My Rules to Live By

Here are some of mine:

• Don't tug on Superman's cape.
• Don't piss into the wind.
• Don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
  
• Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
• Never dismiss Seymour Hersh's reporting out of hand.

Obviously, this could be construed as an appeal to authority, but Hersh is arguably the best investigative reporter ever.  He broke the My Lai massacre, CIA spying on Americans, Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia, the Abu Ghraib torture scandals, US chemical warfare activities in the 1960s. among other major stories.

The reason that I am mention this is because Sy Hersh has written an article detailing how the US and Norway allegedly collaborated to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 & 2 pipelines. (Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames have confirmed that this is indeed Hersh, and not some random on Substack pretending to be him)

Certainly the circumstances, numerous statements by American officials before the fact carrying implied threats over the pipelines, the opening of the Baltic Pipe from Norway to Germany and Poland the day after the bombing, and the end zone celebrations by senior American officials after the blasts, (also here) would seem to confirm this.

I would note that there has been some criticism, most prominently from (CIA linked thru National Endowment for Democracy funding) Bellingcat, stating that Hersh based this on a single report, but this is a deliberate misreading of the article.

The problem is that while Hersh mentions that he got this information from asingle  source, Hersh has been clear throughout his career, and in his memoir, that he does not write a story based on a single source.  He always confirms with other contacts, though the report of the initial source is frequently the catalyst to get those sources talking. (In the audio interview after the break with the War Nerd, he refuses go into detail about his confirming sources, though he does imply that he vetted what his initial source said.  See also here.)

The short version is that US Navy divers prepared the site of the explosions during the  BALTOPS 22 exercises with the cooperation of Norway, and that the eventual explosion was from a sound signal from a Sonar buoy.

I'm inclined to believe this, and I would even if it were not Seymour Hersh.  

The only nations to benefit from the bombing are the US and Norway.

The level of detail is high, though that is not in itself confirmation.

What is confirmation are multiple reports, most notably a Wired report of "Dark Ships" around the pipeline at the time of the explosions, and reports from some admittedly sketchy websites that an anonymous whistle blower reported to them bizarre operations (Heliox setups for shallow water operations and no metal detectors) by Navy divers.  (here [Google Translate] and here [YouTube from October] are reports from an anonymous whistle blower to some rather sketchy web sites.)

What mitigates against this story is that this has the CIA and the Pentagon engaging in an operation with a level of competence and secrecy that is belied by by the history of both organizations.

One of the more interesting criticisms of the Hersh article comes from long-time Moscow based reporter John Helmer, comes from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum from the mainstream media in the US and UK, who maintains that the operation to blow up the pipelines involved far more nations than just the US and Norway. 

Certainly the story is internally consistent, and if they could provide "Plausible Deniability", the risks of such an operation are small, and the rewards great.