Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has published research according to which the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines were instigated by the U.S. government with the support of Norway. In response to Hersh's inquiry, the U.S. government and the CIA have denied his account. Many media outlets have accused Hersh of failing to disclose his anonymous source, making his claims unverifiable. Criticism was also formulated that the research was not coherent. Berlin-based publicist Fabian Scheidler spoke with Seymour Hersh for the Berliner Zeitung.
Mr. Hersh, please explain your findings in detail. According to your source, what exactly happened, who was involved in the Nord Stream assassination and what were the motives?
It was a story that cried out to be told. At the end of September 2022, eight bombs were to be detonated near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, six of them went off, in an area where it is quite shallow. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline has supplied Germany and other parts of Europe with very cheap natural gas for many years. And then it was blown up, as was Nord Stream 2, and the question was who did it and why. On February 7, 2022, just over two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden said at a White House press conference he held with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the U.S. would stop Nord Stream.
Biden literally said, "If Russia invades, there will be no more Nord Stream 2, we will put an end to the project." And when a reporter asked how exactly he planned to do that, given that the project is primarily under German control, Biden said only, "I promise we'll be able to do it."
His deputy secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, who was deeply involved in the events of the Maidan revolution in 2014, had made similar comments a few weeks earlier.
You say that the decision to shut down the pipeline was made even earlier by President Biden. You write in your report that in December 2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of the newly formed task force of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State Department, and the Treasury Department. They write, "Sullivan wanted the group to come up with a plan to destroy the two Nord Stream pipelines."
This group was originally convened to study the problem. They met in a very secret office. Right next to the White House there's an office building, the Executive Office Building, it's connected underground by a tunnel to the White House. And at the very top is an office for a secret outside group of advisors called the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. I mentioned that to signal to people in the White House that I had information. So the meeting was called to look at what we would do if Russia went to war.
This was three months before the war, before Christmas of 2021. It was a high-level group that probably had a different name, I just called it the Interagency Group, I don't know the official name, if there was one. It was the CIA and the National Security Agency, which monitors and intercepts communications, the State Department and the Treasury Department, which provides money. And probably a few other organizations that were involved. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were also represented. The point was to make recommendations on how to stop Russia, either with reversible measures, such as further sanctions and economic pressure, or with irreversible, ''kinetic'' measures, such as blasts.
I don't want to go into any more detail here or talk about any particular meeting because I have to protect my source. I don't know how many people participated, you know what I mean?
In your article, you wrote that the CIA working group reported to Sullivan's "Interagency Group" in early 2022 and said, quote, "We have a way to blow up the pipelines."
They had a way. There were people there who knew about what we call in America "mine warfare." In the United States Navy, there are units that deal with submarines, there's also a nuclear command. And there is a mine command. The area of underwater mines is very important, and we have trained specialists in that. A central place for their training is a little resort town called Panama City in the middle of nowhere in Florida. We train and deploy very good people there. Underwater mine specialists have great importance, for example, to clear blocked entrances to ports and blow up things that are in the way. They can also blow up a particular country's underwater petroleum pipelines. It's not always good things that they do, but they work absolutely in secret.
It was clear to the White House group that they could blow up the pipelines. There is an explosive called C4 that is incredibly powerful, especially at the quantity they use. It can be remotely controlled with underwater sonar devices. These sonar devices send out signals at low frequencies. So it was possible, and that was communicated to the White House in early January, because two or three weeks later, the Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, said we could do it. I think that was on January 20th. And then the President, when he held the press conference with the German Chancellor on February 7, 2022, also said we could do it.
The German Chancellor didn't say anything concrete then, he was very vague. One question I would like to ask Scholz if I were chairing a parliamentary hearing is this: Did Joe Biden tell you about this? Did he tell you at the time why he was so confident that he could destroy the pipeline? We as Americans didn't have a plan worked out at that time, but we knew we had the ability to do it.
You write that Norway played a role. To what extent was the country involved - and why would the Norwegians do such a thing?
Norway is a great maritime nation, and they have deepwater energy resources. They are also very keen to increase their natural gas supplies to Western Europe and Germany. And they have done that, they have increased their exports. So why shouldn't they join forces with the U.S. for economic reasons? There is also a pronounced hostility toward Russia in Norway.
In your article you write that Norwegian intelligence and the navy were involved. You also say that Sweden and Denmark were informed to some extent, but did not learn everything.
I was told, "They did what they did, and they knew what they were doing, and they understood what was going on, but maybe nobody ever said yes." I worked a lot on this issue with the people I talked to. Anyway, for this mission to happen, the Norwegians had to find the right place. The divers who were trained in Panama City could dive down to 100 meters without heavy equipment. The Norwegians found us a site off the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea that was only 260 feet (about 80 meters) deep, so they could operate there.
The divers had to return up slowly, there was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with the people monitoring the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is very thoroughly monitored, there's a lot of freely available data, so we took care of that, there were three or four different people for that. And what was done then is very simple. For 21 years, our Sixth Fleet, which controls the Mediterranean Sea and also the Baltic Sea, has conducted an exercise for the NATO navies in the Baltic Sea every summer (BALTOPS, editor's note). We send an aircraft carrier and other large ships to these exercises. And for the first time in history, the NATO operation in the Baltics had a new program. It was to be a twelve-day exercise to drop and detect mines. A number of nations sent out mine teams, one group dropped a mine, and another mine team went out and searched and blew it up.
So there was a time when things blew up, and during that time the deep-sea divers could operate, and they put the mines on the pipelines. The two pipelines run about a mile apart, they're a little bit under the silt on the ocean floor, but they're not hard to get to, and the divers had practiced it. It only took a couple of hours to place the bombs.
So that was in June 2022?
Yes, they did it toward the end of the exercise. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The president said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and gave new orders, so they had the ability to detonate the bombs remotely at any time. You do it with a normal sonar, a Raytheon product by the way, you fly over the site and drop a cylinder. It sends a low frequency signal, you can describe it as a flute sound, you can set different frequencies.
The concern, though, was that the bombs wouldn't work if they stayed in the water too long, which was actually going to be the case with two bombs. So there was concern within the group about finding the right means, and we actually had to turn to other intelligence agencies, which I have purposely not written about.
And what happened next? The explosives were planted and a way was found to remotely control them.
Joe Biden decided not to blow them up back in June, it was five months into the war. But in September, he ordered it done. The operational staff, the people who do "kinetic" things for the United States, they do what the president says, and they initially thought this was a useful weapon that he could use in negotiations. But at some point, after the Russians invaded and then when the operation was completed, the whole thing became increasingly repugnant to the people who were doing it. These were people who were in top positions in the intelligence agencies and were well trained. They turned against the project, they thought it was crazy.
Shortly after the attack, after they had done what they were ordered to do, there was a lot of anger among those involved about the operation and rejection. That is one of the reasons I learned so much. And I will tell you something else. The people in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I'll tell you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines know the story. I didn't learn the story from them, but I quickly learned that they know it.
Let's go back to that situation in June of last year. President Joe Biden decided not to do it directly and postponed it.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference a few days after the pipelines were blown up that Putin had been deprived of an important power factor. He said the destruction of the pipelines was a tremendous opportunity-an opportunity to take away Russia's ability to use the pipelines as a weapon. The point was that Russia could no longer pressure Western Europe to stop supporting the U.S. in the Ukraine war. The fear was that Western Europe would no longer participate.
I think the reason for this decision was that the war was not going well for the West and they were afraid of the approaching winter. Nord Stream 2 was put on hold by Germany itself, not by international sanctions, and the U.S. was afraid that Germany would lift sanctions because of a cold winter.
What do you think are the motives for the attack? The U.S. government was against the pipeline for many reasons. Some say it was against it because it wanted to weaken Russia or to weaken relations between Russia and Western Europe, especially Germany. But perhaps also to weaken the German economy, which is, after all, a competitor to the U.S. economy. High gas prices have caused companies to move to the United States. What is your view of the U.S. government's motives?
I don't think they've thought this through thoroughly. I know that sounds strange. I don't think Secretary of State Blinken and some others in the government are deep thinkers. There are certainly people in the American business community who like the idea of us becoming more competitive. We sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) at extremely high profits; we make a lot of money on it.
I'm sure there were some people who thought: Boy, this is going to give the American economy a long-term boost. But in the White House, I think they were always obsessed with reelection, and they wanted to win the war, they wanted to win a victory, they wanted Ukraine to somehow magically win. There might be some people who think that maybe it's better for our economy if the German economy is weak, but that's crazy. I think that we have gotten ourselves into something that is not going to work, the war is not going to end well for this government.
How do you think this war might end?
It doesn't matter what I think. What I do know is that there is no way this war is going to end the way we want it to end, and I don't know what we are going to do as we look further into the future. It scares me that the President was willing to do something like this. And the people who carried out this mission believed that the President was aware of what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that was not going well. And in the long run, this will not only damage his reputation as President, but it will be very damaging politically. It will be a stigma for the United States.
The White House was concerned that it would be on the losing end, that Germany and Western Europe would stop supplying the weapons that we wanted, and that the German Chancellor would restart the pipeline - that was a big concern in Washington. I would ask Chancellor Scholz a lot of questions. I would ask him what he learned in February when he was with the President. The operation was top secret, and the President wasn't supposed to tell anybody about our capability, but he likes to chat, he sometimes says things he shouldn't say.
Your story was reported rather cautiously and critically in the German media. Some attacked your reputation or said that you had only one anonymous source and that it was not reliable.
How could I talk about my source? I have written many stories based on unnamed sources. If I named anyone, they would be fired or, even worse, jailed. The law is very strict. I have never debunked anyone, and when I write, of course I say, as I did in this article, that it is a source, period. Over the years, the stories I have written have always been accepted.
How did you fact-check?
I worked with fact-checkers as experienced for the current story as I used to have at the New Yorker. Of course, there are many ways to fact-check obscure information that is shared with me. Moreover, the personal attacks on me miss the point. The point is that Biden has decided to let the Germans freeze this winter. The President of the United States would rather have Germany freeze than have Germany potentially stop supporting Ukraine, and that to me is a devastating thing for this White House.
The point is also that this can be perceived as an act of war not only against Russia but also against Western allies, particularly Germany.
I would put it more simply. The people who were involved in the operation saw that the President wanted to freeze Germany for his short-term political goals, and that appalled them. I am talking about Americans here who are very loyal to the United States. At the CIA, as I put it in my article, you work for power, not for the Constitution.
The political advantage of the CIA is that a president who can't get his plans through Congress can go for a walk in the White House Rose Garden with the CIA director and plan something secret that can hit a lot of people on the other side of the Atlantic-or wherever in the world. That has always been the CIA's unique selling point-which I have my problems with. But even this community is appalled that Biden has decided to expose Europe to the cold in order to support a war that he is not going to win. That, to me, is nefarious.
You said in your article that the planning of the attack was not reported to Congress, as is required for other covert operations. It was also not reported to many places within the military. There were people in other places who should have been informed but were not. The operation was very secret. What role does courage play for you in your profession?
What is courageous about telling the truth? Our job is not to be afraid. And sometimes it gets ugly. There have been times in my life when ... - you know, I don't talk about it. But threats are not made to people like me, but to the children of people like me. There have been terrible things. But you don't worry about it, you can't. You just have to do what you do.