On 8 February legendary journalist Seymour Hersh revealed on his substack that under the cover of a NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22 US Navy divers planted remote triggered explosives which three months later destroyed three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines.
His information comes from a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Nord Stream One (pipelines one and two), had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian gas for more than a decade. Nord Stream Two (pipelines three and four) had been recently completed in September 2021, before the current war in Ukraine, and was due to be brought on line shortly after.
The military industrial complex in the United States and its allies in the big oil and gas companies felt threatened by Russia’s ability to provide Europe with cheap gas which underpinned much of the EU's prosperity. The US ruling class saw Nord Stream 2 as an opportunity for Russia to extend its influence particularly with Germany which has the most powerful economy in the EU. The US put Germany under a lot of pressure not to allow the completion of Nord Stream 2 and believed that if they could stop the pipeline it would open a very lucrative export market for American energy companies.
From Hersh's source we learn that there was nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about what to do about the situation and more pressing how to best achieve the goal of ending this relationship between West Europe and Russia.
They selected a team of Navy divers from the US Navy Diving and Salvage centre which has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades. In part their jobs involved using C4 explosives to clear harbours and beaches of debris and unexploded materials. It also involved blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling undersea oil rigs and destroying locks on shipping canals.
However, they were not only chosen for their expertise, but because the divers were only Navy they did not have to report covert operations to Congress.
This is vital as the planning stage took place in late 2021 and early 2022 before the Ukraine war commenced.
When he was President, Trump made it known publicly that there was deep concern over Russia’s influence over Europe. Similarly Biden, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken and Victoria Nuland have all been vocal in regard to their hostility to Nord Stream.
Germany, especially, had benefited by cheap Russian gas which they even sold on at a profit to other European countries. Therefore the plan to blow up Nord Stream had to be kept on the low down.
On the eve of Biden’s inauguration Republican Senator Ted Cruz repeatedly raised the threat of cheap Russian gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken as Secretary of State. Blinken stated;
I know his (Biden’s) strong conviction that this is a bad idea, the Nord Stream 2...I know that he would have us use every persuasive tool that we have to convince our friends and partners, including Germany, not to move forward with it.
In May 2021 the US surprisingly waived sanctions against Nord Stream conceding that sanctions and diplomacy had “always been a long shot”. Behind the scenes officials urged Zelensky not to criticize the move. Still, they faced political come back domestically.
In mid-November 2021 Germany’s energy regulator succumbed to American pressure and suspended their approval of Nord Stream 2. Within days natural gas prices surged 8% and the fears of war grew. The US regarded new German chancellor Olaf Scholz with disquiet when he backed Macron’s calls for a more autonomous foreign policy for Europe. Meanwhile amidst war games all sides (you mean Russia and were building up troops.
As Hersh writes;
The administration’s attention once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.
It was with this background that Biden authorised Sullivan to bring together an inter-agency group consisting of the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State and Treasury departments, to come up with a plan.
According to Hersh’s source what became clear to the participants was that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the pipelines and that this came with the approval of Biden.
The next series of meetings discussed the hows. Should it be with a submarine? Or dropping bombs with delayed remote control fuses? The CIA argued that however it was accomplished it must be done covertly. They understood that if the attack was traceable to the US it would be seen as an act of war.
From the source we see that the inter-agency group was initially sceptical of the CIA’s plan for a covert deep sea mission. Questions arose. The Baltic Sea was heavily patrolled by Russia. There were no oil rigs that could be used as cover by the deep sea divers. Would the attack be launched from Estonia?
We also know that not everyone was onboard. There were voices saying;
Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.
In early 2022 the working group reported back to the inter-agency group.
On February 7 Biden met Scholz in the White House and at the press briefing said;
If Russia invades...there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring it to an end.
Senior officials now determined that the plan to blow up the pipelines was no longer secret/covert operation and downgraded it to a highly classified intelligence operation. However, it naturally had to be secret from the Russians.
The group determined the perfect place to base the mission was Norway.
Over the last few years the US has spent a considerable pot of money expanding their military presence in Norway. This included a new advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia. Plus a new submarine base and a vastly expanded Norwegian air base with a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes.
Norway, Hersh notes, was one of the original signatories to the NATO Treaty in 1949. Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, former Norwegian PM and a hard-line anti-Putin anti-Russian war hawk. According to the source he is regarded as;
...the glove that fits the American hand.
Sometime in March some team members flew to Norway to discuss operations. The Norwegians identified the right spot at a place called Bornholm to place the explosives. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work.
In addition to difficult deep diving circumstances and keeping it a secret from Russia, the team also needed to keep Danish and Swedish authorities in the dark. To that end they briefed some officials about possible diving activity so that any questions would be contained.
Another issue was the need to camouflage the American explosive devices. The Norwegians proposed that the devices should be laid during the annual NATO Baltic exercise in June. The Americans persuaded the American Sixth Fleet, which sponsored the annual exercise, to add a research and development exercise to the programme. This public at sea event was to be held off the coast of Bornholm Island. It involved teams of divers to lay mines and competing teams of divers to seek and destroy them. It was ingenious cover.
Initially the plan was to set 48 hour timer but then Washington got cold feet and felt a mere 48 hour delay would implicate them. Despite some frustration and anger the Americans began working on the new problem.
The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped from a plane and involved the most sophisticated signal processing technology. To avoid accidental triggering by say, under water drilling, ship activity, seismic events, or even sea creatures, the buoys would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds. Then after a set period they would trigger the explosives to detonate. However, the longer they waited the higher chance that some random signal would trigger the devices.
On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.
The media treated the bombing like an unsolved mystery. Even going as far as blaming Russia for blowing up it’s own pipeline!
Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January Nuland told Senator Ted Cruz;
Like you, I am, and 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.
Of course the msm has demonized Hersh as a “discredited journalist” who “self published” “unproven claims” which have been a gift to Putin. The White House called the story “false and complete fiction”. Norway has stated that “These allegations are nonsense”.
Sweden has spent months investigating the incident last year and declared it was an act of sabotage but did not say by whom. Meanwhile, the German government has recently stated that Russia did not blow up the Nord Stream pipelines and added that it didn't know who did. Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman called Hersh's article remarkable and that they would like more proof.
Of course when Hersh revealed the 1969 My Lai massacre and helped expose the torture programme at Abu Ghraib these were not immediately accepted either. It took time for his revelations to become accepted causing huge scandals for the American military. More recently he has tried to expose the fake killing of Osama Bin Laden and the fake chemical attack in Syria. I’m sensing a bit of a pattern here, are you?
Was this a deliberate leak? Is the US intelligence agency sending a message to the Russians seeking a response allowing them to further escalate the situation? An admission of guilt and a throwing down of the gauntlet seeking to antagonise Russia and provoke a response. A bit like a trial balloon.
