Another Day, Another Nord Stream Narrative

Sy Hersch reports that the CIA acting with Norwegian authorities blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.

And then the CIA started leaking.

First, it was the Russians who blew up their own pipeline, because ………  The Aristocrats?

Then it was persons unknown operating ships who had their transponders turned off.

Then it was a group of random Ukrainians not involved with the government who rented a (way too small for the operation) yacht in Germany and sailed out to bomb the pipeline.

Then it was them plus maybe some Polish involvement.

And today it's anonymous sources at the CIA telling their pet reporters that they had got wind of Ukrainian plans to sabotage the pipeline and told them to back off.

Sy Hersh's reporting is still the most coherent narrative out there, and it is clear given the profligate and panicked leaking from Langley that if the CIA did not do this, then they are concerned that one of their non-Agency assets might be involved.

The Central Intelligence Agency told Ukrainian officials last summer that it had learned of what it thought was an aborted plot by the Ukrainians to attack the Nord Stream pipelines, and the agency reinforced its objection to any such operation, U.S. officials said.

In June 2022, Dutch intelligence officials shared information with the C.I.A. that they had learned the Ukrainian military had been planning an operation using divers to blow up one of the pipelines, according to U.S. and European officials. But the original tip by the Dutch, according to U.S. officials, was that Ukraine had already reconsidered and canceled the operation.

In reality, American officials now believe, the operation was not aborted but delayed, potentially with a different Ukraine-aligned group carrying out the attack.

Even if this was an action taken by the Ukrainian government, they could not have done so alone.

Simply put, the Ukrainians do not have the expertise to execute a deep saturation diving operation in the Baltic, which has a very different environment from the Black Sea.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that the CIA, the Yale educated whiz kids who gave us the Bay of Pigs, missed the first Indian nuclear tests, signed off on WMDs in Iraq, led the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Iran, (leading to the theocracy there) a string of coups in Latin America, (leading to much of our migration problem), helping to create the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge, etc.

Whoever did this got it right, and getting things right is really not the CIA's joint.

On the other hand, this is something that the JSOC would be well positioned to execute.