(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh has claimed to identify the real target of last September’s Nord Stream bombing—one of the largest acts of ecoterrorism in world history—and it wasn’t Russia.
Hersh, who broke the story in February that the Biden administration ordered the bombing, said in a Substack article Tuesday that the intended target of the attack was actually America’s NATO allies, including Germany.
Citing an unnamed official with knowledge of the operation, Hersh said the original plan was for the Nord Stream attack to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
But when Putin disregarded the threat and invaded anyway, the Biden administration decided to use an attack on Nord Stream to keep its NATO allies invested in the war, according to Hersh.
“The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine,” Hersh said in the article, which published on the one-year anniversary of the Nord Stream attack.
“It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources,” Hersh said.
“And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”
Hersh also used his Tuesday article to respond to criticism of his initial February report, which relied on an unnamed official.
“I must note here that I’ve won literally scores of prizes in my career for stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker that relied on not a single named source,” Hersh said.
“In the past year we’ve seen a series of contrary newspaper stories, with no named first-hand sources, claiming that a dissident Ukrainian group carried out the technical diving operation attack in the Baltic Sea via a 49-foot rented yacht called the Andromeda.”
The New York Times has since admitted that the “Ukrainian group story” is likely bogus, and open-source radar data has further implicated the U.S. in the attack.
However, the Times has also called for the Nord Stream attacker to remain secret.
“Naming a culprit could set off unintended consequences. Claiming Russia was behind the attack would mean it had successfully sabotaged major critical infrastructure in Western Europe’s backyard, and could spark demands for a response. Blaming Ukrainian operatives could stoke internal debate in Europe about support for their eastern neighbor,” the Times said in April.
“And naming a Western nation or operatives could trigger deep mistrust when the West is struggling to maintain a united front.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
