
Gas emanating from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, September 28, 2022. Photo: Swedish Coast Guard.
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Gas emanating from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, September 28, 2022. Photo: Swedish Coast Guard.
The false details in the CIA’s cover story
Americaโs Central Intelligence Agency is constantly running covert operations around the world, and all must have a cover story in case things go badly, as they often do. It is just as important to have an explanation when things go well, as they did in the Baltic Sea last fall. Within weeks of myย reportย that Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, the agency produced a cover story and found willing takers in theย New York Timesย and two major German publications.
By creating a story of deep sea divers and a crew who did not exist, the agency was following protocol, and the story would have been part of the first days of secret planning to destroy the pipelines. The essential element was a mythical yacht ironically named theย Andromedaโafter the beautiful daughter of a mythical king who was chained to a rock, naked. The cover story was shared with and supported by the BND, Germanyโs federal intelligence service.
My initial report received coverage around the world but was ignored by the major newspapers and television networks in the United States. As the story gained traction in Europe and elsewhere abroad, theย New York Timesย on March 7 published aย reportย quoting US officials asserting that American intelligence had accumulated information suggesting that a pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged the pipelines. The story said officials who had โreviewedโ the new intelligence depicted it to be โa step toward determining responsibilityโ for the pipeline sabotage. Theย Timesย story got worldwide attention, but nothing more has been heard since from the newspaper about who did what. In an interview for aย Timesย podcast, one of the three authors of the article inadvertently explained why the story was dead on arrival. The writer was asked about the involvement of the alleged pro-Ukrainian group: โWhat makes you think thatโs what happened?โ He answered: โI should be very clear that we know really very little. Right?โ
On April 3 theย Washington Postย reportedย that some European investigators now doubt that theย Andromedaย could have sabotaged the pipelines without the help of a second vessel. Some in Europe wondered if the role of theย Andromedaย was โsomething to distract or only part of the picture.โ The article did not suggest that the Biden Administration was involved in the destruction of the pipeline, but it did quote an unnamed European diplomat saying that everyone can see there is a body lying there, but all are pretending things are normal. โItโs better not to know,โ the diplomat said. No American officials were quoted, even anonymously, by theย Post. The Biden administration has become a Nord Stream-free reporting zone.
Chalk one up for the various CIA officials who have been supplying phony stories to the media here and abroad in what has been a successful effort to keep the world focused on any possible suspects outside of what has emerged as the most logical oneโthe president of the United States.
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Theย Timesย also reported that a European lawmaker briefed by his countryโs intelligence agencies said that the service was gathering intelligence on roughly forty-five ships whose transponders were not working when they passed the area where the pipelines were blown up. One of the so-called โghost shipsโ could have planted the mines and later pulled the trigger.
After theย Timesย story went online,ย Die Zeit, Germanyโs largest weekly newspaper, rushed to publish aย reportย on an investigation into the Nord Stream bombing that it had been researching for months, in conjunction with a public television network. The weekly had something new: it identified a yacht that, it reported, was โrented from a company in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians.โ The group leasing the yacht and carrying out the destruction of the pipeline was said to include a captain, two divers, two diving assistants, and a doctor. Depicted byย Die Zeitย as โassassinsโ whose names were not published or known, the group used forged passports and had transported the needed explosives to the crime scene. The yacht was said to have sailed near the Danish island of Bornholm, which is close to the site of the pipeline sabotage.
The newspaper reported that the yacht had been returned to the company that leased itโsuch yachts can cost two thousand dollars per week or more to rentโin an โuncleaned conditionโ that enabled German investigators to find traces of an explosive on a cabin table. Later stories said that investigators also had found two fraudulent Ukrainian passports left on the yacht. A subsequent story inย Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, said that the yacht in question was named theย Andromeda.
I subsequently published aย storyย suggesting that the information supplied by German federal police to bothย Die Zeitย andย Der Spiegelย had originated with US intelligence. The author of theย Die Zeitย report, Holger Stark, an experienced journalist whom I have known since he worked in Washington a decade or so ago, contacted me to complain about the assertion. Stark told me he had excellent sources in the German federal police and learned what he did from those links, and not from any intelligence agency, German or American. I believed him and immediately corrected the story.
I acknowledge that itโs difficult for any journalist to write about a fellow journalist, especially a good one. But this case involves the acceptance of facts that should have been questioned. For example, I did not ask Stark if he wondered why an American newspaper nearly four thousand miles away would publish the same allegation about a group of unnamed Ukrainians, who were not linked to the leadership in Kiev, that officials in Germany said they had been chasing. We did discuss a fact that he brought up: that officials in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark had decided shortly after the pipeline bombings to send teams to the site to recover the one mine that has not gone off. He said they were too late; an American ship had sped to the site within a day or two and recovered the mine and other materials. I asked him why he thought the Americans had been so quick to get to the site and he answered, with a wave of his hand, โYou know what Americans are like. Always wanting to be first.โ There was another very obvious explanation.
The trick of a good propaganda operation is to provide the targetsโin this case the Western mediaโwith what they want to hear. One intelligence expert put it to me more succinctly: โWhen you do an operation like the pipelines, you need to plan a counter-opโa red herring that has a whiff of reality. And it must be a detailed as possible to be believed.โ
โPeople today have forgotten that there is such a thing as a parody,โ the expert said. โGilbert and Sullivanโsย HMS Pinaforeย is not a history of the Royal Navy in the 19th Century. Itโs a parody. The CIAโs goal in the pipeline case was to produce a parody that was so good that the press would believe it. But where to start? Cannot have the pipelines destroyed by a bomb from an airplane or sailors on a rubber boat.
โBut why not a sailboat? Any serious student of the event would know that you cannot anchor a sailboat in waters that are 260 feet deepโโthe depth at which the four pipelines were destroyedโโbut the story was not aimed at him but at the press who would not know a parody when presented with one.โ
The intelligence expert listed all the elements needed before any individual or group could charter an expensive yacht. โYou cannot just walk off the street with a fake passport and lease a boat. You either need to accept a captain who was supplied by the leasing agent or owner of the yacht, or have a captain who comes with a certificate of competency as mandated by maritime law. Anyone whoโs ever chartered a yacht would know that.โ Similar proof of expertise and competence for deep sea diving involving the use of a specialized mix of gases would be required by the divers and the doctor.
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The expert had more questions about the alleged yacht. โHow does a 49-foot sailboat find the pipelines in the Baltic Sea? The pipelines are not that big and they are not on the charts that come with the lease. Maybe the thought was to put the two divers into the waterโโnot very easy to do so from a small yachtโโand let the divers look for it. How long can a diver stay down in their suits? Maybe fifteen minutes.ย Which means it would take the diver four years to search one square mile.
โNone of these questions is asked by the media.ย So you have six people on the yachtโtwo divers, two helpers, a doctor and a captainย leasing the boat.ย One thing is missingโwho is going to crew the yacht? Or cook? What about the logbook that the leasing company must keep for legal reasons?
โNone of this happened,โ the expert told me. โStop trying to link this to reality. Itโs a parody.โ
The stories in theย New York Timesย and the European press have given no indication that any journalist was able to board and physically examine the yacht in question. Nor do they explain why any passengers on a yacht would leave passports, fraudulent or otherwise, on board after a rental. There have been photographs of a sailboat in dry dock namedย Andromedaย published.
None of this can save a bad cover story, the intelligence export told me. โThe effort to turn fiction into truth will go on forever. Now itโs a picture of a sailboat that appears after the investigation that canโt be tracedโwith no license number where it legally should be. Theย Andromedaย has replaced the Piltdown man in the press.โ
The expert had one final thought: โIn the world of professional analysts and operators everyone will universally and correctly conclude from your story that the devilish CIA concocted a counter-op that is on its face so ridiculous and childish that the real purpose was to reinforce the truth.โ
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