U.S. Navy Sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline: American Journalist

The bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a report by a veteran investigative journalist claims.

Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, published the explosive 5,000-word report on his page on the Substack web service. Citing an anonymous source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh said U.S. Navy divers, with help from Norway, planted mines along the pipelines in June 2022 using a NATO military exercise (BALTOPS 22) as a cover. The mines were detonated remotely three months later using a sonar buoy dropped by a plane.

On September 26, he said, a Norwegian P8 surveillance plane made “a seemingly routine flight” and released the sonar buoy. “The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1,” he wrote.

The high-powered C4 explosives were triggered few hours later 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.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines run through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany and provide cheap gas to mainland Europe. The September explosions were blamed by Western countries on Russia. So far, investigations by Swedish, Danish and German authorities have not pinned the blame on any one country or actor.

Hersh wrote that the pipelines were bombed to cut off Russia’s ability to earn billions of dollars from natural gas sales to Europe. The journalist pointed out that just two weeks before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Biden publicly said U.S. wouldn’t allow Nord Stream pipeline to be opened if it attacked Ukraine.

He also said the U.S. believed the pipelines gave Russia political leverage over Western Europe that could be used to weaken their commitment to Ukraine.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson described Hersh report as "complete fiction.” A CIA spokesperson called it “completely and utterly false.”

Hersh told Russia’s state-owned TASS that he reached out to a CIA spokesman when writing the story. He said he believes the U.S. administration will probably deny its involvement in the sabotage.