Report: US blew up Nord Stream gas pipelines with Norway's help

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 9

The US has questions to answer over its alleged role in explosions that destroyed the undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, said the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakhariva. She was reacting to a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that quoted a source with “direct knowledge of the operational planning” stating how “skilled deep-water divers” from the US navy, with the help of the Norwegian navy, planted explosives on the pipelines during a training exercise last June. They then detonated the bombs remotely three months later.

“President Joe Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponise natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions,” wrote Hersh, who claims the planning for the sabotage began well before the Russian conflict with Ukraine began on February 24 last year. The Norwegian embassy here said the “allegation is nonsense”, while the US also had a similar response.

Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who exposed the 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American forces. But his recent reports have been met by outright denials and no US or European mainstream media house has published his articles of late.

Hersh wrote that Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back-and-forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. The planning regarding the pipelines started in December 2021, where the participants debated options for an attack. The US navy proposed using a submarine to attack the pipeline, while the Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. However, the CIA said action would have to be covert, without leaving evidence, Hersh said.

An American submarine base in Norway was chosen as the “perfect place to base the mission” as they “hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration”. On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian navy surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy and a few hours later high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.

“The White House must now comment on all these facts,” said Russian Foreign Ministry’s Maria Zakharova.

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