A report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was a covert operation orchestrated by the White House and carried out by the CIA.
Hersh (85), a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, alleges that U.S. deep-sea divers used a NATO military exercise as a cover to plant mines along the pipelines, which were later detonated remotely.
In September 2022, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were destroyed in a series of powerful explosions.
According to Hersh, President Biden ordered the sabotage in cooperation with Norway.
In a 5,000-word report published on Substack, Hersh writes that the operation was disguised under the cover of a NATO exercise known as “Baltic Operations 22,” which took place off the coast of Germany in June.
He claims that Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines resulted from nine months of top-secret planning within the American national security community.
“The issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible,” Hersh stated.
In his report on Nord Stream, Hersh cites an anonymous source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
The source claims that U.S. Navy divers from the Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida, planted C4 explosives along the pipelines, which were later triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a Norwegian Navy surveillance plane.
Nord Stream is run by a Swiss-based company with major shareholder Gazprom, the Russian energy giant.
Russia invested about $20 billion in building the pipelines, which provide cheap gas to mainland Europe.
Nord Stream 2, completed in 2021, was not operational at the time of the sabotage.
Biden and his foreign policy team, including his national security adviser, secretary of state, and under secretary of state for political affairs, had spoken out against Nord Stream 2, which they feared would increase Russia’s political influence over Europe and boost its revenue.
In February 2022, Biden warned that there would be no Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Hersh’s anonymous source says that because of the president’s threat, destroying the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option.”
The source claims that the plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was downgraded from a covert operation to a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support, which did not require reporting to Congress.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, recently alleged that Washington carried out the attack to ensure global dominance, although Moscow had previously accused the British Royal Navy of bombing the pipelines.
After the attack, the U.S. State Department rejected allegations of U.S. involvement and called them “preposterous” and “Russian disinformation.”
