The Nordstream Sabotage and the Ukraine War Narrative

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/claims-of-u-s-involvement-in-nord-stream-attack-draw-scrutiny

Mainstream media has all but ignored Seymour Hersh's latest Substack piece in which he states emphatically something that many of us have suspected all along – that the Nordstream Pipelines were sabotaged by the US Navy.

There's been some criticism levied at Hersh even from those who normally would appreciate his work. He does make some mistakes and there are conflicts between some of his reporting and what open source data investigations reveal about the location of ships and so forth. For his part, Hersh questions how reliable these 'open source' resources are and whether they are subject to manipulation.

Hersh deprecates editors (especially at this late stage of his career), but he could probably use one. The editors would catch some of the minor mistakes which in the end don't affect the primary arguments but muddle the interpretation and damage overall credibility. Also an editor would demand more documentation on certain points. Over the years Hersh has come to rely on his sources and people come to him because of who he is – and that he won't reveal them.

And though an editor might help – who can he trust at this point? An editor has to be in the know because he's going to put his publication's reputation on the line and subject it to possible litigation. But I don't know if Hersh can trust anyone at this point and it would be hard to walk into a friendly overseas context (such as Europe or Latin America) and let someone into your source-world.

At the end of the day I'll say this – dismiss Hersh at your own peril. People don't like his reliance on anonymous sources but he's been right and has scooped some of the biggest scandals over the past fifty-plus years. He is hated by many within the Washington DC Establishment because probably more than any other reporter he has revealed their crimes and cover-ups.

It was his reporting on the Bin Laden Raid that finally blacklisted him and he also got caught up in some of the business surrounding Wikileaks, the so-called Russiagate scandal, and the murder of Seth Rich. To many he went off the deep end – I personally don't think so. And for those who think he was aligning with Trump, think again. You're not understanding him. He is adversarial regardless of the party – and that certainly includes the Democrats. That doesn't make him a Trumpite, no more than it does Julian Assange.

And unlike many contemporary pseudo-left journalists he doesn't sell out and join hands with the likes of FOX in order to get a financial bump. He has too much integrity to make a move like that.

The Nordstream story is huge and yet many dismiss it because they are unfamiliar with the long history of how the US treats its allies.  Washington blowing up Nordstream would constitute an act of treachery perpetrated against an ally – Germany, as it deeply wounded their economy, threw them into an energy crisis, and all but forced Berlin to buy US gas. It seems inconceivable to many that the US would behave in such a fashion. But in reality it's not shocking at all. The US has frequently taken advantage of its own allies and forced them to fall on their swords – sometimes in humiliation, in order for Washington get its way. One immediately thinks of events from just a few years ago and the way Washington manipulated the air refueling tanker contract situation, resulting in the US wresting billions of dollars away from Airbus and placing them into the coffers of Boeing – and Wall Street.

And on a darker note there are the various episodes that fall within the Gladio spectrum during the Cold War, when the US proved more than willing to resort to terror and assassination in order to manipulate the internal politics of its allies. The bad optics associated with tank-led Soviet-style clampdowns was unthinkable for Washington as such moves would harm its liberal narrative. And so instead the US turned to covert means and effectively demonstrated it was not an ally in a partnership but an imperial power brow-beating and manipulating its satraps.

The real bombshell about the Nordstream sabotage is the fact that if Hersh is right – the planning for this operation antedates the February 2022 Russian invasion, in which case the entire narrative surrounding the war is falsified. It's clear that attacking Nordstream – also an act of war against Russia, was being pursued by the American Deep State. War with Russia was already in the cards and energy plays a key role in the strategic planning. Instead they delayed its implementation and laid the trap for Vladimir Putin – a trap he walked right into. It was also a trap that allowed the West to spin the narrative in terms of democracy, freedom, and Western values – utter absurdities in light of Zelenskiy's government, its anti-democratic tactics, corruption, and alliance with Ukrainian fascism.

The media doesn't want to cover the story because the 'Russia did it' narrative they tried to push months ago has collapsed – revealed for the absurdity it is. Well if Moscow didn't do it – and clearly they didn't as it was their pipeline which they are now trying to repair, then the obvious question is who and cui bono? Everything points back to the United States. As I've said before I am confident that many leaders in Europe know the truth but as always they have to grit their teeth, and take it – and smile and shake the hands of the US Secretaries of State, Defense, and the President. So it is with subject states.