(CNSNews.com) – The White House has dismissed as “complete fiction” a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleging that the U.S. was responsible for the sabotaging of the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September, but the Kremlin said Thursday it must be taken seriously.
“It would be unfair not to give it attention,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Unfortunately, the article was not widely disseminated in the Western media, which cannot but cause our surprise.”
Peskov recalled that Russia had previously announced it had obtained evidence that “Anglo-Saxons” were behind the explosions. (The Kremlin said last October it had intelligence showing that Britain’s Royal Navy carried out the sabotage, an allegation denied by London.)
Hersh, who has won journalism’s top awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, but also attracted significant controversy with some past claims, made the allegations in a detailed report posted on Substack.
Citing “a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” he wrote that under orders from President Biden, the U.S. Navy, intelligence agencies and Norwegian Navy had undertaken a mission to plant, and then later remotely detonate, explosives that damaged the undersea pipelines running between Russia and Germany.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson called the claims “utterly false and complete fiction,” and State Department spokesman Ned Price at a briefing Thursday affirmed the denial.
Asked whether the department had been in contact with allies such as Norway or Germany about the claims, Price said, “it would not be typical for us to engage allies and partners on something that is utter and complete nonsense and that should be rejected out of hand by anyone who is looking at it through an objective lens.”
Price also described the allegations as “propaganda” and made reference to Hersh “getting his facts entirely wrong, as he has before in very high-profile ways.”
The three separate explosions on September 26 caused leaks of gas from both the then-operating Nord Stream 1 pipeline, and the adjacent Nord Stream 2 pipeline which, although not operational, had been pressurized in anticipation of being launched.
Nord Stream 2 was not online because Germany froze the approval process as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Critics in the U.S. and Europe regarded the project, designed to double the amount of Russian gas already flowing to Europe via Nord Stream 1, as a means for President Vladimir Putin to make Europe even more reliant on Russian gas than it already was.
After the blasts, the one thing agreed upon by Russia, the U.S., and Denmark and Sweden – in whose maritime zones the explosions occurred – was that they were likely deliberate acts of sabotage. Who was responsible, however, was a different matter.
From the outset, Moscow laid blame on the West.
Days after the blasts Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Twitter recalled that Biden had warned on February 7 last year that if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine goes ahead, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” and “we will bring an end to it.”
Since Biden had “threatened to end” the pipeline, Zakharova tweeted; he “must give a definitive answer whether the United States acted on its threat.”
The Biden administration dismissed the allegations of U.S. involvement.
“The idea that the United States was in any way involved in the apparent sabotage of these pipelines is preposterous,” Price said two days after the explosions. “It is nothing more than a function of Russian disinformation and should be treated as such.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, reacting to Zakharova’s tweeted insinuation, said what Biden had been referring to in that early February warning was that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. “would work with Germany” on ensuring the pipeline did not become operational. Germany had duly done just that when it froze the approval process, she said.
‘The US was in no way involved’
Senior Pentagon officials also denied any U.S. role in the affair.
“I think we’re as perplexed as anyone else and would – are very interested in knowing how this came about,” a senior military official said during a background briefing.
“Can you rule out that the U.S. was involved?” a reporter asked. “Yeah. Absolutely not involved.”
Asked the same question days later, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper replied, “The U.S. was in no way involved.”
Some pointed a finger at Russia.
“The only people in that region who have both the motivation and the capability to have done it are Russian or Russian forces,” Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told CNN’s State of the Union days after the explosions.
For his part, Biden said the administration did not yet know “precisely what happened,” but that Russia’s accusations should be discounted.
“It was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies,” he said at the White House on Sept. 30. “Just don’t listen to what Putin is saying. What he’s saying, we know is not true.”
Asked later that day if Biden’s comments meant the U.S. believes Russia was responsible, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, “Russia has done what it frequently does when it is responsible for something, which is make accusations that it was really someone else who did it.”
Sullivan said more work was needed in the investigation before the U.S. determined the culprit, “but what we can say unequivocally is the suggestions Russia has made about the United States and other countries are flat-out false.”
(Hersh’s piece claims that Sullivan was a central figure in the plan authorized by Biden to sabotage the pipelines.)
Among skeptics of the administration’s assertions, then and later, was Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who said Putin “would have to be a suicidal moron to blow up” his own pipeline.
In response to Hersh’s new allegations, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tweeted, “I’m troubled that I can’t immediately rule out the suggestion that the U.S. blew up Nord Stream.”
“I checked with a bunch of Senate colleagues,” Lee said. “Among those I’ve asked, none were ever briefed on this. If it turns out to be true, we’ve got a huge problem.”
Carlson in his show on Thursday highlighted Hersh’s article, and said it contained so many details “that it is not possible that it’s not true. It is true.”
See also:
Biden: If Russia Invades Ukraine Again ‘There Will Be No Longer a Nord Stream 2’ (Feb. 8, 2022)