a Wag-the-Dog-style distraction because of two important yet little-reported stories from the beginning of the month.
There was the train derailment and toxic chemical spill that is being dubbed “mini-Chernobyl” in East Palestine, Ohio, which is finally getting the media coverage it deserved from the start.
And the other ignored yet critically important story was a piece from America’s most influential investigative journalist placing blame on America for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.
The article “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” by Seymour Hersh should have been commanding headlines across the planet since it was published on February 8th.
It should have created in-depth investigations to verify or refute the accusations.
And it should lead to intense debate, discussion, and rethinking by global leaders — especially in Europe — as to how to move forward geopolitically.
Instead, it is being all but ignored in the West.
Time will tell what kind of impact these bombshell revelations will have, but some claim it could be Seymour Hersh’s most important work yet — which is high praise.
The article “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” by Seymour Hersh should have been commanding headlines across the planet since it was published on February 8th.
While the corporate media can ignore or downplay the message, it cannot ignore the messenger. Seymour Hersh’s track record speaks for itself, and any other journalist dropping such an explosive piece would have met demeaning criticism and slander.
Although he’s received a bit of that, it doesn’t work well when it comes to Sy Hersh.
The man has been breaking stories that alter geopolitics and rattle the centers of power for six decades. He came to national prominence and won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War. He covered the Watergate Scandal, the secret US bombing of Cambodia, the CIA domestic spy regime, and in 2004, he detailed the abuses and prisoner torture program at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
To go with his Pulitzer Prize, Hersh has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, five George Polk Awards, and two National Magazine Awards.
In the debate about the most important American journalist of the last century, Seymour Hersh is surely in the conversation.
And in that vein of making power centers sweat with discomfort, this most recent piece could be his most impactful.
“How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline,” subtitle, “The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret — until now” is incredibly damning.
(Side note: he wrote a separate piece that is worth reading and explains why he chose to post on Substack versus a mainstream outlet)
“The primordial interest of the US, over which for a century we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — had been [to sabotage] the relationship between Germany and Russia…” — George Friedman
The article gives a bit of backstory to the American hatred of the Nord Stream pipelines and, using an anonymous source with alleged inside knowledge, walks through the planning and execution by US Navy dive teams of this covert operation. All of which was supposedly directed by the White House itself.
From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance… America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income [Nord Stream 2], and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia — while diminishing European reliance on America. — S.H.
As a person who’s very critical of American foreign policy, even I was surprised by how routinely and rabidly US politicians spoke out against a German-backed infrastructure project.
But as George Friedman, strategist and founder of Geopolitical Futures, said back in 2015, “The primordial interest of the US, over which for a century we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — had been [to sabotage] the relationship between Germany and Russia because united they are the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Again, even I am surprised by how out in the open Americans in Washington DC were and continue to be about all of this stuff. So, for decades the US has despised the Nord Stream pipeline and was doing everything it could to make sure Nord Stream 2 never went live.
Fast forward to the Biden presidency and the escalating tensions in Eastern Europe. Hersh reports that “In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force — men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments.”
The White House was allegedly exploring options for a response to Russian action.
What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines — and that he was delivering on the desires of the President… Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.” — S.H.
Hersh writes that the team was looking at options like a submarine attack or Air Force planes dropping bombs with delayed fuses but knew they needed something more subtle. In the end, they decided to use Navy divers that train in Panama City, Florida.
Using Navy divers was much more covert than submarines, but importantly, by not using members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose operations must be reported and briefed to Senate and House leadership, the planning team could avoid leaks and keep the sabotage plan hidden.
Then weeks before the invasion, secret task force member Victoria Nuland — whose name and escapades every American should learn — went into a State Department briefing and kind of gave away the game, stating, “I want to be very clear to you today. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Apparently, that didn’t create too many press waves because, as mentioned, American politicians had been calling for the end of the pipeline for a decade. But then, on February 7th, less than three weeks before the invasion, Biden had a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House.
At the press briefing afterward, he uttered this mayhem, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
When asked the follow-up, “How will you, how will you do that, exactly? Since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control.”
In front of the freaking German Chancellor, Biden said, “We will, uh, I promise you we will be able to do it.”
On that strange episode, Hersh wrote the following:
Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”… The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it — but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.” — S.H.
The article goes into how Norway was briefed and a critical player in the mission. According to Hersh, “The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island.”
But they needed a way to be operating around the area without raising suspicion. Again, Hersh claims the Norwegians had a fix and proposed using the NATO training exercise in the Baltic Sea that happens every June and includes allied ships from throughout the region. That year, it was known as Baltic Operations 22 or BALTOPS 22.
The Americans added a “research and development” element to the exercise that allowed dive teams to be in the water off the coast of the chosen Bornholm Island. Allegedly, they were first going to place C4 with a 48-hour fuse, but the planners thought this was a little too close to the training and would surely raise suspicion.
Hersh goes into the planning and dynamics that went into this complicated problem. It’s not an easy task to plant explosives deep underwater, have them sit there for weeks or months, and then be able to detonate them at the press of a button.
But of course, they found a solution, and Hersh wrote, “The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology.”
We all know what happened next.
The pipelines exploded on September 26th, 2022, and the US media immediately blamed Moscow without ever giving a motive. One pundit stated, “We’d have to conclude, without the evidence, that it was most likely Russia.”
The idiotic wall-to-wall coverage was completely in sync.
The Western public was supposed to believe the Russians, rather than simply keep the valves closed, went all the way into Danish waters to blow up their own expensive and highly lucrative pipeline, which was also one of their most useful negotiating tools.
The whole American government and media response was a laughable circus.
Hersh wrote, “A few months later, when it emerged that Russian authorities had been quietly getting estimates for the cost to repair the pipelines, the New York Times described the news as “complicating theories about who was behind” the attack. No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.”
Secretary of State Blinken said shortly afterward that the explosion created a “tremendous opportunity,” and Victoria Nuland recently stated, “I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
And we’re supposed to believe the whole thing is an unsolvable mystery.
Of course, the US and CIA strongly deny the allegations, and the source is unknown. These are uncorroborated allegations.
There will probably never be “smoking gun” proof, many of the details will probably never be confirmed, and some materials could possibly-maybe-hopefully be released to the public in 75 freaking years and heavily redacted.
The article by Seymour Hersh ends with words from his source complimenting the audacity and execution of the operation, but saying, “The only flaw was the decision to do it.”
We’ll now see what the implication will be.
The Western public was supposed to believe the Russians, rather than simply keep the valves closed, went all the way into Danish waters to blow up their own expensive and highly lucrative pipeline, which was also one of their most useful negotiating tools.
In general, when it comes to the media, not covering an important story can sometimes say more than scrutinizing coverage. That is surely the dynamic at play here. The lack of interest in who blew up critical German infrastructure is astounding.
If there was even slight evidence pointing towards Moscow or some rogue actor, the Western media would continue to be all over the story, and European nations would be demanding a full investigation and action from the UN Security Council.
Instead, there’s been scant coverage in the months since the explosion. And any discussion of the Seymour Hersh article tries to downplay the significance, like Reuters using the dismissive term “blog post” when reporting on Washington’s denial.
But nobody is offering alternative theories.
There aren’t too many global players who had the motive, access to the Baltic Sea, the capability to reach the pipelines and plant explosives deep under the water with a long time delay, and the ability to do that all in secret.
The list of suspects and possible theories is tiny, and the Western press seems utterly disinterested.
American economist Jeffrey Sachs has been making the rounds, asking good questions, and ruffling feathers by trying to keep the story top of mind. He recently said, “The Swedes went in to clean up the debris. And what did the Swedes say? We cannot share our findings with Germany because of national security. Can you figure that one out?”
He also recently presented to the UN Security Council and demanded a full investigation.
Why would Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and the entire EU not demand the same? Why would the Western media not have continual updates and investigative pieces as to who could have committed this unprecedented act of terrorism?
Surely politicians throughout the EU are having real conversations on the topic behind closed doors.
They have to be aware of the Seymour Hersh revelations.
And they must be asking very uncomfortable questions.
If the US would so casually and covertly blow up German energy infrastructure, what else would they do?
While those types of questions rattle around European capitals, we’ll see if any political figures emerge who are critical of the Yanks or if any countries rethink the relationship with the Mafia Don on the other side of the Atlantic.
At a minimum, there should be an investigation to refute or corroborate the Seymour Hersh piece.
And one would expect the “free press” to at least be a little bit curious.
But once again, the lack of coverage speaks volumes.
