United States Detonated Nord Stream Pipelines In Covert Operation, Investigative Journalist Claims

According to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the United States conducted a covert operation to take out the Nord Stream pipelines.

Hersh says 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.”

US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh | News | The Times https://t.co/ZNSTlXe6Kr

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) February 8, 2023

The U.S. Navy issued this release describing BALTOPS 22:

“BALTOPS, with the high degree of complexity, tested our collective readiness and adaptability, while also highlighting the strength of our Alliance and resolve in providing a maritime domain with freedom of navigation for all,” said Vice Adm. Gene Black, commander, U.S. Sixth Fleet and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO).

Led by U.S. Sixth Fleet, BALTOPS 22 was command and controlled by STRIKFORNATO. From the staff’s headquarters in Oeiras, Portugal, Rear Adm. James Morley, STRIKFORNATO deputy commander, was responsible for ensuring participants met all training objectives.

“We here [at STRIKFORNATO], safely executed an ambitious training scheme on behalf of the 16 Allied and partner nations in the exercise, improving combat readiness and demonstrating the ability to work seamlessly together across all environments- in the air, on the ground, and at sea,” said Morley.

Participating nations included Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries participated alongside one another to test the flexibility, adaptability, and capabilities of maritime and amphibious forces.

cont.

At sea, ships fine-tuned tactical maneuvering, anti-submarine warfare, live-fire training, mine countermeasures operations, and replenishments at sea. The Swedish submarine participating in the exercise, the U.K.’s Daring-class air-defense destroyer HMS Defender (D 36), and aircraft from other participating nations trained in anti-submarine warfare. Meanwhile, mine operations served as an ideal area of focus for testing new technology.

Scientists from five nations brought the latest advancements in Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios. The BALTOPS Mine Counter Measure Task Group ventured throughout the Baltic region practicing ordnance location, exploitation, and disarming in critical maritime chokepoints.

The White House said that Hersh’s report was “utterly false and complete fiction.”

Reuters noted:

Reuters has not corroborated the report, published by U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, which said an attack was carried out last September at the direction of President Joe Biden.

“This is utterly false and complete fiction,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. Spokespeople for the CIA and State Department said the same.

While Sweden and Denmark concluded the pipelines were deliberately destroyed, they haven’t pointed the blame at any particular country.

Hersh claims that Washington’s national security community debated more than nine months on the best way to achieve their goal of sabotaging the pipelines.

Knowing that, Biden’s prior warnings about the Nord Stream pipelines make sense:

Read further details on Seymour Hersh’s substack page:

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.

The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit Ukraine, had been a boon for the German economy, which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian natural gas—enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a profit, throughout Western Europe. Action that could be traced to the administration would violate US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia. Secrecy was essential.

From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.

America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, 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.

The White House, NATO, and mainstream media wanted us to believe Russia destroyed their own pipelines.

Nord Stream 1 provided a critical stream of income for Russia and Nord Stream 2 would increase profits upon becoming operational.

Russia taking out the Nord Stream pipelines never made sense, so it’s hard to imagine anyone with critical thinking skills buying pro-NATO propaganda.

BREAKING💥

Nord Stream bombing was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA according to the Times newspaper.

We said this from day one.

The Western MSM said it was Russia who blew up their own pipeline.

The USA BOMBS its own allies! pic.twitter.com/zn8U2zzNHP

— UNN (@UnityNewsNet) February 8, 2023

⚡️#BREAKING Nord Stream gas pipeline bombings were a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA — The Times, citing a veteran investigative journalist

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 8, 2023

Hersh described details of how Norway allegedly helped the United States execute the operation.

Cont. from Hersh’s substack:

Norway was the perfect place to base the mission.

In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the north Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arctic Circle with Russia. The Pentagon has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.

A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula. America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.

In return, the Norwegian government angered liberals and some moderates in its parliament last November by passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.

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Norway was one of the original signatories of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the early days of the Cold War. Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.

Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)

Sometime in March, a few members of the team flew to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy. One of the key questions was where exactly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explosives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.

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. 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.

Read Seymour Hersh’s full report on substack.

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