Lee Heidhues 3.7.2023
America’s paper of record, The New York Times, published a detailed investigative piece whose ultimate conclusion is that the United States had no involvement in the September 2022 explosion that seriously damaged the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is supposed to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The Biden administration has consistently maintained that it was not involved. Now the results of “new intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukranian group carried out the attack.”
The public may never know who was responsible if Washington has its way.
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.7.2023
WASHINGTON – Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of President Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s pre invasion threat to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.
U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.
Early last year, President Biden, after meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the White House, said Mr. Putin’s decision about whether to attack Ukraine would determine the fate of Nord Stream 2. “If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Mr. Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”
When asked exactly how that would be accomplished, Mr. Biden cryptically said, “I promise you we’ll be able to do it.”
Since the explosions along the pipelines in September, there has been rampant speculation about what transpired on the sea floor near the Danish island of Bornholm.
Poland and Ukraine immediately accused Russia of planting the explosives, but they offered no evidence.
Russia, in turn, accused Britain of carrying out the operation — also without evidence. Russia and Britain have denied any involvement in the explosions.
New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.
U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.
Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.
The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine.
Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.
Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved.
The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explosions in September, in what U.S. officials described at the time as an act of sabotage. European officials have publicly said they believe the operation that targeted Nord Stream was probably state sponsored, possibly because of the sophistication with which the perpetrators planted and detonated the explosives on the floor of the Baltic Sea without being detected. U.S. officials have not stated publicly that they believe the operation was sponsored by a state.
The explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services, U.S. officials who have reviewed the new intelligence said. But it is possible that the perpetrators received specialized government training in the past.
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, as the two pipelines are known, stretch 760 miles from the northwest coast of Russia to Lubmin in northeast Germany. The first cost more than $12 billion to build and was completed in 2011.
Nord Stream 2 cost slightly less than the first pipeline and was completed in 2021, over objections from officials in the United States, Britain, Poland and Ukraine, among others, who warned that it would increase German reliance on Russian gas. During a future diplomatic crisis between the West and Russia, these officials argued, Moscow could blackmail Berlin by threatening to curtail gas supplies, on which the Germans had depended heavily, especially during the winter months. (Germany has weaned itself off reliance on Russian gas over the past year.)
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