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US President Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in order to make sure Germany could not change its mind about sanctions against Russia and weapons shipments to Ukraine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with ‘Going Underground’.
Earlier this month, Hersh published an article that blamed the US and Norway for the series of explosions that disabled both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the pipelines under the Baltic Sea built to supply Western Europe with Russian natural gas.
In an interview with Afshin Rattansi this week, Hersh said the US intelligence community hatched the plan “in late 2021,” before the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine. When Biden and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland both publicly spoke about “stopping” and “ending” Nord Stream 2, however, Hersh claimed the spies were upset, “because it was supposed to be a covert operation.”
“The people who did this thing in the intelligence community, they initially thought it was a great idea,” Hersh told Rattansi. According to his story, the bombs were planted in June, during the scheduled BALTOPS 2022 naval exercise off the Danish island of Bornholm. The bombs went off in late September, as Ukraine was facing “a serious issue” on the battlefield.
“It’s not going to help the war. What he was doing it for, was to prevent Germany and Western Europe, in case the winter came quickly, from opening up the pipeline,” Hersh said.
The rationale for the mission was “to make sure that Europe keeps on supporting NATO and keeps funneling arms into what is clearly a proxy war against Russia that’s being fought right now,” he added.
Asked whether Moscow had somehow missed the American involvement, and focused on the UK instead, Hersh said he had not spoken to anyone in Russia. One thing he could say is that it would be “absolutely insane” for Russia to blow up its own pipeline. Just about everyone in the pipeline business agrees with that assessment, he added.
The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have all disavowed Hersh’s article as “fiction” and denied all accusations of US involvement in the attack on Nord Stream. Russia has called for an independent UN investigation into what it described as an act of international terrorism.
Seymour Hersh talks Nord Stream revelations with ‘Going Underground‘
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Why the US media is silent on Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream bombing revelations
It has been 10 days since journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the Biden administration carried out an act of international terrorism directed against Europe’s civilian energy infrastructure. The Nord Stream pipeline was built to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany. Hersh wrote that US Navy divers planted the explosives that detonated the pipeline on September 26, 2022.
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize journalist, who played a central role in some of the most important exposures of criminal activities by the United States government, including domestic spying, the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.
But his revelation, published on Substack, that the United States directly destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines is perhaps his most significant report to date.
It is all the more telling that, to an extent greater than any of his previous stories, Hersh’s report has received effectively no coverage in the major US print and broadcast media.
Hersh’s original report included a response quote by Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, who declared, “This is false and complete fiction.”
These blanket declarations have been repeated multiple times by the White House, combined with ad hominem accusations against Hersh accusing him of making false assertions, which are never specified, in the past.
Beyond these blanket denials, the US government has not responded in any substantive way. Despite the multiple, concrete details reported in Hersh’s article, the Biden administration did not attempt to disprove a single one.
Beyond these blanket denials, the US government has not responded in any substantive way. Despite the multiple, concrete details reported in Hersh’s article, the Biden administration did not attempt to disprove a single one.
The Biden administration’s silence has been aided by the US media, which has deliberately suppressed any discussion of the story. This silence, more than anything else, serves as a confirmation of the fundamental correctness of Hersh’s assertion.
The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have not carried a single article devoted to the story.
The closest thing to a serious response was an article that appeared in Snopes “debunking” Hersh’s article, under the title “Claim That US Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines Relies on Anonymous Source.”
The central argument of the Snopes piece is that the article cannot be believed, because Hersh bases his reporting on the statements of a single anonymous source. The problem, however, is that the single most incriminating piece of evidence pointing to US complicity in blowing up the pipelines is the US government itself.
On February 7, ahead of the invasion, US President Joe Biden declared publicly, “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
In congressional testimony in January, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said, “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.”
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