Russia is looking for answers from Washington after a report from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said the US blew up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia and Germany.
“The White House must now comment on all these facts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram in response to the report. For their part, the White House has denied the reporting, calling Hersh’s work “complete fiction.”
Hersh cited one source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning” who said US Navy divers planted C4 explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last June during widely publicized NATO drills in the Baltic Sea, known as BALTOPS 22.
The source told Hersh that the operation was coordinated with Norway. The explosives were detonated by a sonar buoy that was dropped by a Norwegian spy plane on September 26, 2022.
The most explosive allegation in the report is the fact that the Biden administration began planning how to destroy the pipeline before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In early 2022, the source said that a CIA working group that was coming up with ways to sabotage Nord Stream said they “have a way to blow up the pipeline.”
Shortly after the plans were devised, President Biden publicly threatened the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a project the US tried to stop for years through sanctions. “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” President Biden said on February 7, 2022.
A few weeks earlier, Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, made a similar threat. Hersh’s source said Nuland and Biden’s comments were like “putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it.”
In the wake of the Nord Stream bombings, Western media, and some Western officials blamed the attack on Russia even though the pipelines are mainly owned by Gazprom, Russia’s state natural gas company. But recently, it’s been acknowledged by major American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, that there’s no evidence pointing to Moscow’s involvement.
The Times of London reported last week that Germany is “open” to theories that a Western country attacked the Nord Stream pipelines in an attempt to blame the incident on Russia. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have been investigating the sabotage but have shared very few details and have not said publicly who they think was responsible.
US officials have openly celebrated the Nord Stream bombings, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who called it a “tremendous opportunity” to wean Europe off Russian gas. Nuland recently said she and others in the administration were happy that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was just a “hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
Hersh’s report said Blinken, Nuland, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan were major players in the plot to destroy the pipeline. While the White House and the CIA deny the report, and critics are pointing out it only has one source, Hersh is a widely revered journalist. The 85-year-old exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and broke the story about the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
It is, of course, Russia who is looking for answer, not Germany. Germany needs no answers. Germany is proud to participate in a new Drang nach Osten. This time as a minor partner.
It reminded me a long time forgotten piece of poetry from Deutschland eine Wintermarchen by Heinrich Heine:
Sie stelzen noch immer so steif herum,
So kerzengerade geschniegelt,
Als hatten sie verschluckt den Stock,
Womit man sie einst geprugelt.
(They still strut around so stiffly, so snazzy, as if they had swallowed the stick with which they were once beaten.)
I don’t think Germany had a Drang to invade Russia, the Kaiser was a cousin of the Czar and they were friend sand liked each other much, Germany and Russia were big business trade partners, it was the thorn in the British side, that is why they signed a military treaty with Poland against Germany which opened the door for war on the continent for them, the second WW was similar, Germany was encircled again, they did not want a war with Russia and now is not much different, it is to break the economic partnership between Russia and Germany. See the effort of the Anglo-Saxons to lure NATO in the big WW III with help from Poland and the three poor Baltic states.
The poem is a great photo of the time and people.
George Friedmann of Strafford explains it well from the American point of view.
Germans made the treaty with Russia in August 1939 because Poland refused the free pass for German army. Hitler was outraged because he considered Poland as a reliable partner. Poles were very much enthusiastic to participate with Germans in a new crusade against Russia. Poland was first who made an alliance with Germany. Pilsudski did it just one year after Hitler got the power. The behavior of Poland is impossible to understand. Just plain nastiness and stupidity. Actually, by this idiotic act they spoiled everything. Britain and France, the same as Italy, hoped all united Europe will go together to the war against Bolshevik Russia.
They had as much deception as the current allies have.
To me the question is if the government can keep the media under control, what happens when the truth comes out while the people struggle to get warm and have food on the table? Not only in Germany in other countries to including the Scandinavians. Things can get out of hand, I think.
Germans know who exploded the pipeline. It was obvious from the beginning. The situation is somewhat ridiculous. American strategists are treating them the same as they treat Ukrainians. They even forced Germans to send their tanks to Ukraine while Americans themselves don’t hurry to send their Abrams.
These crazies risk the lives of every living thing on this planet to try to control gas??
Biden is finished NO sane person will want DEMENTIA BIDEN ANY WHERE NEAR THE LEVERS OF AMERICAN POWER…!!!!!!!
We wish. Unfortunately they’ll try to keep the zombie pumped up as in ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’. 2024 looks very problamatic for the Democrats unless they can get a bunch of those dead voters to show up at the polls…..again.
Or as Wars once said, Weekend at Biden’s 😁
… and make way for the second coming of the passion of the trump
It’s a bull… story. Nothing Norway has done in recent past indicates they would be intimately involved in a plan for such an action against Russia(their forever neighbor) and their ally Germany. If it was Poland or UK instead of Norway maybe I would believe it but not Norway. Also Norway is a well run country so I don’t see their security apparatus operating with us without the approval of their government.
Norway has been doing lot of military activity lately. Sorry, we will need more than your opinion to doubt Hersh..
Fair enough. Free thinking is what help us make informed decisions.
Gosh no, Toto, Norway wouldn’t do anything bad like that!
Duh.
And Holy Shit.
Pray Russia doesn’t decide to respond in kind.
Russia already knows that the US was behind the sabotage, regardless of direct involvement. Russia has remained cool and collected in the face of multiple provocations, and no one was injured or killed in this one. In major league baseball, each team keeps a scorebook of the batters who are struck by an opposing pitcher’s ball, and pays it back in due time. I would not be surprised if nations do the same.
Right. They’ll have to wait until the equivalent of the clean-up hitter comes to the plate and knock him on his ass.
ByeDone’s pitching in the eighth, has given up three consecutive home runs, and ain’t nobody warming up in the bullpen.
“The most explosive allegation…is…that the Biden administration began planning how to destroy the pipeline before Russia invaded”
Dave, what are you talking about!?
Hersch’s “most explosive allegation” is that an insider told him the US did it!
After the act of sabotage I recalled the press conference and the Scholz demeanor and it made me suspect that Biden, the kind of man he is, had told Scholz what would happen to the pipeline. As long as Scholz could keep it shut it was ok, but when people started to demonstrate and put pressure on the government they blew the pipelines up. They had prepared for that and Scholz and the Swedes knew it. Norway and Poland must have known too, the pipeline from Norway to Poland was ready to pump gas the very next day. There was no ship traffic either at the time of the explosion.
D’WHEELS HAVE CUM OFF BIDEn”S BUS
This will definitely focus Latin America and other world regions. Very few anywhere believe a word spoken north of the Mexican border or by former colonial powers.
Shaky NATO members now have justification to tell Biden to go to hell, they will not go to war against Russia.
Maybe the neocons and Biden crossed the red line and Seymour helped them to prove it. That would be the biggest success for the great journalist Seymour Hersh.
Great job, the best yet.
NPR@ 8;50: Seymore WHO…??
Let’s see… Who am I going to believe, Sy Hersch or Joe Biden……
I’ll take door number 1, Alex.
we should believe joe biden.
because he literally said “we will put an end to the nordstream”.
oops that means that we should actually believe hersch.
since biden is now claiming that was a fiction.
WoW!!!!! The magnatude of this attempt to sweep this elephant under the rug ought to be the end of many of those who must think that they can walk on water and feign amnesia!!!!!!!!! BBC coming on in one miniute………. Will they follow this mad administration… First story, UN aid convoy to Syria, It is definitely “Seymore Who” at the BBC too. It seems that the “Full Spectrum Dominance” the Neocoms crave is alive and well this morning in their Journsalism…… This is absolutely insane! We are witnessing an absolute information BLACKOUT of relevant journalism. This cover up tells all anyone needs to know on the cabal that has taken on this peralous journey into the unknown of domination, irresponsibility & deciet:! Unprecedented in my long experience… How long can it be maintained…..???????
This scenario implicates Stoltenburg in the planing and LOCKING UKRAIJNE INTO WAR with Russia when he nixed negotiations! There is NO WAY this scenario Hersh presents could have gone forward without Stoltenburgn signing off on blowing the pipe. I don’t think there is any scenario of the provenance Hersh presents that is not an act of war against Russia by “defensive organization” NATO. I wonder what the NATO Gnomes, like N Macedonia and Montenegro are thinking as they have their morning coffee about very possibly being at WAR with RUSSIA with enough thermonuclear devices to nuke every Gnome 50 or 60 Times…
The interesting response to this will be Germany’s, not Russia’s.
It is Germany that was stabbed in the back by its ally.
Well, yes. But that was already understood. Germany had agreed to sanctions against Russian gas, so Nord Stream 2 was never opened at the western end, and Nord Stream 1 was being throttled. It’s more like Germany fell on its own knife to please the US.
But the people were getting ready with demonstrations demanding to open the pipeline.
Germans are aware of their vassal status. They have nothing to say.
But we can believe Scholz was told to shut up and he did and will continue to do as told.
But the Russians, with certainty know now how broken and unreliable NATO really is. Scandinavians are the same scum as the other NATO members, just as corrupt as they are.
Where are the Sy Hershs to fill the role he has filled over the years? Does the US have any journalists?
Not many, mostly paid shills.
Glen Greenwald, Aaron Matte, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, and of course the original, Sy Hersh himself.
Nice you listed some names and there are so many more, and Consortium News publishes great journalists. Many, many thanks to all of them. They are real heroes.
Assange, an Australian, is paying a high price for doing his job as journalist.
I love Caitlin Johnstone myself, Jeff. She manages to convey both horror and humor in a way that makes her columns very readable.
Caitlin Johnstone is a New Zealander who fled the country in fear of the state authorities.
Indeed.
She is at the very top of my list. She articulates more effectively than anyone else the tragedy of our times … and more pointedly than anyone else identifies the criminals responsible.
The U.S. Pressitutes have become the biggest purveyor of lies. Saying that Russia sabotaged their own pipeline should have been enough to quickly figure out who the real culprits are.
I mean to anyone that THINKS it was obvious from the start. Unfortunately, nobody in the mainstream media thinks any more, they parrot.
I believe Hersh, Biden and his cabal have no credibility at all, neither do the back stabbing deceptive NATO partners. The leader of the alliance stabbed the next biggest ally in the back.
I don’t know, but I do BELIEVE Biden told Scholz before the press conference that is what he will do to him if he opens his mouth. And Scholz did as told, he said, he knows who did it but can’t tell.
The backstabbing among NATO members is more widespread than expected. I am sure President Putin and his people have known a lot already, if not they must be pleased to find out what back stabbers the US/NATO allies really are. That reassures them that it is an alliance based on extortions and deceit, it is not likely to be a dependable alliance. Sweden the de facto NATO member just fits in with the pack of criminal governments. Finland will be comfortable with them too.
All traitors of the people that elected them and pay their salaries.
This news was the perfect “out” the Pentagon was looking for. Remember, those generals want to make money but not at the expense of a nuclear war. Not to mention the fact that Ukraine does not have a bright future.
The source who leaked this information on purpose will now place Biden and the CIA on the defense. It will also now drive a wedge between NATO members like Germany and Norway and give them an “out” to try to settle with Russia. Germany will go thru a chancellor change in the coming year.
This may also open the door for either impeachment of Biden or denying him of a re-election.
Impeach Biden? He’s got the perfect insurance policy. Vice-President Kackles is bad enough, but a Hellary clone for President???
Why r u so against keep being reminded of the “passage of time”
We don’t need to fool ourselves, the governments knew who did it.
I am convinced that Scholz knew it, Biden must have told him what he would do in detail, that is why he had nothing to say.
After the Swedish investigation, if there ever was one, the Swedes refused to tell the results even to the Germans and certainly not the Russians. The media was silent, doing all they could to not make waves.
It was when the people demonstrated for the opening of the pipeline the Americans blew up the pipelines in Swedish waters in Sept. About 6 months after Scholz visited Biden. With Swedish permission we can be sure, so the Swedes are interested in hiding the results of an investigation. Tthey covered up for the real backstabbing going on within NATO in which they participated.
More than 150 years of neutrality and peace and prosperity down the drain. Did they tell the people that is why they want to become a NATO member?
Two thoughts.
First, can’t imagine the estimable Hersch inventing this – gotta assume he was in fact told it…though it’s not 100% clear the source spoke directly to Hersch vs. a second person claiming to report something the primary source had said…
Second, accepting Hersch was told this, a single anonymous source is problematic in at least a few ways:
a/ Almost everything hangs on the ‘reputable-ness’ of the source…hope Hersch wasn’t snookered by someone telling a tale with purposefully unlikely details designed to throw doubt on the wholly plausible ‘US did it’ claim – e.g., the ‘Norway’ part another poster complained about…details ‘too colorful, too good to ring true’…
b/ As a practical matter, with just the one anonymous source, we can already see the fate of Hersch’s piece – ‘anonymous source’ makes it a ‘this can never be proven’ thing – and so, as investigative interventions go, it will remain ‘a contested claim’ vs being ‘the bombshell scoop of the century.’
“a single anonymous source”
There seem to have been at least two sources, for different parts of the story.
thx, will re-read
Who does Russia think they are making demands…..they will get bombed and they will like it.
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
384 Aircraft, 206 helicopters, 3057 UAV’s, 403 Anti Aircraft systems, 7798 tanks inc. APC’s, 1012 multiple rocket launchers, 4034 rocket launchers and 8302 military automotive equipment.
What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final Russian attack on NATO. Remember Russia attacked Ukraine just as NATO was about to unleash in the Donbass. Russia has shown they will pre-emptively attack to defend the Motherland from Europe and America when the time is dictated by events on the ground.
The article implies that Olaf signed off on this, if so what are the laws in Germany regarding something like this? What legal ramifications could Olaf face for this act of terrorism? I can’t imagine any situation in which he would be allowed, legally, to unilaterally make this type of decision, especially considering the claim is that the choice was made prior to the war even starting.
Does German law allow their Chancellor to engage in an act of war against their neighbor, which at the same time was an act of ecological terrorism and economic terrorism as well?
Same thing goes for Joe by the way. How was this even remotely legal and why isn’t he being impeached? He had no authority to do this, we were not at war with Russia, nor was Russia at war with any of our allies. Ukraine was not a NATO member and even if they were, is terrorism allowed under their much loved “international law”?
Nothing has exposed our hypocrisy more than the Ukraine war, not in my life time and I pay attention. This one takes the cake.
All right out there in front of everyone with a functioning brain to see.
The greens in Germany signed off on the biggest hydrocarbon release in world history. NO HYPOCRISY THERE. BTW it was an act of international terrorism and a declaration of war on the people of Germany by the US and co-conspirators. It was a conspiracy against the German people that was also undertaken by the German Government. This is the definition of traitor, when you covertly operate for a foreign power against your own nation, you are a spy and a traitor.
The biggest carbon foot print in world history is the war in Ukraine. But if i drive an electric care i can save the planet. What a joke it all is.
Actually it is not hypocrisy at all. They changed from left wing positions to right wing positions. Quite far right too from what I can tell.
I have not seen or read of any recent indications at all that they ever held left wing positions.
The German Greens are shedding their fake green skin, and what is emerging are war-mongering imperialists. This isn’t really surprising since in 1999, Joschka Fischer was an advocate of bombing Serbia.
“Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have been investigating the sabotage but have shared very few details and have not said publicly who they think was responsible.”
And if they thought Russia was responsible, would they still not publicly say so?
They say they investigated, but why would they, they were involved in the act of sabotage. They knew all about it. They are liars. They must have checked the damage done, but no need to investigate anything else.
Hersh is probably right but, perhaps as significant, in the absence of a preceding narrative his is now the establishing and controlling one. It may prove decisively awkward to have your “ally” destroy your infrastructure, which I can see being a hard sell for the German government to its people. This is going to be interesting. I think the world needs to stand back and take a look at this new rules based order where you get to secretly blow up whatever you don’t like.
addendum:
I just read Hersh’s account and yeah, I’d put money on it. I happen to have grown up just down the beach from where the divers trained, I’ve dove the same waters. The problem with keeping the operation secret was always going to be that the sort of men who can get to 260 feet and plant explosives and get the job done have enough intelligence to see where we may be headed and some have the courage to try and stop it. It’s grimly amusing that people like Biden, Nuland, and Blinken aren’t able to understand this.
Biden could prove Seymour wrong if he put the evidence on the table, which he does not have or he would have done it a long time ago.
The needed the Swedes to refuse to show results of the investigation not to Germany or Russia.
Without a coalition with the media they could not get away with it, the hubris and arrogance alone would cause debates and add the backstabbing of the biggest ally, how can journalists worth their salt keep silent?
I forgot, the people who own the government own the media too. They are our bourgeois nobility dictators of the billionaires club, led by Klaus Schwab and meeting at the top of the mountain in Davos every Jan.
RT today- “Separate probes into the explosions being carried out by Germany, Sweden and Denmark have yet to produce any concrete results” … is all you really need to know. And yeah, the media are mostly trash.
We have a skank of an administration. I voted for Joe to be rid of Trump. Talk about egg on my face. Of course we bombed the gas lines, and of course the story of the “spy balloon” is so full of sh*t. China has satellites that can visualize a postage stamp. My G_d in heaven if millions here in the U. S. believes that story, we are doomed.
And I voted for Trump to be rid of Hillary Clinton, and to improve US/Russian relations. Didn’t exactly work as I planned.
I’d like 2B a fly on the wall when the reply to Putin is being composed.
So Biden is a proven international terrorist destroying another country’s sovereignty,, the thing he hates and polluting the environment
I read Hersh’s article and immediately subscribed to his Substack. Hell, I was going to subscribe the second I saw he was on Substack. Him joining Substack is truly a deathknell for the legacy media. Just because he may have depended on one or two anonymous sources doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have the connections to corroborate what those sources are telling him.
There may still be a functional bomb on one of the lines that didn’t go off. So even if there is a rapprochement between Germany and Russia on the use of the remaining line, how long before it’s blown up, wittingly or no?
Also, Moon of Alabama has a couple of corrections to Hersh’s story, regarding the timeline of the sabotage.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/some-small-corrections-to-seymour-hershs-new-nord-stream-revelations.html#more
Gilbert Doctorow has also added that “[Today], I had received from one of my associates in Germany a full corroboration of the essence of Hersh’s narrative from a sailor who happened to be on board the ship participating in August naval exercises in the Baltic Sea from which the U.S. Navy divers carried out their dirty deeds of planting the explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines for later detonation.”
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/02/10/getting-back-on-air-in-russian-domestic-television/
Putin won’t get any answers from the Cadaver-in-Chief. However, if Putin decides to answer, a great big mushroom cloud over DC should do it.
How about it, Uncle Vlad? You’d be doing all of us an enormous favor.