UFO panic ‘engineered’ distraction from Nord Stream bombing: Whistleblower Edward Snowden

Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims four unprecedented balloon kills are an intel agency misdirection from the Nord Stream bombing.

As new details on four balloons shot down over North America drip out, spy agency whistleblower Edward Snowden warned the sudden panic was a carefully choreographed misdirection from the US’s sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline.

The former National Security Agency analyst, who blew the whistle on America’s secret surveillance program to spy on its own citizens, said the seemingly sudden invasion of unidentified flying objects and balloons into US airspace were “not aliens” but rather a standard intelligence agency disinformation operation.

“I wish it were aliens, but it’s not aliens,” Snowden said.

“It’s just the ol’ engineered panic, an attractive nuisance ensuring [national security] reporters get assigned to investigate balloon bullshit rather than budgets or bombings (à la nordstream).”

A balloon shot down over the US. Picture: AFP

Gas bubbling to the surface from the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline. Picture: AFP

It comes as the US military said important sensor and electronic parts were recovered from the Chinese surveillance satellite, the first balloon shot down in American airspace on February 4.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, meanwhile, said the leading explanation for the other three was that they were being used for commercial or benign purposes.

News that the Pentagon was monitoring a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States broke on February 2 (local time), one week before Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed the Nord Stream pipeline bombing was ordered by US president Joe Biden.

The report, outlining in step-by-step detail how the act of sabotage was allegedly ordered by the White House, plotted by the CIA and executed by secretive Navy diving teams, sent shockwaves through Washington and prompted rare public denials by the intelligence community.

it's not aliens

i wish it were aliens

but it's not aliens

it's just the ol' engineered panic, an attractive nuisance ensuring natsec reporters get assigned to investigate balloon bullshit rather than budgets or bombings (à la nordstream)

until next time

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 13, 2023

Snowden, who offered no concrete evidence or corroboration to support his claims, pointed to comments from an intel operative “25 years in the CIA” who outlined how the agency covered up the White House’s covert actions to support the president’s foreign policy.

“The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President’s foreign policy advisers,” the former officer, Ralph McGehee, said in his 1983 memoir, Deadly Deceits.

“It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies.”

US whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks during an interview at an undisclosed location in Hong Kong. Picture: AFP

Headlines of possible “Unidentified Flying Objects” were blazed across the world’s media after the head of US North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command (NORAD) General Glen VanHerck said they “haven’t ruled out” aliens.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Char General Mark Milley said the US was “getting a lot of stuff” off the first balloon shot down, but that they had not yet reached the other three; one off the coast of Alaska, one in Canada, and one at the bottom of Michigan’s Lake Huron – where the first heat speaking missile that missed also splashed down” safely”.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. Picture: AFP

“We’ll get them eventually but it’s going to take some time to recover those,” he said.

Mr Milley wouldn’t be drawn into whether the three unrecovered wreckages were spy balloons or alien UFOs.

“I’ll just use the word object. That’s what everyone’s using,” he said.

Audio recordings from one of the F-16 Viper pilots who shot down the object over Lake Huron revealed they were unable to definitively identify the octagon-shaped bogey.

“I wouldn’t really call it a balloon … I don’t know what … I can see it outside with my eyes,” one of the pilots says. “Looks like something … there’s some kind of object that’s distended … it’s hard to tell, it’s pretty small.” one of the pilots said, according to an audio recording published by The War Zone.

“I’m gonna call it a balloon,” a second pilot says later.

The US alleges the balloon shot down on February 4 was part of China’s global “fleet” of espionage balloons. China denied its balloon was used for spying, and urged the United States to conduct a “thorough investigation” into what it claimed was a string of incursions into its airspace by US balloons.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin compared the US downing of flying objects to shooting mosquitoes with flak guns, and called it “odd and costly political behaviour art”.

“The US needs to be careful not to pull its muscle while flexing it so hard,” he said, after dismissing questions about whether China was focusing on Nord Stream to distract from their balloons.

Russia, meanwhile, called on NATO to hold an emergency meeting to investigate reports that the United States had sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

“There are more than enough facts here: the explosion of the pipeline, the presence of a motive, circumstantial evidence obtained by journalists,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “So when will an emergency NATO summit meet to review the situation?”

Wreckage from spy balloon recovered. Picture: Supplied

Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied? Besides, you know, that little "mass surveillance" kerfuffle. pic.twitter.com/AF1GyO2cmB

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 8, 2023

The White House denied reports that it had destroyed the pipeline as complete fiction, which Snowden compared to their 1961 denials over failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

“Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied?” Snowden tweeted alongside a new report of former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denying the Bay of Pigs.

“Besides, you know, that little ‘mass surveillance’ kerfuffle,” he added, about his own revelations.

Originally published as UFO panic ‘engineered’ distraction from Nord Stream bombing: Whistleblower Edward Snowden