US ‘bombed Nord Stream’ gas pipelines, report claims

The bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream underwater gas pipeline was ordered by the White House and executed by the CIA, according to a shocking investigative report.

The US has been forced to deny the underwater bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines after a stunning investigative report claimed the operation was ordered by Joe Biden’s White House, plotted by the CIA, and executed by secretive Navy diving teams.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that US Navy divers, under the cover of a NATO military exercise, planted C4 explosive mines along the pipeline in June 2022 that were remotely detonated three months later.

The sabotage, in September last year, was reportedly designed to force Europe, especially Germany, to end their reliance on Russian gas amid Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The bombshell report sparked a rare public response from the Central Intelligence Agency, with a spokesman for the spy organisation saying “this claim is completely and utterly false.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said in response that the US had questions to answer over its role in explosions on the undersea pipeline, which came at a critical time in securing European support for the war in Ukraine.

Gas leak at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as it is seen from the Danish Defence's F-16. Picture: Supplied

“The White House must now comment on all these facts,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a post on her Telegram.

A spokesman for the White House, Adrienne Watson, said the report was “utterly false and complete fiction’.

Investigations carried out by Sweden and Denmark, which control the waters where the pipeline was destroyed, found a deliberate act of sabotage but refused to reveal who they thought responsible.

The latest report from Hersh, however, quoted sources “with direct knowledge of the operational planning” to destroy three of the four Nord Stream pipelines.

“Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal,” he wrote.

“For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.”

Hersh is a veteran war correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for revealing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, and later went on to cover the Watergate scandal for The New York Times.

His 5000-word investigation goes into specific detail how saboteurs from the US Navy Diving and Salvage Center in Florida planted the explosives during BALTOPS22, a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea in June 2022.

The C4 explosives were later triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by an aircraft, which communicated with the underwater sensors using the most advance signal processing technology available, he claimed.

Such buoys emit low frequency sounds, like those from a flute or piano, in a unique sequence to avoid the explosive being accidentally triggered by ambient noise underwater, like drilling, waves and sea creatures.

One of four gas leaks at one of the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines. Picture: AFP

Planning for the operation began as far back as December 2021, two months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Hersh claimed, led by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to destroy two Nord Stream pipelines.

The group rejected proposals from the Navy to use a new submarine in a direct assault and the Air Force dropping bombs with delayed fuses, with the CIA arguing the op had to be covert.

“This is not kiddie stuff,” the source told Hersh. “If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

The operation was suddenly downgraded from “covert” to “highly classified” by a seemly off the cuff gaffe by Biden, who said on a February 7 press conference that “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

“It was like putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it,” the insider source told Hersh. “The plan was for the options to be executed post invasion and not advertised publicly. Biden simply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

The downgrade from covert, given that Biden announced it publicly 21 days before Russia invaded Ukraine, meant that there was no longer a legal requirement for the operation to be reported to Congress.

With that legal hurdle avoided, the mission went ahead with the help of NATO member Norway, whose Navy helped identify the location in the calm waters near Denmark’s Bornholm Island, the report claimed.

On September 26 last year, the CIA’s sonar buoy was dropped into the ocean by a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane under the cover of a routine flight, the report said. “I gotta admit the guy has a pair of balls,” the anonymous insider said of Biden. “He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

Gas emanating from leaks on the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, in the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea. Picture: Supplied