Hersh Exposes Biden Administration Plot To Blow Up Nord Stream Pipelines

Feb. 8, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Seymour Hersh, the ostracized but most senior American investigative journalist since the Vietnam War, has issued a shocking exposé, depicting with precision who and how the U.S. Establishment and military rallied to plan and carry out the blowing up of the Russian/German Nord Stream pipelines. This project, according to Hersh, traces back to early 2021.

Titled “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline,” Hersh begins by saying outright that the command headquarters selected to run the physical assault on the pipelines was the highly secretive “U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center “ in Panama City, Florida. “Last June,” he writes, “the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a ... midsummer 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.”

White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson has already been deployed to answer an email stating about this charge: “This is false and complete fiction.”

Per Hersh’s account: The choice of the Panama City facility was based on its covert status. As Navy personnel, its actions are not subject to those covert operations that must be reported to and briefed in advance to the leadership of the Senate and House. Navy divers are also famed for their “successful” espionage infiltration into a high-level Soviet era communications system used by the submarine division of the Soviet navy.

Whatever the covert operation formalities, however, Hersh makes clear that leading Republicans, most notably Ted Cruz, was involved as soon as Biden was to be inaugurated, to demand that aggressive action be taken against the pipelines. Hersh provides a detailed description of how the pipelines were a pivotal benefit for the German economy, and an exemplification of the Willy Brandt-era, “realist” “Ostpolitik” policy, which, though Hersh doesn’t say so, gave Germany a margin of sovereignty, which now the Anglo-Americans are demanding be erased.

Hersh writes: “Opposition to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inauguration in January 2021, when Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz... repeatedly raised the political threat of cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken...” By then, Hersh continues, the Senate

“had successfully passed a law that ... ‘halted [the pipeline] in its tracks” according to Cruz. When Biden, in communication with Zelenskyy in Ukraine, flinched in moving against the pipelines, Senate Republicans retaliated, blocking all of Biden’s foreign policy nominees and delaying passage of the annual defense bill until deep into the fall. “It was not clear to Washington just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, stood,”

Hersh notes.

The operational planning for a physical attack on the pipelines got underway starting December, 2021. The presumed reason for top level secret meetings held at that time in the White House, was the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to invade Ukraine. Those called together from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, State and Treasury Departments, began to realize that this topic—Ukraine—was completely linked in the secret proceedings to plans to destroy the pipelines.

Several more meetings occurred. There was skepticism in reaction to “the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack.” Hersh writes: “Some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out. Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: ‘We have a way to blow up the pipelines.’ ”

Soon after, Biden met in D.C. with Scholz, who was pushed into support of the U.S. team. That was the press conference where Biden sputtered, “If Russia invades... there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.” Biden was merely repeating, Hersh notes, what Victoria Nuland had said 20 days earlier, at a State Department briefing: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” (Note: Hersh makes it clear that the warhawks desperately wanted Russia to attack Ukraine.)

Further intelligence leads introduced by the article will be evaluated by the EIR staff, which pertain to the close ties between Norway and its former prime minister, long-term NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, with U.S. intelligence, and other elements pertaining to the BALTOPS maneuvers.