Ekaterina Blinova via infowars.com
The White House has denounced Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream bombshell as “fiction”. Oslo claimed that the Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist’s allegations are “nonsensical.” Still, the denials are unlikely to satisfy the public given that EU probes in the attack remain top secret, Sputnik’s interlocutors say.
“Many people – including myself – determined at the time that blowing up the pipeline was a US/NATO operation that was being falsely blamed on Russia,” Hans Mahncke, a US investigative journalist and lawyer, told Sputnik.
“Many of the details of Seymour Hersh’s reporting were already known but not reported by western media, including the fact that the Danish and American governments had agreed to station US military personnel in Bornholm and the fact that NATO’s BALTOPS military exercise in June 2022 took place in the area of the Nord Stream 2 bombing. Hersh has added some details about the exact modalities of how the sabotage was carried out, which he attributes to a source. Hersh’s track record is solid and there is no reason to believe that the source is not credible.”
On February 8, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the US online platform Substack detailing the Biden administration’s plot to destroy Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline network. The blasts occurred on September 26 at three of the four strings of Nord Stream 1 and 2 underwater pipelines, which were built to carry a combined 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe annually. According to Hersh, the plan was carried out by US operatives in coordination and collaboration with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.
“[NATO Secretary General] Stoltenberg is one reason. Another reason is the competence (excellence) of our Navy Special Forces,” Norwegian investigative journalist and intelligence veteran Geir Furuseth told Sputnik.
Furuseth believes that only a very few Norwegian politicians and officers were in the know about Washington’s alleged covert operation.
“Norway has highly experienced military personnel, especially in connection with underwater and naval operations,” echoed Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel while speaking to Sputnik.
“Norway’s involvement is natural though it seems highly ill-advised. Another set of questions concerns why the governments of Sweden and Denmark [were] willing to play along, as they were informed at high levels concerning this scheme, according to Hersh.”
Hersh revealed that “The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity” in their respective territorial waters. He specified, however, citing his source, that what Swedish and Danish officials “were told and what they knew were purposely different.”
Remarkably, following the sabotage, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden kicked off separate inquiries into the attack. Sweden was reportedly the first to leave the planned joint investigation team; Denmark followed suit. Thus, Germany was left to investigate the matter on its own.
European states didn’t invite Russian investigators to participate: at that time the western media actively disseminated an ungrounded assumption that Moscow blasted the pipelines itself. What’s more, neither of the European countries made their findings public.
Why hasn’t Sweden or any other of the implicated governments made their investigations public? This secrecy undermines all western credibility!