What should we make of Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, marking the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with his Substack newsletter “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”? Truth-telling investigative reportage? Or simple disinformation?
It highlights the clash between new and old investigative journalism: the former being the ruggedly independent star reporter wearing out shoe leather chasing their own “Deep Throat” in the deep state; the latter comprising an eclectic mix of team collaborations, in-depth research and computer-assisted journalism, digging into oligarchs and mafia states and the big issues such as the climate crisis and rising authoritarianism.
The 85-year-old Hersh drives a breezy tick-tock-style certainty through the large gap in what we still don’t know about last September’s destruction of the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream, built to pipe Russian gas into an eager German market.
“Last June,” Hersh bluntly tells us, “[US] navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicised mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
“Utterly false and complete fiction,“ said the US.
It being Hersh — the man who broke 1968’s Mỹ Lai massacre and wrote one of the first exposés on 2003’s Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse — it got attention. But not the kind you would have once expected.
Hersh’s 1970s employer, The New York Times, set the trend for the mainstream media by ignoring his claim. Instead, the story has been nudged along by both the war-sceptical left and the anti-Ukraine right, including various News Corp/Fox voices such as Fox News, London’s The Times and Sky News in Australia.
Russian media has leapt at it, with Russia as well as China taking a swipe at the Western media’s approach.
The open source intelligence (OSINT) community, which relies on publicly available (aka “open-source”) information, has picked the story apart, factual error by factual error. The Snopes fact-checking site points out that “his case for conspiracy is held together by a seemingly omnipotent anonymous source”.
“Hersh’s story is a case study in modern-day disinformation,” said Natalia Antelava from investigative site Coda in her Disinfo Matters newsletter. True or not, it’s off and running.
It’s not the first go-around between the confidential-sourced reporting of Hersh and the new internet-powered investigative network of OSINT, fact-checkers and reporters with a disinformation focus.
Before Ukraine, Syria was the battleground, with Hersh challenging reports that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons against rebels. (The UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons released its third report, on the 2018 Douma attack last month, confirming the Syrian government’s role.)
In the London Review of Books in 2013 and 2014 and in Germany’s national newspaper Die Welt in 2017, Hersh argued the weapons were either a false flag by rebel groups to draw the US into the war or released by accident in a bombing attack.
The claims, Bellingcat’s Eliott Higgins wrote in 2017, “fell apart under real scrutiny, and relied heavily on ignoring much of the evidence around the attacks, an ignorance of the complexities of producing and transporting sarin, and a lack of understanding about facts firmly established about the attacks”.
The Die Welt report, Higgins said, relied on “a tiny number of anonymous sources, presented no other evidence to support his case, and ignored or dismissed evidence that countered the alternative narrative he was trying to build”.
Another eyebrow-raising Hersh story in the LRB in 2015 questioned the official narrative over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The New Yorker had originally passed on the lightly sourced and contradictory story for not standing up to its fact-checking, and has since marked an end to his 20-year contributor relationship with the outlet. The New Yorker had also declined to run his stories on chemical weapons.
Maybe, as Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall said, Hersh just needs an editor strong enough to say no (and the humility to take no for an answer). And certainly, as Antelava argued, we should keep a more sceptical eye out for disinformation in self-published articles via the editor-less Substack platform.
Editor or no, Hersh writes with the “realism” certainty that sees events driven by great powers — particularly an imperial US — and their proxies. He goes looking for “facts” and claims that fit this Cold War-era worldview.
The result, said Antelava, was that “millions of people around the world now believe that the United States conducted an act of war against Russia. Even though they haven’t seen any actual proof.”
I hope your’e not suggesting that the US is NOT an imperialist, warmongering state? Don’t you remember Biden promising to blow up Nord Stream?
None of us should ever forget John Pilger’s frequent quote – ” don’t believe anything until it is officially denied”……
Biden never threatened to damage the Nordstream1. He said Nordstream2 would not go ahead, and guess what
Nordstream2 hasn’t gone ahead as the Germans won’t certify it. It was Nordstream1 that was blown up.
Too many people here conveniently overlooking that distinction to suit their politics.
Because in this context it is a trivial distinction – exaggerated here to suit their politics.
Ambrose, can you tell me who you think was behind the Russian Georgian pipeline explosion in 2006, after Georgia had started seeking NATO membership, in the same way Ukraine has?
Crickets hey?!
What a ridiculous article. Compared to Seymour Hersh, you’re not qualified to shine his shoes. When your sources debunking Hersh onclude Bellingcat – Bellingcat! – you’ve enlisted in the US-UK war dinsinformation machine.
The fact is the USA committed an act of war against Germany and Europe because war is what it does – always – with complete impunity – but because it is our “ally” all major party politicians and media companies will never call it out until well after the fact.
Hersh has form; he has contributed to the pro Assad and Kremlin supported ‘Grayzone’ which promoted anti-white helmet conspiracy in Syria, which was adopted by much right wing media and US ‘fake anti-imperialist sh*theads’ masquerading as geopolitical analysts and/or journalists.
Do you have any evidence that The Grayzone is Kremlin supported?
The Grayzone split from Alternet some years ago, responsible for anti ‘white helmets’ conspiracy in support of Putin’s Syrian ally Assad, now anti-Ukraine; called out by CounterPunch analyst Draitser describing them as ‘fake anti-imperialist sh*theads’.
One would also add those faux US geopolitical ‘experts’ supported by US oligarchs demanding that Ukraine yields inc. Mearsheimer, Sachs et al.
‘Dossier. In the grey zone. How did an American journalist turn into a pro-Russian propagandist? …The Grayzone, created by Blumenthal in 2015, has been publishing materials consistent with Russian propaganda all these years….In 2014, The New York Times published a column by Slawomir Sierakowski, a Polish journalist and head of the Institute for Advanced Studies. He called Max Blumenthal a “useful Putin idiot.”….However, for a couple of years, he contributed to resources connected to the Kremlin and supported the Assad regime, according to the Bellingcat investigation. He repeatedly criticized the actions of the “White Helmets” and constantly questioned the crimes committed by the Syrian regime against civilians….’
https://ms.detector.media/trendi/post/30269/2022-09-16-dossier-in-the-grey-zone-how-did-an-american-journalist-turn-into-a-pro-russian-propagandist/
yes he has clearly enlisted. a sad sad day when Crikey signs up to the MICIMATT. Guy Rundle where are you?
The destroyer of the Nord Stream pipeline is currently unknown however it’s possible to arrive at plausible scenarios.
1) First eliminate who probably didn’t blow it up. That eliminates any actors who could cease the operation of the pipeline simply by turning off the taps.
The list starts with Russia which would have been in a stronger position had it been able to use cutting off supply as a bargaining chip. It’s hard to see any benefit at all for Russia in the destruction of this pipeline.
The list includes the customers of the gas who could simply turn off the taps and stop using the gas at a time of their own choosing.
The list also includes any state which does not like the USA since the destruction of the pipeline is clearly beneficial for the USA.
The list includes allies of the US unless in conspiracy with the US.
2) The next step is to figure out who would like to see the pipeline taken out. Clearly Ukraine, and the USA has disliked the pipeline right from the start.
3) Who has the capability. It’s unclear whether Ukraine would have the capability however there is no question the US would be able to get the job done without much difficulty.
4) However it would certainly not be in the interests of the US to be seen to be blowing up the pipeline. For this reason the US would want to be seen as had having nothing whatever to do with this incident. Consequently substantial steps to impose a cloak of plausible deniability would be required.
My guess is this was a clandestine operation organised and paid for by the US and carried out by small under cover team. Alternatively Ukraine might have paid some specialist contractors to take out the pipeline.
It would be interesting to know how much it would have cost and how difficult it would be to place some explosives on the pipeline – maybe not that difficult and maybe a big bang for small bucks.
Probably not provable, but certainly plausible.
Fairly readily provable if whistleblowers were not so terrified of the CIA (see Assange…), and well beyond plausible…indeed highly likely.
And Hersh is by no means the only courageous voice saying so – see Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org for example.
Did someone say ‘Assange’? The traitor who repeatedly ‘blew the whistle’ on misdeeds by the West, but never, ever took Russia or China to account by leaking any of THEIR dirty laundry? Puhlease! And it appears that Hersh is in that mould too, given that his main claims to fame are dumping on the US and its government. Is Uncle Sam a good guy? Like hell! But is it as evil as Xi Xinping or Vlad the Bad? Not even in the same league. So undermining the current US (and/or Ukrainian) government does only one thing: provides aid and comfort to Trump, Putin an Xi. Should Hersh be lauded as a brave voice for the truth? Um…no!
Of course western investigate journalists will concentrate on the crimes of western governments! What else would you expect!?
And if you think Xi is some kind of despot I’d advise you to lay off pro war western sources. Perhaps you could point to a single crime we have evidence of him committing/ordering?
Seeing Assange as a traitor is trademark Putinist thinking.
All this talk about Ukraine not having the technical wherewithal to damage the pipeline is garbage. Its sitting in only 100m of water. That’s not exactly rocket science. Take a decent sized boat, a side scan sonar system. Throw explosives over the side and drag along the bottom until the device is next to the pipeline as shown on sonar screen. Cut the rope and sail away.
You telling me Ukraine couldn’t pull that off????
Or put a metal detector in the device and drag towards pipe until it goes beep beep beep.
And here is a video of a Guardian reporter landing a small underwater drone (or coffee maker?) right into the hole of the pipeline, from a small boat.
So if a reporter can do this, anyone could have dropped a device onto the pipe.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p2yCqEA435o
Neither Russia nor Germany could just ‘turn off the taps’ as there were contracts in place to send and receive said gas. So that means Germany and Russia are back in the equation by your logic.
Either Russia or Germany could just ‘turn off the taps’ as they have done so despite contracts in place to send and receive said gas. So that means neither Germany nor Russia are back in the equation by your logic. It is a sad comment on the level of”discussion” that a commenter can ignore sanctions by Germany plus refusal to supply by Russia.
No, Germany refused to certify Nordstream2, so it was never commissioned. They couldnt just turn the taps off of Nordstream1 as there were contracts in place. Now the contracts are irrelevant.
Let’s dismiss him because he refuses to reveal his source(s). Isn’t that how investigative journalism supposed to work? Otherwise why would anyone ever tell a journalist any sensitive information?
But let’s not forget the US lied to the world before and not just once. So there is that. There is also Biden assuring us that the US will find a way to shut down the pipeline, a piece of infrastructure that as a reporter pointed out belonged to Russia and Germany. Neither of the latter two benefits from the destruction of the pipeline. And maybe the most interesting fact – apparently the Swedes conducted an investigation as to what happened and upon concluding that investigation said, that they won’t release or publish the results. This is telling, because considering how keen the West is to attribute the world’s worst evils to Russia (not that the latter has clean hands) while positioning itself as always right and never to blame for anything – do we really think that the West would keep quiet if the investigation has shown that Russia did it? No, the minute they knew they’d blast the news into the world.
Did you read the linked piece ? He’s being “dismissed” because of the numerous factual inconsistencies with his account.
Tochna (exactly) as the Russians would say. But never underestimate the passion of those needing their biases confirmed.
There is a hole in your analysis you could drive a truck thru. Its Russian property, so Russia has every right to collect it’s own evidence and present it’s own findings aren’t they?
And have they? No. What does that tell you? The Russians aren’t interested in talking about who did it, because either it was them or the Ukrainians.
So many rusted on lefty f wits in one forum.
Yet the fact remains that somebody blew up the critical gas pipelines and you have to ask the question “who benefits?” I am going to chance my arm here and say that the Russians probably don’t. Nor do the Germans or other European countries that depend on Russian gas, so they probably didn’t do it either. Hersh might be open to criticism for his take, but at least he is having a go – the rest of the media have seemingly ignored what is a massive and blatant disruption to Europe’s energy supply, itself a “casus belli”, and are instead intent on rubbishing Hersh. Look forward to the MSM telling us who really did the deed.
Hersh is not being rubbished for investigating the explosion but for insisting he’s right on flimsy evidence. And the question of ‘who benefits’ offers fewer insights than you seem to believe.
in the courts that’s called establishing a motive
Why stop there, it could have been Australia too. We sell gas. Motive established!
Once it was blown, the following certainly gives probable cause to the US at least
I could go on but it is worth while to know that Norway upped their export of gas to Germany at a dearer rate than what the Russians were selling it for, something which the ex Prime Minister of Norway, now the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg praised its destruction irrespective of the damage it was doing to Germany’s economy. Russia meanwhile found different markets for its gas in the Far East so it hasn’t affected them as much as it has the EU. A good example of NATO/EU shooting itself in the foot.
My money is on the Yanks with assistance from the Norwegians with moral (what morals?) support from the Poms and Ukranians.
Speaking to reporters on February 7, 2022, Biden said: “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2.”
“We will bring an end to it,” the president said. A journalist asked Biden how he could do that since Germany was in control of the project, the president replied: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”
Nah, just hearsay that the U.S. did it.
Exactly. Did Warren even read the Hersh article? Biden told the world the US would do it. Beyond the actual operatives being caught, what more do you need?
I agree.
Logical answers to questions can help us make a guess at the likely scenario.
“Who benefits, and who loses, from the destruction of the pipeline?”
“Who has the capability to get to the pipeline and sabotage it?”
“Would the saboteur confirm it was them if it was suggested?”
“How could the Scandinavian countries not detect the saboteurs?”
“Who benefits, and who loses, in restricting gas exports from Russia to Europe?”
“Who has been supplying gas to Europe to make up what was lost from Russia?”
The original articles which claimed that Russia did it, do not make logical sense.
Occam’s razor would suggest that Seymour Hersh’s proposition is the closest to an answer that has been published.
Occams razor is the most straightforward explanation.
You’re saying that a bunch of countries plotted to blow up the pipeline and are now sitting on a highly contentious secret which if it ever gets out will give Russia moral rights to attack US infrastructure. Maybe like sinking a bulk gas carrier. Mmm yep such a straightforward hypothesis.
Occams razor points straight at the Ukrainians.
Yep. Follow the money.