🔹"At the last minute, the White House got nervous. The president said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and gave new orders, so that the bombs could be remotely detonated at any moment. You do it with a conventional sonar, a Raytheon product, by the way, you fly over the place and drop a cylinder. It sends out a low frequency signal, it can be described as a flute sound, it can be tuned to different frequencies
🔹Joe Biden decided not to blow them up then, in June, that was five months after the war began. But in September, he ordered it done. The operations staff, they initially thought it was a useful weapon they could use in negotiations. But when the operation was completed, the people who ran it grew increasingly disgusted with the whole thing. These were people who worked in senior positions in the intelligence services and were well educated. They opposed the project, they thought it was insane
🔹Soon after the terrorist attack, after they had done what they were ordered to do, there was a lot of anger and disgust among the participants in the operation. That's one of the reasons I learned so much. And I'll tell you something else. People in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I'll tell you something important. The people who own the companies that build the pipelines know the story
🔹Biden ordered the pipelines blown up to put pressure on Western Europe not to stop supporting the U.S. in the war in Ukraine. The war was not going well for the West, and they were afraid of the approaching winter. And the U.S. was worried that Germany would lift sanctions because of the cold winter
🔹What I do know is that there is no way this war is going to end the way we would like it to, and I don't know what we are going to do as we look forward. It scares me that the president was prepared for something like this. And the people who were on this mission believed that the president was aware of what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that didn't end well. And in the long run, it would not only damage his reputation as president, but it would do serious political damage. It would be a stigma for the United States
🔹The White House feared that it might lose its position, that Germany and Western Europe would no longer supply the weapons we wanted, and that the German chancellor might restart the pipeline - this has raised serious concerns in Washington. The point is also that this could be perceived as an act of war not only against Russia, but also against Western allies, particularly Germany. The people involved in the operation saw that the president wanted to freeze Germany for his short-term political purposes, and it terrified them. I'm talking here about Americans who are very loyal to the United States
🔹The political advantage of the CIA is that a president who fails to carry out his plans in Congress can take a walk with the CIA director in the White House Rose Garden to plan something secret that could hit a lot of people on the other side of the Atlantic. This has always been the hallmark of the CIA. But even this community is horrified that Biden has decided to put Europe in the cold to support a war he won't win. To me, that's vile."
Can someone translate the entire article?? Would like to repost everywhere.
PART 1
Interview with Seymour Hersh: Joe Biden blew up Nord Stream because he didn't trust Germany
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has published a controversial investigation into the Nord Stream attack. We spoke with him. An interview. interview : Fabian Scheider 02/14/2023 | 10:58 a.m Journalist Seymour Hersh. Everett Collection/imago
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has published an investigation according to which the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines were arranged by the US government with the support of Norway. The US government and CIA, at Hersh's request, have denied his account. Many media outlets have accused Hersh of not disclosing his anonymous source, making his claims unverifiable. Criticism was also formulated that the research was inconsistent. The Berlin publicist Fabian Scheidler spoke to Seymour Hersh for the Berliner Zeitung.
Mr. Hersh, please detail your findings. According to your source, what exactly happened, who was involved in the Nord Stream attack and what were the motives? It was a story that begged to be told. In late September 2022, eight bombs were to be detonated near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, six of which went off in an area that is fairly flat. They destroyed three of the four major Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline has provided Germany and other parts of Europe with very cheap natural gas for many years. And then it was blown up, as was Nord Stream 2, and the question was who did it and why. On February 7, 2022, just over two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, US President Joe Biden said at a White House press conference he held with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the US would stop Nord Stream. Biden literally said: "If Russia invades, there will be no more Nord Stream 2, we will put an end to the project." And when a reporter asked how exactly he planned to do that, since the project was primarily under German control , Biden just said, "I promise we'll be able to do it."
His Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, who was deeply involved in the events of the Maidan revolution in 2014, had made a similar statement a few weeks earlier. They say the decision to shut down the pipeline was made even earlier by President Biden. You write in your report that in December 2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called a meeting of the newly formed task force of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State Department and the Treasury Department. They write, "Sullivan wanted the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines."
Pipes for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Stefan Sauer/dpa This group was originally convened to study the problem. They met in a very secret office. Right next to the White House is an office building, the Executive Office Building, which is connected to the White House by an underground tunnel. And at the top is an office for a secretive outside group of advisors called the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. I brought this up to signal to the folks in the White House that I have information. So the meeting was convened to examine what we would do if Russia went to war. That was three months before the war, before Christmas 2021. It was a high level group that probably had a different name, I just called it the Interagency Group, I don't know the official name if there was one. They were the CIA and the National Security Agency, which monitors and intercepts communications, the State Department, and the Treasury Department, which provides money. And probably a few other organizations that were involved. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were also represented. The point was to make recommendations on how to stop Russia, either with reversible measures such as further sanctions and economic pressure or with irreversible, "kinetic" measures, e.g. B. Blasts. I don't want to go into the details here or talk about a specific meeting because I need to protect my source. I don't know how many people took part, do you know what I mean?
In your article, you wrote that in early 2022, the CIA working group reported to Sullivan's "Interagency Group" and said, quote, "We have a way of blowing up the pipelines."
In your article, you wrote that in early 2022, the CIA working group reported to Sullivan's "Interagency Group" and said, quote, "We have a way of blowing up the pipelines."
They had a way. There were people there who knew what we in America call "mine warfare." In the United States Navy there are units that deal with submarines, there is also a nuclear engineering command. And there is a mine squad. The area of underwater mines is very important and we have trained specialists in it. A central location for their education is a small vacation town called Panama City in the middle of nowhere in Florida. We train very good people there and employ them. Underwater miners are of great importance, for example to clear blocked entrances to harbors and blow up things that stand in the way. You can also blow up a specific country's underwater petroleum pipelines. It's not always good things they do, but they work absolutely in secret. It was clear to the group in the White House that they could blow up the pipelines. There's an explosive called C4 that's incredibly powerful, especially at the level they use. You can control 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, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said we could do it. I think that was January 20th. And then the President, when he held the press conference together with the German Chancellor on February 7, 2022, also said that we could do it. The German chancellor didn't say anything concrete at the time, he was very vague. One question I'd like to ask Scholz if I was chairing a parliamentary hearing is this: Has Joe Biden told you about this? Did he tell you then why he was so confident that he could destroy the pipeline? As Americans, we didn't have a plan in place then, but we knew we had the ability to do it.
You write that Norway played a role. To what extent was the country involved - and why should Norwegians do something like that? Norway is a great seafaring nation and they have deep sources of energy. They are also very keen to increase 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 US for economic reasons? In addition, there is marked hostility towards Russia in Norway.
The Johan Sverdrup oil field in the North Sea. Carina Johansen/dpa In your article you write that the Norwegian secret service and the Navy were involved. They also say that Sweden and Denmark were informed to some extent, but did not know everything.
I was told: They did what they did and they knew what they were doing and they understood what was going on, but maybe no one ever said yes. I've done a lot of work on this subject with the people I've spoken to. Anyway, for this mission to go ahead, the Norwegians had to find the right place. The divers, who were trained in Panama City, could dive up to 100 meters deep without heavy equipment. The Norwegians found us a spot off the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea that was only 260 feet deep to operate there. The divers had to return to the top slowly, there was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with the people monitoring the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is monitored very closely, there is a lot of data freely available, so we took care of it, there were three or four different people on it. And what was then done 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 the NATO navies in the Baltic Sea every summer (BALTOPS, editor's note). We're sending an aircraft carrier and other large ships to these exercises. And for the first time in history, the NATO operation in the Baltics had a new program. A 12-day mine dumping and mine detection exercise was to be conducted. A number of nations sent out mine teams, one group dropped a mine, and another mine group went in search and blew it up. So there was a time when things blew up, and that was when the deep sea divers who put the mines on the pipelines were able to operate. The two pipelines are about a mile apart, they're a little under the seabed silt, but they're not difficult to reach and the divers had practiced. It only took a few hours to place the bombs.
So that was in June 2022? Yes, they did towards the end of the exercise. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The President said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and issued new orders, giving the ability to remotely detonate the bombs at any time. You do that with a regular sonar, a Raytheon product by the way, you fly over the spot and drop a cylinder. It sends a low-frequency signal, you can describe it as a flute sound, you can set different frequencies. However, the fear was that the bombs would not work if they stayed in the water for too long, which in fact should be the case with two bombs. So there was concern within the group to find the right remedy, and we actually had to reach out to other intelligence agencies, which I intentionally didn't write about.
What do you think were the motives for the attack? The US government was against the pipeline for many reasons. Some say she opposed it because she wanted to weaken Russia or to weaken relations between Russia and Western Europe, particularly Germany. But maybe also to weaken the German economy, which is a competitor to the US economy. High gas prices have prompted companies to relocate to the US. What is your take on the US government's motives? I don't think they've thought this through thoroughly. I know that sounds strange. I don't think Secretary of State Blinken and some others in the government are deep thinkers. There are certainly people in American business who like the idea that we are becoming more competitive. We sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) at extremely high profits, we make a lot of money from it. I'm sure there were some people who thought, Boy, is this going to give the American economy a long-term boost. But in the White House, I think they've always been obsessed with re-election, and they wanted to win the war, they wanted to get a victory, they wanted Ukraine to somehow magically win. There might be some people who think that maybe it's better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that's crazy. I think we got caught up in something that won't work, the war won't end well for this government.
How do you think this war could end? It doesn't matter what I think. What I do know is that there is no way this war will end the way we want it to, and I don't know what we will do as we look further into the future. It scares me that the President was willing to do something like this. And the people running that mission believed that the President was aware of what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that wasn't going well. And in the long run, this will not only damage his reputation as President, it will also be very damaging politically. It will be a stigma for the US.
PART 2
The White House was concerned that it might be lost, that Germany and Western Europe would stop supplying the weapons we wanted, and that the German Chancellor might put the pipeline back online—that was a big concern in Washington. I would ask Chancellor Scholz a lot of questions. I would ask him what he learned in February when he was with the President. The operation was top secret and the President wasn't supposed to tell anyone about our ability, but he likes to chat, he sometimes says things he shouldn't say.
The Nord Stream 2 gas leak near Bornholm in Denmark. Danish Defense Command Your story was reported in the German media in a rather cautious and critical manner. Some attacked your reputation or said you only had one anonymous source and that it wasn't reliable. How could I talk about my source? I have written many stories based on uncredited sources. If I named anyone they would be fired or worse, jailed. The law is very strict. I've never unmasked anyone, and of course when I write I say, as I've done in this article, that it's a source, period. Over the years, the stories I've written have always been accepted.
How did you check your facts? I worked with the same experienced fact-checkers I used to have at the New Yorker for the current story. Of course, there are many ways to verify obscure information shared with me. The personal attacks on me also miss the point. The point is that Biden has decided to let the Germans freeze this winter. The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine, and that to me is a devastating thing for this White House. The point is also that this can be perceived as an act of war not only against Russia but also against Western allies, especially Germany.
US President Joe Biden (left) with CIA Director William Burns. Samuel Corum/AFP 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 that horrified them. I'm talking about Americans who are very loyal to the United States. The CIA, as I put it in my article, works for power, not for the constitution. The political advantage of the CIA is that a president who can't get his plans through Congress can walk the CIA director in the Rose Garden of the White House to plan something secret that's across the Atlantic -- or where anywhere in the world – can meet many people. That was always the CIA's unique selling proposition -- which I have my problems with. But even that community is appalled that Biden has decided to expose Europe to the cold to support a war he will not win. This is nefarious to me.
Some Comments From The Bundestag
Nord Stream debate in the Bundestag: Where is the enemy?
There was a current hour in the Bundestag on Friday about the attacks on Nord Stream. Various guesses have been made as to where the enemy might be located. Michael Maier 02/10/2023 | 10:44 a.m
Nord Stream after the attack Cover images/imago In a current hour on Friday afternoon, the Bundestag discussed the status of the investigation into the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines. In its argument, the opposition referred to the recent article by the American journalist Seymour Hersh, according to which the American government is said to be behind the attacks together with Norway. Both the White House and the CIA as well as the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sharply rejected the report.
The governing parties met the allegations of the opposition speakers from the Left Party and AfD unanimously on the same levels: they questioned Hersh's journalistic credibility; stressed that for security reasons it is better not to say much to the public; said that Russia was the aggressor and finally promised new confidential bodies to better protect the critical infrastructure in Germany. Sebastian Fiedler (SPD) said the federal government should think about re-establishing a “protection commission”. A panel of scientists should constantly monitor threats and do so without publicity in order to be able to protect better. With regard to the investigation into Nord Stream, Fiedler said that details specific to the population should not be disclosed so that the "enemies of democracy" do not learn these details either. He called the AfD the enemy of democracy.
Nord Stream Attacks: Who is the Investigator Seymour Hersh? The revelation that the US government is behind the attacks on Nord Stream 2 is the subject of a current hour in the Bundestag. By Michael Maier politics 02/10/2023
Ann-Veruschka Jurisch (FDP) called for the establishment of a "National Security Council" that should act as a "superior early warning system". She said that the main threat to German infrastructure was the excessive "dependence on Russia": "Nord Stream 2 should never have been built." For the FDP, Leon Eckert said that the responsibilities had to be clarified because there was currently damage through natural disasters, the federal states are responsible, but in the case of sabotage the federal government is responsible. Konstantin Kuhle from the FDP said that the perpetrators of the destruction of critical infrastructure in Europe are known: Russia is destroying infrastructure in Ukraine and no longer even conceals its goal, namely the "annihilation of Ukraine". Kuhle went on to say that Russia is trying to undermine democracy in Europe by looking for "specific contacts with advocates" in the institutions, "they are sitting on the fringes," said Kuhle, pointing to the left and the AfD, and saying that you have to look ahead protect the "enemies of democracy in our house". Green Party MP Canan Bayram was cautious about the Hersh article, saying: "We cannot judge the veracity of the story." She warned against hasty judgments. Philipp Amthor (CDU) made particularly derogatory and defamatory remarks about Seymour Hersh. He spoke of the "blog post" of an "85-year-old who received a journalism award 50 years ago". AfD man Tino Chrupalla said the government's silence on the attacks "feeds rumors and conspiracy theories".
Pulitzer Prize Winner: US blew up Nord Stream pipelines Star journalist Seymour Hersh claims that US divers planted explosive devices on the gas pipelines with the help of Norway. Joe Biden was involved. Ukraine 02/08/2023
The Left's Sevim Dagdelen said Hersh's career has made the difference between journalism and government statements clear. She told the Berliner Zeitung: "It is shocking how the US reporter Seymour Hersh is defamed for his research into the terrorist attacks on Nord Stream and urged to disclose his source. It is part of the basics of journalism to protect whistleblowers.” She called for an “international investigation under the auspices of the United Nations”. She said: "Despite Hersh's revelations, the federal government still seems to lack a real will to clarify." The member of parliament Jürgen Hardt from the CDU said in the current hour that he was proud that all the speakers in his parliamentary group were members of the Atlantic Bridge e.V., because he could not remember that the Americans had ever done anything bad. The destruction of a pipeline was unimaginable a few years ago. Shortly before 4 p.m., to the laughter of his group, he asked for the debate to be closed because he had to catch his train to Wuppertal.