Tag Archives: Nordstream 1 and 2 sabotage

LISTEN: Nord Stream Attack an ‘Act of War’, by Ray McGovern

Posted on February 13, 2023 | 2 comments

Intelligence veteran Ray McGovern has an astute take on the Nordstream sabotage. From Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com:

Transcript

Garland Nixon

Sy Hersh has a piece at his Substack account entitled How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. The New York Times called it a, quote unquote mystery. But the United States executed a covert C.I.A. operation that was kept secret until now. For insight into this, let’s turn to our first guest. He works with Tell the World, The publishing arm of the Ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner city Washington; has 27 year career as a C.I.A. analyst, serving as chief of the Soviet foreign policy branch and preparing the president’s daily brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and he is, of course, Ray McGovern. As always, Ray, welcome back.

Ray McGovern

Thanks for having me.

Garland Nixon

So Sy Hersh writes, last June, the Navy divers operating under the cover of a widely publicized midsummer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that three months later destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines. This is according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

What I’ll say, Ray, is usually when we hear of unknown sources, we tend to question the veracity or validity of the piece.

But if it’s Sy Hersh, I got to give it its due. Ray McGovern.

Ray McGovern

I know Sy Hersh.

Garland Nixon

I know you do.

Ray McGovern

I know him to be a meticulous reporter, winner of five Polk Awards, Pulitzer Prize, you name it. Back in the day when honest reporters were so honored. This piece has all the earmarks of Sy’s meticulous approach, and he clearly has a very good source who felt, well, he felt a constitutional obligation to honor his or her oath to the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme oath any of us take. And that is to make sure that you tell the truth, especially when the Constitution is being violated.

Continue reading→

2 Comments

Posted in Geopolitics, Government, Investigations, Media, Politics, War

Tagged ,

Biden Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines but Did He Allow the Ukraine War to Go Ahead to Justify the Covert Operation? By Martin Jay

Posted on February 12, 2023 | 1 comment

Hersh confirmed what everybody already knew—that the U.S. had blown up the Nordstream pipeline. The mainstream media asked none of the questions that might have led to their own journalistic scoops. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.org:

All the signs were there for American journalists to arrive at the conclusion of Hersh. But they didn’t, fearing this would be an anti-patriotic act.

What does Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan all have in common? These are all countries which either have vast energy reserves – or are believed to have them but are untapped – and whose regimes don’t fall in line with U.S. hegemony and its American leaders’ demands. Or, in other words, they are countries which have been invaded and bombed, or at the very least in the case of Iran sanctioned (which is a form of warfare) due to their resistance to let Uncle Sam have cut price oil and gas, which in some cases in effect is intended to be free.

And all these countries are a stain on U.S. hegemony and its floundering model, as they have all been failed interventions which have cost America dearly.

The theme is always the same for U.S. intervention as energy keeps coming up time and time again as the basis of its policies. And pipelines. This word is really the one keyword which we see emerge repeatedly in this dark area of America’s post-war history.

And so it should come as little surprise that in Seymour Hersh’s excellent investigative piece recently, that the award-winning journalist lifts the lid on the Biden administration and shows the whole world just how much American presidents lie while in office, not only to the world but to those who vote for them. Biden planned the attacks on the two Russia pipelines Nord Stream meticulously for months, probably from his inauguration into office in January 2021 and, in fact, was not even discreet about keeping his intentions from public view.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Media, Military, War

Tagged ,

What Hersh Got Wrong, by Mike Whitney

Posted on February 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

This is the best critique we’ve seen so far of Seymour Hersh’s article concerning the Nordstream sabotage. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

There’s something not-quite-right about Sy Hersh’s report on the destruction of Nord Stream 2. There are a number of inconsistencies in the piece that lead me to believe that Hersh was less interested in presenting ‘the unvarnished truth’ than relaying a version of events that advance a particular agenda. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate what the author has done. I do. In fact, I think it would be impossible to overstate the significance of a report that positively identifies the perpetrators of what-appears-to-be the biggest act of industrial terrorism in history. Hersh’s article has the potential to greatly undermine the credibility of the people in power and, by doing so, bring the war to a swift end. It is an incredible achievement that we should all applaud. Here’s a brief recap by political analyst Andre Damon:

On Wednesday, journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that the United States Navy, at the direction of President Joe Biden, was responsible for the September 26, 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas between Russia and Germany.

This article, which has been met with total silence in the major US publications, has blown apart the entire narrative of US involvement in the war as a response to “unprovoked Russian aggression.” It lifts the lid on far-reaching plans to use the escalating conflict with Russia to solidify US economic and military domination over Europe.

Hersh revealed that: The operation was ordered by US President Joe Biden and planned by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.” (“Seymour Hersh’s exposure of the Nord Stream bombing: A lesson and a warning”, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site)

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Military, Propaganda, Uncategorized, War

Tagged

Censorship Operations: Covid, War, and More, by William Spruance

Posted on February 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government has become a massive censorship operation, trying to stifle us “domestic terrorists.” From William Spruance at brownstone.org:

censorship operations

Wednesday, Congress held a hearing on Twitter’s censorship of The New York Post and its coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. While House Republicans focused on issues like shadowbanning and government collusion with Big Tech, Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats advocated for increased censorship from Silicon Valley companies.

Raskin argued that the committee would be better served focusing on “the real threats of massive Russian disinformation and white nationalist violent incitement on social media.”

Like the Biden Administration’s usurpation of the First Amendment, Raskin’s cohort’s goal is censorship and the accompanying augmentation of state power, not challenging the veracity of opponents’ arguments or claims.

In “Shouting Covid in a Crowded Theater,” I discuss how officials in the Biden Administration use wartime rhetorical strategies to slander dissidents. In doing so, they conflate dissent with threats to public safety to censor critics.

When discussing public health, the regime consistently uses labels of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But the more we learn about government operations, the more it appears that these labels are references to inconvenience, not falsity.

This strategy extends beyond the country’s COVID response.

Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.”

The sabotage presented a major energy crisis for the United States’ European allies. Europe imports nearly 40% of its gas from Russia, and the Nord Stream 1 was responsible for delivering approximately one third of that supply.

Now, Hersh reports that “the United States executed a covert sea operation” with Navy divers to sabotage Russia’s pipelines with explosives.

For a less obsequious press corps, this should have been an easy story to crack.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Government, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged

The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono? By Pepe Escobar

Posted on February 11, 2023 | 1 comment

The Seymour Hersh story is a big deal in the Global South. If those nations weren’t alienated from the American empire before that story, they are now. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism.

Everyone with a brain already knew the Empire did it. Now Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report  not only details how Nord Stream 1 and 2 were attacked, but also names names: from the toxic Straussian neoliberal-con trio Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland all the way to the Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief.

Arguably the most incandescent nugget in Hersh’s narrative is to point ultimate responsibility directly at the White House. The CIA, for its part, gets away with it. The whole report may be read as the framing of a scapegoat. A very fragile, shoddy scapegoat – what with those classified documents in the garage, the endless stares into the void, the cornucopia of incomprehensible mumbling, and of course the whole, ghastly, years-long family corruption carousel in and around Ukraine, still to be completely unveiled.

Hersh’s report happened to pop up immediately after the deadly earthquakes in Turkey/Syria. This is an investigative journalism earthquake in itself, straddling over fault lines and revealing countless open air fissures, nuggets of truth gasping for air amidst the rubble.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged

A Star is Born! by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on February 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government stands accused of an act of war against it’s own ally, Germany, and nobody is making a peep in either country. The weirdness is overwhelming. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

“Everything that can be engineered is being engineered dishonestly.” —Truman Verdun

If you think the reasons behind the First World War were incomprehensible, imagine what historians of the future — pan-frying peccary loins over their camp fires — will think about World War Three. Some people started something in Ukraine… and then the USA blew up the main energy supply line of its NATO ally, Germany… say, what…?!?

Weird, a little bit.  A sane person in a sane world would call sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines an act-of-war against a friendly nation, since the result was to virtually destroy the basis of Germany’s industry, not to mention the domestic comfort of German citizens. Now, thanks to 85-year-old Seymour Hersh, the independent investigator who uncovered the My Lai Massacre in 1969 and reported on the depraved antics of American jailers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, we have a pretty good idea how the Nord Stream caper went down.

For a year before the op, “Joe Biden” and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland — architect of the 2014 Maidan Coup in Ukraine, which kicked-off the present fiasco there — blabbed about “ending” the Nord Streams. Curiously, the Germans said nothing. Meanwhile, the US made a deal to beef up military bases in Norway, an original NATO signatory (1949), for staging the Nord Stream sabotage op. Of course, Norway, being Western Europe’s sole remaining oil-and-gas exporter, had an interest in eliminating its competition.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Privacy, War

Tagged ,

What’s Wrong With The Hersh Report On The Nord Stream Attack, by John Helmer

Posted on February 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

What part did the British, Norwegians, Poles, and Germans play in the Nordstream sabotage? On this, Seymour Hersh is silent. From John Helmer at johnhelmer.org:

Seymour Hersh’s (lead image) report on President Joseph Biden’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines on the Baltic seabed on September 26, 2022, and the involvement of the US Navy in preparing the explosives, has been based on a single anonymous US source with what Hersh calls “direct knowledge of the process”.

From the full text of the Hersh report,   it appears that neither the source nor Hersh has “direct knowledge” of the history of US-led operations to sabotage and destroy the pipelines which became public more than a year before;  they directly involved the Polish government and the Danish government. In fact, by error of omission Hersh and his man are ignorant of those operations and of that history.

Also, the two of them are ignorant of the British government’s role in this history, and in the final destruction, which was revealed publicly by then-Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sixty seconds after the detonation;  and by the Russian government when it announced its knowledge of the British involvement.

The source and the reporter appear to be equally oblivious of the role German government officials played in the operation, and of the history of German warfighting operations against Russia stretching back to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s engagement in the NATO plan for military intervention in eastern Ukraine,  following the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014.  That attack was costlier in lives and in the US warfighting strategy against Russia than the Nord Stream operation.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments, Intelligence, Military, War

Tagged

China Demands US “Explain Itself to the World” Over Nord Stream Attack Story, by Paul Joseph Watson

Posted on February 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

The rest of the world is not dismissing Seymour Hersh’s Nordstream sabotage article as easily as the U.S. mainstream press. From Paul Joseph Watson at summit.news:

Beijing unsatisfied with dismissal of Seymour Hersh bombshell.

China has demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” if the revelations in Seymour Hersh’s story about US intel being responsible for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines are true.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist published an article this week in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.

According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.

One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”

Now Beijing is demanding that the White House address the issue, seemingly unimpressed with the Biden administration’s rather weak response to merely label the story “false”.

Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning asserted that Washington would have to bear responsibility if the report is confirmed as accurate.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments

Tagged

Mission Accomplished: Seymour Hersh, Nordstream, and What’s Left on the Cutting Room Floor, by Tom Luongo

Posted on February 10, 2023 | 1 comment

Tom Luongo thinks there’s a lot more to the Nordstream sabotage story. From Luongo at tomluongo.me:

On Wednesday, I turned 55 and I got one of the best birthday presents a guy like me could ever ask for, a major geopolitical bombshell.  Seymour Hersh published his first article in a long time on the bombing of the Nordstream pipeline bombing, directly implicating major players within the “Biden” administration.

Hersh’s story is noteworthy not just because of what it says, but for the timing of him hitting the publish button and to whom this story is directly aimed.

And, more importantly, who it is NOT aimed at.

To be clear, I don’t think for a second that Hersh is whitewashing anything here.  If he is, well, I’ll leave that to the reader.  I believe his story is incomplete and a little too Bourne Identity versus Mission Impossible for my tastes.

Regardless of your conclusions, I think we all can agree we need much better screenwriters than the current crop haunting the halls of SIS in London and at the CIA in Langley.

Their contempt for us is obvious in the shoddy stories their telling us now.

Mission Identity: Bourne Impossible

The Bourne story is pretty straightforward.  Agent Bourne is sent on an assassination mission. He has a moment of conscience and his latent humanity asserts itself as he regains his memory.  The mystery was in rebuilding his past which, in the end, is pretty straightforward.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Crime, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments, War

Tagged

Sy Hersh and The Way We Live Now, by Craig Murray

Posted on February 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

The way we live now is that 85-year-old Seymour Hersh is probably the only journalist out there who could break this story, and he had publish on his own substack rather than in an established media outlet. From Craig Murray at craigmurray.org.uk:

It is a clear indicator of the disappearance of freedom from our so-called western democracies, that Sy Hersh, arguably the greatest living journalist, cannot get this monumental revelation on the front of the Washington Post or New York Times, but has to self-publish on the net.

Hersh tells the story of the US destruction of the Nordstream pipelines in forensic detail, giving dates, times, method and military units involved. He also outlines the importance of the Norwegian armed forces working alongside the US Navy in the operation.

One point Sy does not much stress, but it is worth saying more about, is that Norway and the USA are of course the two countries who have benefitted financially, to an enormous degree, from blowing up the pipeline.

Both not only have gained huge export surpluses from the jump in gas prices, but Norway has directly replaced Russian gas to the tune of some $40 billion per year. From 2023 the United States will appear in that list in second place behind Norway, following the opening in the last two months of two new Liquefied Natural Gas terminals in Germany, built to replace Russian gas with US and Qatari supplies.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Military, War

Tagged