White House denies report that US blew up Nord Stream pipelines
Breanne Deppisch
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The White House on Wednesday denied a new report from noted investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the United States was behind the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany.
Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and a former staff writer for the New Yorker and the New York Times whose reporting in recent years has been controversial, wrote in a Substack post that the Nord Stream blasts were a long-planned, covert operation carried out by Navy divers operating under the cover of NATO military exercises.
“Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of [the NATO exercise] known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four [pipelines],” Hersh wrote.
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told the Washington Examiner the report was “false and complete fiction.”
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CIA spokeswoman Tammy Thorp told Hersch that “this claim is completely and utterly false.”
Hersh cited only one anonymous source for the post, whom he said had “direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
The article prompted Russia’s foreign ministry to weigh in on Wednesday, demanding that the U.S. respond to the report.
“The White House must now comment on all these facts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted about the report Wednesday, writing, “If false, slander. If true, war.”
The twin Nord Stream gas pipelines were targeted in a series of four blasts in September in the Baltic Sea. The blasts were described by some Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, as an act of “gross sabotage.”
Swedish and Danish security authorities immediately launched separate investigations into the blasts, which occurred in their respective economic zones. Germany is also conducting its own investigation.
Officials with both the Swedish Security Office and the Danish Security And Intelligence Service declined to comment on the report Wednesday, telling the Washington Examiner that they cannot comment on the status of a current investigation. Neither has named a culprit in the explosions.
Hersh, now 85, has become increasingly controversial for his reporting over the past decade.
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In recent years, Hersh has disputed the U.S. government’s account of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden and questioned the Syrian government’s use of sarin gas, a chemical weapon, in its attacks on civilians.
He said in a 2018 interview that he “doesn’t necessarily buy the story that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.”