Seymour Hersh: “Nord Stream explosion will end very badly for the Biden administration”

American journalist Seymour Hersh predicted enormous consequences for the United States due to the undermining of the Nord Stream.

Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh, who previously exposed the My Lai massacre of civilians by American soldiers in 1969 and now directly blames the Biden administration for the Nord Stream pipeline explosion, along with Norway’s support for US geopolitical and financial benefits, gave an interview German journalist Fabian Scheidler. But, as we have already said, Seymour Hersh is difficult to “shorten”, he is too big even for the mechanism of the “deep” American state.

Hersh’s article states that in December 2021, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of the then-newly formed task force, consisting of the military, CIA, State Department and Treasury officials. He wanted to develop a plan to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines.

“This group was originally convened to study… the problem. They all met in a very… secret office. Right next to the White House is a building, the Executive Office Building, which is connected to the White House by an underground tunnel. And upstairs is the office of a secret outside advisory group called the Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board. I mention this so that those who frequent the White House will understand that I have this information.

So the group was convened to consider what we would do if Russia went to war. This meeting took place three months before the war, before Christmas 2021. It was a high-level group, it may have had another name, but I called it “inter-agency group”, I don’t know its official name, and whether it existed. It involved the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), which oversees telecommunications, the State Department and the Treasury Department, which provides money, and probably several other organizations. The chiefs of staff of the ground forces were also presented. The point was to make recommendations on how to stop Russia’s actions in Ukraine: either by reversible measures, such as sanctions and economic pressure, or by irreversible, “kinetic” measures, such as bombings. I don’t want to go into details or talk about this particular meeting because I have to protect my source. I don’t know how many people were involved,” Hersh said.

He even wondered if German Chancellor Olaf Scholz knew about the US plans, since President Biden approved the plan to blow up the pipelines on January 20, 2022. “I think it was January 20. And then the president, when he held a press conference with the German chancellor on February 7, 2022, also said that we can do it. The German chancellor then did not say anything concrete, he was very vague.

One question I would like to ask Scholz if I were chairing the parliamentary hearings is this: “Did Joe Biden tell you about this? Did Joe Biden tell you at the time because he was so sure he could destroy the pipeline ? As Americans, we didn’t have a plan at the time, but we knew we had the ability to do it.”

The Nord Stream explosion, Hersh says, came at the end of the Balstop exercise. “The White House hesitated at the last minute… The President said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and issued new orders allowing the bombs to be detonated remotely at any time. This can be done using a conventional depth finder, by the way, manufactured by Raytheon, fly over the place and reset the cylinder. It sends out a low frequency signal, it can be described as the sound of a flute, you can set different frequencies.

However, there was a fear of failure… There was concern in the team about finding the right drug, and in fact we had to turn to other intelligence services, which I deliberately did not write about. Joe Biden decided not to blow them up in June… five months after the Russian invasion. But in September he ordered it to be done.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the people who do everything for the United States, do what the president says. So at first they thought it was a useful weapon that he could use in negotiations. But some time after the Russian invasion, and then after the completion of the operation, all this became more and more disgusted by the people who led it. These are people who work in senior positions in intelligence and are well trained. They opposed the project, considered it insane.

Shortly after the attack, after they did what they were told, there was much anger at the operation and opposition from those involved. This is one of the reasons why I learned so much. And I’ll tell you one more thing.

The people in America and Europe who are building the pipelines know what happened. I am telling you something important. The people who own the companies that build the pipelines know this story.
I didn’t hear this story from them, but I quickly learned that they knew.

Foreign Minister Antoni Blinken said at a press conference days after the pipeline explosion that an important lever of power had been taken from Putin.He said the destruction of the pipelines was a huge chance to deprive Russia of the ability to use the pipelines as a weapon. Thus, Russia will no longer be able to put pressure on Western Europe. Therefore, there was a fear that Western Europe would not support Ukraine. I think that the reason for this decision was that the war was not going very well for Europe, which was afraid of the approaching winter. The Nord Stream 2 project was suspended by Germany itself, and the US was afraid that in the face of a cold winter they would lift sanctions.

As for the motivation of the Americans, as Hersh said, “I don’t think they thought it all out well”: “I know it sounds weird. I don’t think that Secretary of State Blinken and other members of the government made the decision after much deliberation. There are people in American business who like the idea that we are becoming more competitive. We sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) at extremely high profit margins, we make a lot of money from it. I’m sure there were people who thought it would give the American economy a 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 to win, they wanted Ukraine to somehow magically win. There may be people who think it’s better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that’s crazy. I think we’ve fallen into a trap that won’t work, the war won’t end well for the Biden administration.”

When it comes to how the war will end, Hersh notes: “It doesn’t matter what I think. I only know one thing: there is no way this war can end the way we want it to, and I don’t know what we’re going to do as we look to the future. It scares me that the president was ready to go for it. And the people who led this 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 very well. And in the long run, this will not only damage his reputation as president, but also cause great political damage.

This will be a stigma for the USA. The White House fears that Germany and Western Europe will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. Another concern is the resumption of construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. I would ask Chancellor Scholz many questions. I would ask him what he learned in February when he met with the President[Байденом]?

The operation was top secret, and the President was not supposed to tell anyone about our potential, but he likes to talk, sometimes he says things that he shouldn’t say.The fact is that Biden decided to let the Germans freeze this winter. The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than stop supporting Ukraine.

I would put it more simply. The people involved in the operation saw that the president wanted to freeze Germany for his short-term political goals, and this frightened them. I’m talking about Americans who are loyal to the United States”.

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