Seymour Hersh during a public conversation. Photo: Europa Press via MisiĂłn Verdad.
An interview by Fabian Scheider of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper with journalist Seymour Hersh about his investigation into the US (and Norwegian) role in the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was published on Tuesday, February 14. Here are the highlights:
• Details of the explosion and a question.
“At the end of September 2022, eight bombs were to be detonated near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, six of which exploded in a fairly flat area,” said Hersh. “They destroyed three of the four main Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. The gas pipeline Nord Stream 1 has been supplying Germany and other parts of Europe with very cheap natural gas for many years. And then it blew up, just like Nord Stream 2, and the question was who did it and why.”
• Did German Chancellor Olaf Scholz know that the United States was planning to blow up the gas pipelines?
“It was clear to the group [made up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State Department and the Treasury Department] in the White House that they could blow up the pipelines,” said Hersh. “There is an explosive called C4 that is incredibly powerful, especially in the quantity they use it. They can detonate it remotely with underwater sonar devices. These sonars emit signals at low frequencies. So it was possible, and that was communicated to the White House in early January, because two or three weeks later the Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, said it could be done. I think it was January 20. And then the president, when he held the press conference together with the German chancellor on February 7, 2022, also said that it could be done.”
“The German chancellor did not say anything in detail at the time, he was very vague. A question I would like to ask Scholz if he were presiding over a parliamentary hearing is this: has Joe Biden told you about this? Did he tell you then why he was so sure he could destroy the pipeline?”
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• Why Norway participated in the operation?
“Norway is a great seafaring nation and has abundant sources of energy,” said Hersh. “They are also very interested in increasing their natural gas supplies to Western Europe and Germany. And that’s what they did; they increased their exports. So why not join forces with the United States for economic reasons? In addition, there is marked hostility towards Russia in Norway.”
• More details about the operation.
“The Norwegians found us a place off the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea that was only 260 feet deep to operate from,” said Hersh. “The divers had to get back to the top slowly. There was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine chaser. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with the people who monitor the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is monitored very closely, there is a lot of data available for free, so we took care of that. There were three or four different people on it. And what was done then is very simple. For 21 years, our Sixth Fleet, which controls the Mediterranean Sea and also the Baltic Sea, has been conducting an exercise for NATO navies in the Baltic Sea every summer [BALTOPS, ed.]. We send an aircraft carrier and other large ships to these exercises. And, for the first time in history, the NATO operation in the Baltic had a new program. A 12-day mine detection and discharge exercise was to take place. Various nations sent mine crews, one group dropped a mine and another group went looking for it and make them explode.”
“So there was a point where things blew up, and that’s when the deep-sea divers who laid the mines in the pipelines were able to operate. The two pipelines are about a mile apart, they’re kind of under the seabed sediment, but it’s not hard to get to them and the divers have practiced. It only took a few hours to set the bombs.”
• There was involvement of intelligence agencies other than the CIA in the operation.
“It was feared that the pumps would not work if they stayed in the water too long, which in fact should be the case with two pumps,” Hersh explained.
“So there was concern within the [White House] group to find the right remedy, and we actually had to communicate with other intelligence agencies, which I intentionally didn’t write about.”
• European businessmen know who had exploited the Nord Stream.
“And I’ll tell you one more thing,” added Hersh. “The people of America and Europe who are building pipelines know what happened. I’m telling you something important. The people who own companies who build pipelines know the story. I didn’t hear their story, but quickly I knew they knew.”
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• Why Biden decided to blow up the pipelines?
“The point was that Russia could no longer pressure Western Europe to end US support for the Ukraine war [after the Nord Stream sabotage],” Hersh said. “The fear was that Western Europe would no longer participate.”
“I think the The reason for this decision was that the war was not going well for the West and they were afraid that winter was coming. Nord Stream 2 was suspended by Germany itself, not by international sanctions, and the United States feared that Germany would lift sanctions due to a cold winter.”
• Had Biden’s team coldly calculated the economic consequences of the sabotage?
“I don’t think they’ve really thought this through,” Hersh said. “I know it sounds strange. I don’t think Secretary of State Blinken and some others in the government are deep thinkers. Certainly there are people in American business who like the idea that we’re getting more competitive. We sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) at extremely high profit, we make a lot of money from that.
“I’m sure there were some people who thought, ‘wow, this is going to give the US economy a long-term boost.’ But in the White House, I think they have always been obsessed with re-election and they wanted to win the war. They wanted a victory. They wanted Ukraine to magically win somehow. There may be some people who think maybe it is better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that is crazy. I think we got caught up in something that won’t work. War won’t end up well for this government.”
• The “reputation” of the United States would collapse with the results of the war and the operation against the Nord Stream.
“It scares me that the president would be willing to do something like this,” said Hersh. “And the people who were running that mission believed that the president knew what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that was not going well. And in the long run, this will not only hurt his reputation as president, but it will also be very damaging politically, it will stigmatize the United States.”
“The White House was concerned that [the Russo-Ukrainian war] might be lost, that Germany and Western Europe would stop supplying the weapons we wanted [to Ukraine], and that the German chancellor might get the pipeline back online—that was a great concern in Washington… The point is that Biden has decided to let the Germans freeze this winter. The president of the United States would rather Germany freeze than Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine and that, for me, it’s devastating to this White House.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
