Nord Stream sabotage – Seymour Hersh’s revelations
Corporate media are doing what they can to quash discussion of the USA’s attack on its ally, but the fall-out from this detailed exposé is destined to be far-reaching.
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 Nord Stream 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 the antifascist autonomous regions of 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 would also have been aware that this assault would be likely to instigate a Russian intervention, hence his threats to sabotage the pipelines should Russia ‘invade’, ie, 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, which 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 26 September 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.”
Hersh 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, while the European Union has claimed not to know whether the revelations are 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 an EU spokesperson.
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 no longer 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 USA 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.” (US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh by Emanuele Midolo, 8 February 2023)
The sources would not have been ‘anonymous’ to Seymour Hersh, who has consistently shown that he knows very well which whistleblowers he can trust, which is what has made him the great journalist that he is, in conjunction with his honesty and his fearlessness. The whistleblowers always provide ‘hard evidence’, but this often cannot be disclosed because of the retribution that they would face from the enraged imperialist powers that they are exposing.
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 USA.
