English:
Did Joe Biden attack Nord Stream?
Seymour Hersh's accusation that the U.S. blew up natural gas pipelines
is credible. What is needed now is an international investigation. The
mainstream media has failed.
Benjamin Abelow, February 17, 2023
I
recall only three news events from my childhood. The first was the 1963
assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. I was four years old.
Though I did not understand what was happening, I remember a radio
announcement—and my mother bursting into tears. The second event was the
Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. The third event, also in 1969, was the
horrific news that the U.S. military had carried out a mass murder of
Vietnamese civilians—the My Lai massacre. It was the investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh who broke that story.
Hersh is one of
the most famous and respected investigative journalists in the United
States. Some consider him one of the half-dozen greatest journalists in
American history. He worked for The New York Times and The New Yorker. He holds five Polk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.
On
8 February, Hersh published a new, 5,000-word article—online and freely
accessible on Substack, a private internet platform—claiming that the
United States attacked Nord Stream. At the end of this essay, I will
comment on what it means that his article was not published in the
mainstream media. But first, let us consider what Hersh says and why I
find it credible.
Hersh claims, based on a confidential source,
that the U.S. carried out the Nord Stream attack. He asserts that,
acting with President Biden’s approval, National Security Advisor Jake
Sullivan initiated the process, and that detailed planning was done by a
secret group that included Secretary of State Antony Blinken,
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, and representatives of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency, and Treasury
Department.
That was bombshell enough, but there is more. Hersh
claims that crucial assistance came from Norway—a country whose ex-prime
minister, Jens Stoltenberg, is NATO’s Secretary General. Hersh
describes how the explosives were set by the Americans and detonated
using a communications buoy dropped into the sea by Norway.
The White House says the article is “utterly false and complete fiction.” The CIA issued a similar denial.
To
help explain why I suspect that Hersh’s article is correct, at least in
broad outline, I will describe some important background, all from
publicly available sources.
For the past 51 years, the U.S. Navy
has sponsored and carried out an annual training exercise in the Baltic
Sea. The exercise is called BALTOPS—for Baltic Operations. In 2022, the
exercise began on 5 June and lasted twelve days. The lead ship was the
USS Kearsage—a gigantic amphibious assault vessel two and a half times
the length of an American football field. In all, fourteen nations
participated.
A key feature of the BALTOPS exercise involved
using unmanned undersea vehicles (so-called “UUVs”) to practice
destroying mines and other undersea targets. Such mine-clearing is
typically done by planting explosives on the target and detonating them
remotely. This part of the exercise took place near the Danish Island of
Bornholm, which is located off the Swedish coast.
Although the
BALTOPS exercise ended on 15 June, the Kearsage and several other U.S.
ships remained in the Baltic, visiting various ports, till 24 September.
Only then did they leave the Baltic, presumably returning to Italy,
where they are based with the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Just two days after the
ships left, explosions destroyed three of the four Nord Stream
pipelines. Importantly, the explosions occurred near the island of
Bornholm, not far from where the BALTOPS exercises were carried out.
There
were also statements by American officials. A few weeks before Russia’s
invasion, President Biden stated publicly that if Russia invaded
Ukraine, “we will bring an end” to Nord Stream 2. He added: “I promise
you, we will be able to do it.” Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland
had likewise warned, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another,
Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” As if this were not enough, when
Biden made his threats, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood silently on
stage with him. Here one must wonder whether—if the U.S. did in fact
attack Nord Stream—Chancellor Scholz had acquiesced to the plans.
Many
others in the American political establishment have vociferously
opposed Nord Stream, fearing that Germany in particular, and Europe in
general, might ally itself too closely with Russia. A seven-minute video
by Matt Orfalea that captures some of these statements is searchable
online by its English-language title: “Who Blew Up Nord Stream
Pipelines? A Mystery!”
Finally, although Denmark, Sweden, and
Germany have all carried out investigations into the attack, none have
made their findings public. In Germany, I recall reading that the
ministries of interior and defense refused to release information even
to a member of the parliament. As I understand it, the refusal was made
on the grounds of national security. If there had been evidence pointing
to Russia, it seems likely that the conclusions of the investigations
(even if not the methods used to reach those conclusions) would have
been actively publicized.
To my reading, the most likely scenario
is that these investigations showed no evidence of Russian involvement
and may in fact have pointed to one or more NATO members. Perhaps that
was the national security problem—for if a NATO member carried out the
attack, and it became publicly known, the result might be strong popular
opposition to the NATO alliance. Here I note that, just during the past
few weeks, both The New York Times and The Washington Post have
published articles indicating there is no evidence of Russian
involvement.
What I have just described is public information. I
was familiar with it well before 8 February. So even before Hersh
published his article, I thought it quite possible—even likely—that
elements of the U.S. government had either attacked the pipeline or
helped another country do so. This helps explain why I find his article
credible. Very likely the information on which the article was based
came to Hersh from a whistleblower who brought it to him precisely
because of his integrity and credibility in the broad public, and
because Hersh has a reputation for protecting the identity of sources.
Based
on all this, and pending the results of a formal, open, international
investigation—which I believe should be carried out—I suspect that
members of the U.S. government, including President Biden, are
responsible for the attack.
What conclusions can we draw from the
appearance of Hersh’s article in a private online platform? What
conclusions can we draw from the article’s having been almost totally
ignored by the mainstream media in the USA and Europe, and from the fact
that these media are not assertively questioning the White House’s
claim that the article is “utterly false and complete fiction”?
I
believe we are witnesses to a profound and oppressive self-censorship
by the media in the USA and in all of the EU. This censorship has grown
vastly since the onset of the Ukraine war. Under these circumstances, it
behooves the public to avail itself fully of so-called “dissident”
sources of information, not only on the bombing of Nord Stream, but on
the underlying causes and ongoing conduct of the war in Ukraine.