Hersh wrote in his article that the explosives were planted near the pipeline last June by US Navy divers in cooperation with Norway and detonated three months later. He also added that US President Joe Biden is allegedly behind this decision, who wanted to deprive Moscow of income from the sale of Russian gas in Europe.
The White House described Hersh’s article as “absolute fiction”, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry as false.
Nord Streams 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea started leaking natural gas at four locations on September 26, preceded by two explosions. Danish and Swedish investigators then found traces of explosives near the pipeline, confirming sabotage. Experts believe that only the state could have had the means to carry out sabotage of this scale, but the investigation did not reveal who was responsible for it.
Hersch was most famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970, he won the most famous journalism award, the Pulitzer Prize, for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War. He also covered the Watergate affair for the New York Times, when Republican President Richard Nixon’s staff planted wiretaps in the Democratic headquarters.
In recent years, however, Hersch’s articles have raised more questions. For example, he wrote about the fact that Pakistan detained the terrorist and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden already in 2006, and the US SEALs did not fight on the spot five years later. In another article, he also questioned the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime on civilians.
His articles were criticized for relying too much on anonymous sources and lacking hard evidence. Hersh’s article on Nord Stream has similar features. In it, he quotes an anonymous source “with direct knowledge of operational planning”. He said that divers from the US Navy placed C4 explosives along the Nord Stream. But he no longer bothered to contact these alleged members, for example.
Germans pour ashes on their heads. With Nord Stream 2, we gave Putin the courage to invade Ukraine
The war in Ukraine
