[Skybird]

A subjective opinion piece by German blogger Roger Letsch, trying to make sense of the Hersh article on the Nordstream detionation:
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Northstream: Explosives in every respect

Did the U.S. Army blow up the Northstream pipelines with the help of Norway? Seymour Hersh, veteran journalistic investigator, makes this thesis in a detailed account. The case is making waves. A preliminary assessment.

Seymor Hersh's story, available to everyone on the "Substack" platform, has been making waves since yesterday and prompted the US government to issue a prompt denial. White House spokeswoman Adrienne Watson let it be known: "This is false and completely made up."

The quick reaction to a blog entry is surely due in part to the fact that Seymour Hersh is not just anyone in the United States. Seymour Hersh established his reputation as an investigative reporter with his Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. He has won five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards for Public Interest, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the U.S. for his numerous political expose stories. "The story you're going to read today is the truth I worked on for three months," Hersh says. To which it must be added: Hersh, too, was sometimes off the mark in his stories.

According to his account, which is ultimately based only on an unnamed source, the Biden administration's plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines dates back to 2021. The command center chosen to attack the pipelines, he said, was the U.S. Navy's Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida. "Last June, Navy divers operated under the guise of a NATO midsummer exercise known as BALTOPS 22," he writes. The attached explosive charges were detonated three months later, he said. This would also be consistent with Joe Biden's announcement at a press conference on Olaf Scholz's visit to the U.S.: "If Russia invades... there will be no more Nord Stream 2."


Perplexity among German media

Hersh's article proves first of all, and this is a good thing, that the so-called mainstream media are no longer able to select or inhibit the dissemination of information. Right now and as I write, neither ZEIT, nor BILD, Spiegel or SZ are reporting. Even the taz, to which any "good" news about the "bad" Americans comes as a surprise, is apparently at a loss.

But the debate has long since arisen. The WELT takes up the matter. The Tagesschau writes: "Hersh's version raises many questions." The FAZ focuses on the denial: "USA rejects accusations about Nord Stream leak". Bayerischer Rundfunk "clarifies" that the U.S. "did not blow up Nord Stream pipelines." Deutschlandfunk chooses the "shooting the messenger" method and places Hersh in the vicinity of conspiracy theorists. On t-online, the counter-argument is that Russian propaganda channel Russia Today was one of the first media outlets to pick up the story, which is not necessarily a viable argument.

Of course, we don't know if Hersh is ultimately on the right track, but he is more likely not a Relotius [Skybird: Relotius was a liar working as a reporter for Der Spiegel who invented stories and made up facts that were no facts, but inventions]. On the other hand, of course, the evidence Hersh cites is one of those things, since he produces no documents, his eyewitnesses remain unnamed, and no one has yet jumped out of the bushes in exasperation to shout "Arrest me, I did it!"

You can read for yourself what Hersh wrote at the link above. So here's just a brief summary: Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan - all high-ranking government officials in the Biden administration - had recruited the personnel for the action with the help of the CIA at a Navy diving school in Panama City, FL, who were prepared for the action with the help of Norwegian specialists in Norway, according to his story.

However, he said, they didn't want to put a special forces unit in charge of the operation because it would have required congressional authorization, which, of course, would have made secrecy even more difficult. Under cover of the NATO maneuver BALTROPS22, the explosive charges were set in June 2022, which, at Biden's request, were not to be detonated immediately a few days later, but at a later time and by remote detonation.

According to Hersh's account, it was the Norwegians who dropped the sonar buoy that ultimately gave the signal to start the timed detonators. In both Sweden and Denmark, Hersh says, high-ranking military/intelligence officials were briefed at least to the point where they could break the chains of communication if the two littoral states somehow got wind of the actions.


One can wonder what our Olaf Scholz knew

One can think that all this is humbug. Maybe for Russian propaganda or a perfidious plan of the Republicans, although their senator Ted Cruz was not exactly unhappy about the end of the pipeline either. One can wonder what, in case it's true, our Olaf Scholz knew, if he cares to remember, or Habeck, who is currently begging for gas in the US. And one should definitely ask oneself whether, in view of our foreign policy of recent years, which has been characterized by arrogance and self-denial, anyone cares at all about what our interests might be.

And, of course, one must lament the fact that it was ultimately the damnable energy transition that allowed us to build the pipeline in the first place, against the opposition of all our allies and neighbors. One can also wonder - if one follows the circumstantial evidence in Hersh's article - who is really running the United States, Joe Biden or his apparatus. And you can ask yourself whether Donald Trump was really the worst thing imaginable to look at us from there.

But one can and must also ask why the Swedish investigating authorities are still so taciturn after four months and why we still do not have a comparably fluent and eloquent explanation that would make other authors of the blast plausible.

On the other hand, one is on quite safe ground with the prognosis: If there is a blackout or a gas cut-off in Germany because of the home-made energy transition ideology, the blame has so far been assigned to Vladimir Putin. That was very convenient. From now on, the Americans are to blame. That's even more practical.
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