NordStream sabotage – Seymour Hersh’s revelations
On 8 February 2023, Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, published the results of his latest investigation, exposing the lies of the US administration concerning the sabotage of Russia’s NordStream pipelines.
Everybody knew that it was US imperialism that had perpetrated the sabotage, notwithstanding the denials emanating from the White House. After all US President Joe Biden had stated publicly that were Russia to ‘invade’ Ukraine, then the pipelines would be put out of action. Biden at the time would certainly have been aware that the Kiev fascist junta, armed to the teeth by the Western powers, was preparing a major assault on Donetsk and Lugansk, hence all the talk at the time regarding Russia preparing to attack Ukraine because she supposedly wanted to incorporate her into Russian territory. Biden, however, would have known of the imminent blitzkrieg planned by the junta against Donetsk and Lugansk, though it was a secret at the time, and been aware it would be likely to instigate a Russian intervention, hence his threats to sabotage the pipelines should Russia ‘invade’, i.e., take steps to protect the Ukrainian Russian speakers in Donetsk and Lugansk. Besides this, the US corporations wanted Europe deprived of cheap Russian fuel, on the one hand to make their European competitors less competitive, and, on the other hand, to open the European market to America’s expensive liquefied natural gas. The circumstantial evidence against Uncle Sam was already overpowering.
Now Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre of 500 unarmed civilians in Vietnam, as well as the horrors of Abu Ghraib, has unearthed evidence that it was indeed US imperialism, hand-in-hand with Norway, who inflicted the damage. He revealed that the explosives that destroyed the pipelines had been planted in June 2022 by deep-sea divers from the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Centre in Florida under cover of Nato military exercises that took place off the German coast. Then on September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made “a seemingly routine flight” and released a signal to trigger the explosions. “The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1,” he wrote. “A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission”.
He revealed that there had been more than nine months of top-secret planning for the attack. Moreover, “… the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible”.
The response to Hersh’s revelations in imperialist quarters has been muted. The White House continues to deny any responsibility. The European Union claimed not to know whether the revelations were true or not: “We do not comment on speculations about the perpetrators of the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines. The only basis for any possible response can be the outcome of an official investigation. Such investigations are the responsibility of the competent authorities of the Member States concerned. And they are still ongoing. So far, it has only been established that the pipelines were destroyed by a deliberate act of sabotage” said a spokesperson for the EU.
The British Times, no doubt deeply embarrassed to see US imperialism so exposed, tried to suggest that Seymour Hersh was past his prime and could not be relied on:
“Once hailed ‘the greatest American investigative reporter’, Hersh’s more recent stories have been called into question. These included articles about how the US found Osama bin Laden and calling into question the use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians by Syria’s regime, which were criticised for relying heavily on anonymous sources and lacking hard evidence” (Emanuele Midolo, ‘US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’, 8 February 2023).
The sources would not have been ‘anonymous’ to Seymour Hersh, who has consistently been shown that he knows very well which whistle-blowers he can trust, which is what has made him the great journalist that he is, in conjunction with his honesty and his fearlessness. The whistle-blowers always provide ‘hard evidence’, but this often cannot be disclosed because of the retribution that whistle-blowers face from the enraged imperialist powers that they expose.
The attack on the pipelines was not only an attack against Russia, but also against Germany whose manufacturers have been serious rivals to those of the US.