Who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines? (hint: it wasn’t Russia)
It has been an international mystery. Who blew up the underwater pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea running from Russia to Germany last September, shutting off the supply of cheap Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe?
Many countries were quick to blame Russia, and PeaceQuest readers will recall we published the analysis by John Foster, who said that Russia would have no motive to blow up its own pipelines, called Nord Stream 1 & 2.
Foster said that by asking, “Who benefits?” from such sabotage, and who might have the capability to pull-off such a stunt as secretly placing explosives on an underwater pipeline, there are only two suspects: Poland and the United States.
This week, renown award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says he knows who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines: it was the United States working with Norway.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. reporter writes that U.S. Navy divers, in a CIA operation ordered by President Joe Biden, planted explosives that destroyed the Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea last summer.
Hersh’s article describes an operation right out of a film script. The U.S. Navy worked with Norway and used a NATO naval exercise as cover. Navy deep-water divers placed explosives on the pipelines that could be detonated remotely any time the U.S. Administration ordered.
Reuters reported the White House dismissed Hersh’s report, which relied on a single source to support its claim about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, as “utterly false and complete fiction.”
As Hersch says, “On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.”
Why would the U.S. blow up the Nord Stream pipelines?
Hersh writes, “From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin.”
“America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America.”
As John Foster explained to PeaceQuest readers, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, the United States had the Nord Stream pipelines in its sights. “On February 7, President Joe Biden stated that, if Moscow invaded Ukraine, ‘there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it… I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.’” Seems he may have made good on his threat.
