It reads like a racy Tom Clancy novel – cold war-like intrigue set against the background of Ukraine, special forces’ derring-do, double dealing with allies, sophisticated disinformation and high politics. An unresolved mystery – who did it? Who benefited? And all wrapped in plausibility from a journalist, Seymour Hersh, who made his name with sensational, verified exposes.
Hersh, a veteran investigative journalist, has long traded on a reputation established back in 1969 for exposing the massacre of Vietnamese villagers by US troops in My Lai. Other journalistic coups would follow, not least the revelations of US torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004.
But Hersh has his detractors who warn that he has also peddled conspiracy theories and sensationalist rumour as fact on the basis of limited sourcing, and who wonder at his credulity in trusting perhaps anyone rather than US official sources. He ignited a storm of controversy with a 2013 London Review of Books article blaming a sarin nerve agent attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in a rebel-held Damascus suburb on rebels acting under Turkey’s direction. Did he, his critics suggest, source the story from the Assad regime?
Hersh had by that time also fallen out with both the well-regarded New Yorker and New York Times who had published and leant authority to his earlier stories.
Ten days ago, Hersh self-published another sensational, riveting story, based on a single anonymous source, alleging that last September the US, in the wake of – and in retaliation for – the invasion of Ukraine, was covertly responsible for blowing up the underwater Nord Stream Baltic gas pipelines. Nord Stream 1 and only-recently-completed-but-not-yet operational Nord Stream 2 run from Russia to Germany, and had at one time accounted for one-third of the energy the EU was importing from Russia. They are majority owned (51 per cent) by Russia’s Gazprom, along with German, Dutch and French stakeholders.
[ Two explosions reported near Nord Stream pipelines gas leak in Baltic SeaOpens in new window ]
The whole Nord Stream 2 project, maintaining what the US saw as Germany’s deeply unhealthy reliance on Russian gas supplies, had been vigorously opposed by Washington for some years. It also hoped to export more of its own liquefied natural gas to Europe. And that US president Joe Biden should decide to target the pipelines is, as Hersh argues plausibly, far more logical than the case against Russia, blamed initially by both the US and Europeans. But that this president would do so appears to many completely out of character. Donald Trump? Maybe.
Hersh supports his theory and a wonderfully detailed description of the submarine operation, allegedly assisted by Norway under cover of a Nato joint exercise, with unguarded asides from the US administration that, he suggests, show its complicity. Biden tells a pre-invasion press conference that “If Russia invades, there will be no longer be a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it” and, after the event, state department official Victoria Nuland says she was “gratified” it was now “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”. Not, however, evidence that would stand up in court.
[ ‘Sabotage’ in Baltic Sea leaves Nord Stream pipelines in need of more maintenanceOpens in new window ]
A number of well-respected media outlets have studiously avoided retelling the story and the White House has called it “utterly false and complete fiction”. But even the latter’s willingness to respond is a tribute to the journalist’s standing. And the US has a strong interest in deniability and distancing itself from the bombing which might be considered an act of war which struck at the vital interests of key ally Germany.
A number of investigations are under way. Moscow denies involvement and has repeatedly expressed its conviction that the US and Nato were responsible, appealing for an international investigation. Hersh’s story suits it down to the ground. Smoke and mirrors.
“An unnoticed, conspiratorial damage to pipelines at a depth of 80m in the Baltic Sea requires sophisticated technical and organisational capabilities that clearly point to a state actor,” Gerhard Schindler, former president of the German Federal Intelligence Service, told Welt. “Only Russia can really be considered for this, especially since it stands to gain the most from this act of sabotage.”
[ Russia accuses British navy personnel of blowing-up Nord Stream gas pipelinesOpens in new window ]
But does it? It is a valuable Russian asset that the latter is already talking of repairing at considerable cost. Its willingness to take advantage of the swirl of disinformation that surrounds the attack does not mean it is responsible.
Hersh’s claim may not be credible, but questions remain unanswered: who carried out this sophisticated operation? Who benefited?
And why, as MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, albeit well-known for their anti-US scepticism, have alleged in parliament, does the EU show such little apparent interest in finding out who was responsible for this attack on the union’s infrastructure?