Seymour Hersh’s latest controversial piece concerns the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines last year. Citing a single unnamed source, he says this was carried out by U.S. Navy divers who planted explosive charges in June 2022 during a routine NATO training exercise that were then remotely detonated months later, on September 26th.
There are several problems with this story.
The most glaring issue is a legal one. Hersh’s source claims that – by using regular U.S. Navy divers instead of special forces like the Navy SEALs, and/or because Biden and Victoria Nuland possibly hinted at such an operation – the important Congressional oversight provisions contained in the National Security Act 1947 could be circumvented, making it unnecessary to inform the eight most senior members of Congress (the ‘Gang of Eight’) in advance of the operation. This is false. Covert action of that nature, conducted by any government official, military or clandestine officer or even civilian contractor or any other agent or operative of the U.S. Government is most certainly covered under the definition of “covert action” provided by statute, 50 U.S. Code § 3093(e). Furthermore, the situation is not changed even following a stated intention to carry out such an action; after all, no-one was in any doubt that the U.S. intended to kill Osama bin Laden, yet it was still a covert action under the law.
It’s useless to try to argue the exception for “traditional […] military activities or routine support to such [covert] activities”, since such action would be neither “traditional”, nor would it only involve “routine support”. We are talking about the clandestine destruction of a major foreign-owned gas pipeline, and it’s not about who carries out the action, it’s the nature of the action that matters – although the claims of Hersh’s source are further weakened by his assertions that the operation was planned by the CIA.
There’s also the question of why the Biden administration would want to keep the Gang of Eight out of the loop. Informing this bipartisan group implicates senior members of both parties, since they can’t veto it and are bound to secrecy. They could only distance themselves by resigning, without saying why. This effectively means the executive branch officials responsible for it can’t be impeached or sent to prison: it gives both political and legal cover to the operation. (And at the same time, Hersh claims that Norway was heavily involved in the operation, suggesting strict secrecy wasn’t that important anyway.)
Of course, it’s convenient for Hersh’s source if the Gang of Eight weren’t informed, since those eight mostly-credible public figures wouldn’t be able to deny his claims. But in itself, this one legal issue already completely undermines the credibility of Hersh’s source, since the use of regular U.S. Navy divers is central to the tale being told. However, the story is further lacking in credibility, since the regular U.S. Navy divers (rather than SEALs) were seemingly involved before the operation was supposedly “downgraded” to one that didn’t need to involve the Gang of Eight – a logical inconsistency.
Other aspects of the story are problematic too. The first is the supposed need to operate under the cover of a routine NATO training exercise (BALTOPS 22) to plant the explosives, diving from a Norwegian(!) minesweeper. Bear in mind that the precise locations of the ships taking part in these exercises would be known to Russian observers, and any vessels operating around the Nord Stream pipelines for the length of time needed to plant the explosives might look fairly suspicious – even if the explosives weren’t detonated there and then.
On the other hand, given the shallow-but-not-too-shallow depth of water in the Baltic Sea, the conditions would be good for a submarine with an underwater hatch to have remained hidden below a good thermocline while carrying out what would be a relatively swift operation involving Navy SEALs. The only hint in the article as to why this wasn’t done is that “the Baltic Sea [is] heavily patrolled by the Russian navy”, ignoring the fact that submarines can evade detection even relatively close to surface vessels (which is pretty much the point of a submarine), and in the unlikely event of detection, the mission could be aborted and rescheduled without great inconvenience.
I also have deep reservations about the remotely-triggered detonators that were apparently designed and manufactured for this one operation on short notice, that survived over three months submerged under battery power in the cold Baltic Sea, vulnerable all the time to discovery, and which were apparently triggered by a single sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian(!) aircraft, despite the fact that the explosions happened about 50 miles and precisely 17 hours apart. Every detail of that story raises a number of questions, but perhaps Sweden (which is carrying out the investigation) can tell us whether evidence of these sophisticated trigger devices has been found.
Just to be clear, I’m not offering an opinion on which country carried out this attack. Certainly, the U.S. has the capability for it, as well as arguably a strong motive. However, the methods and motives of Hersh’s unnamed source, as well as Hersh himself, are also in question. I question whether it would be possible for his source to have direct knowledge of conversations between the Director of the CIA William Burns and the supposed internal CIA working group, as well as conversations at the higher-level inter-departmental group he claims were supervising the operation, besides all the other operational details. Possibly only a senior CIA officer like William Burns himself would fit the profile.
Depending to whom one speaks, Seymour Hersh is either a fearless crusader after truth, or one step removed from a fabulist. His early investigative journalism was impressive and entirely factual, but in recent years he seems to have spun a lot of tall tales, relying on anonymous sources who are always remarkably well-placed and willing to leak details about matters of current public interest that, if true, would be damaging to the reputation and standing of the U.S. His Wikipedia page is littered with pungent quotes from his critics, with the charitable assessment being that he’s simply rather gullible. But perhaps we should be kind:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Robert Browning
Or what’s a heaven for?
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And how’s it going in Ukraine, really?
‘This indicates that:
a. the infantry is increasingly unable to use its own heavy group weapons (which has already been written about many times)
b. battalion 120-mm mortars and brigade artillery groups fail to support their infantry for one reason or another (training / accuracy of fire, communication / interaction, or something else)
c. the resource of our longest 152-mm barrels is wasted for trifles instead of counter-battery at “777” and other targets more significant than an AGS squad.
When I receive information from the Russian Federation about how many new “volunteer battalions” are being formed there, my hair stands on end. The question immediately arises: “Where will you get the communications chiefs for these battalions?” There are none. None. Just recently, in one wonderful chat, a person was looking for a chief of communications, right about the battalion level, for a generally very much combat-ready unit. I am not the only signalman in this chat, and we told him in unison – “There are NO SIGNALMEN AND WILL NOT BE!” And one of my colleagues added, “You do it yourself, you find an embryo and grow it as best you can.”
And what will these volunteer battalions be without digital closed radio communications working 24/7? An uncontrollable crowd of deer, which the Ukrainians, actively playing “from defense”, will very quickly send to cemeteries and hospitals. What will be the advance payment for the “3rd Army Corps” glorified by Shurygin, the state of communication in which is senseless to try to describe to those who have not seen it – people simply will not believe that this is happening? And it is happening, it is happening. The Corps will be a huge, monstrous, unruly mob of deer.
It’s all senseless to tell those who have not seen such things being performed by our military men alive. Well, that is, I saw Debaltseve, and I no longer laugh in this circus and finally I’m not surprised. I saw tanks going into battle with empty containers of dynamic protection, I saw people who came to the service yesterday, and today they are already being given an assault rifle and grenade launchers, three of them are selected as specialists, also a platoon commander, and they go into battle. And we were leading them, in fact, three officers – a physician, a signalman and a seriously wounded political officer, a 60-year-old Astrakhan Cossack, who was being transported in the troop compartment of an infantry fighting vehicle, in the tower of which I was riding, wondering how I, with one non-working hand, would pull Petrovich out of troop compartment if they hit us.
And then, and before, and after, I saw a lot of things that people will never believe until they themselves see, do not participate themselves (if someone thinks their curse words vocabulary is incomplete I suggest trying to complete it while refuelling a moving tank driving on ice).
Moreover, the 1st and 2nd Army Corps of January 2015, they had at least some backbone of people, not just trained people, but people with combat experience in the summer-autumn of 2014. And Debaltseve, as a result, came out to be a three-week meat grinder. Moreover, the enemy were the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the same year, nothing like the current ones. But … then the magic pen of the same Shurygin turned a three-week meat grinder into a three-day network-centric brilliant success, in which there was a queue to take part in (in reality, on the contrary, a bunch of those who became the officers “via connections” for good salaries in dollars, already dressed in “pixel”, wrote a report on the nearest bulletin board in the same barracks, in which right there, in front of them, shaking with fear, angry simple men “without connections dressed in “flora”, were filling magazines and checking the equipment before the battle).
In general, if the offensive itch among our military intensified by the political leadership prevails, then after the unavoidable in this case sad and senseless autumn massacre, in winter we will face a choice – either another monstrously shameful and obviously unsuccessful search for peace, or mobilisation in the Russian Federation. Of course, at first there will be shame, and then still mobilisation. Our leaders can’t do differently. Mobilisation in the Russian Federation is, in fact, the last chance to stop such massacres, because our generals will crap themselves before thinking of stacking layers of dead conscripts.’
LPR Volunteer Murz live journal account 02 Sept 22
So, not very well at all, really.
Murz thinks Putin can hold on to Kherson, but what if the Kherson ‘offensive’ is a feint to create a killing ground?
Oops.
Latest brilliant propaganda wheeze:
‘It fled from here and this is the direction of Nikopol (in Ukrainian hands). It did a U-turn. In principle, it landed and spun around’
Renat Karchaa, Russian ‘expert’
‘Everyone working in the plant knows (the rocket) is Russian.’ ‘It cannot fly and make a U-turn.’
Ukrainian former employee Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant
Who to believe? U-turn if you want to…….
Only one thing is sure about the Ukrainian situation and that is that none of us, here, including you, knows what is happening there. Anything you read, watch or listen to is unlikely to be the whole truth. There may be grains of truth but in war the truth is the first casualty. All that I can surmise is how this effects us, here in the UK, and what that actually means for our lives. Right now, our society is in free fall. The war is being as an excuse for this. Why? Why is no one talking about this and why we have to support a war and fly those ghastly blue and yellow flags from just about everywhere as we pour billions of pounds into a place and ignore our own concerns? I don’t buy into the Zelensky story one little bit and don’t trust him or Putin or any of the so-called leaders and movers and shakers that are involved in the whole charade. Call me a sceptic – which is why I’m here after all – but if you smell a rat, then there’s probably a rat and I smell a great big rat in this whole sorry mess.
With you 100%. Furthermore, what excuse can be given for the grotesque and deliberate hiking of fuel bills in this country when so much as one penny is spent abroad – regardless of the so-called cause.
Oh no Bozo – guilty as sin.
You can bet your life people know exactly what is happening there. Satellite imagery, ELINT intercept; there is a great deal of information available, a lot of it open source if you can be bothered to look…..
You can get satellite imagery? ELINT intercept? I am talking about us, here, on this site, not the CIA or any of the other intelligence agencies. Of course there are people ‘out there’ who know what is happening but none of us civilians do.
Yes. It is open source, a lot of it:
Satellite imagery
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/satellite-images-show-destruction-russian-air-base-crimea-2022-08-11/
Intercept this week:
‘(R)=Russian man (R2)=Russian man 2
(R): Where are you then?!
(R2): F*ck, where, where, behind Izyum, Kamyschevaha. Yesterday I didn’t speak while next to the captain, we had a bit of an argument. He was sitting next to me, f*cking f*ggot. We have no cover, nothing. They can’t withdraw us. Commandants are saying “F*ck you, go fight”. F*ck, “we have 60 tanks here, infantry, artillery is working all day”. Where is it working? F*ck knows. At any possible opportunity it’s better to f*ck off to home, f*ck, and come back alive. […] Today the captain made [a show], like “You are not needed to us”. A situation happened with ours, I thought “Holy f*ck, you call that a situation, a guy’s liver got shot the man died in the mud”. What a f*cking “situation”. One shot the other. Can’t f*cking see sh*t at night, we are sitting without night vision. And the captain has three… anyway, f*cking devils.
(R): Finish them off.
(R2): Our own commanders need to get kicking too, yesterday I had an argument with senior lieutenant, every day, he’s walking around drunk, telling tales how cool he is, how he was shelled and he didn’t p*ssy out! Better f*ck him up and leave. Tanks, tanks, but there’s nothing to advance with…’
And so on.
Everyone knows what is going on in Ukraine, outside of this and one or two other sites.
But the ‘sceptics’ on here are not sceptics re Russia. They all row the same pro Russian boat. Curious? I am……because I’m a sceptic….
..it’s pointless … he thinks that Reuters and the MSM are telling the truth, without question. If it were Russian Satellite Imagery of which there’s also plenty, it would be fake news……
You are correct that this is the worst war for information we have ever had, and I think it’s obvious why. I don’t know why the Guardian and Telegraph bother, they could just let Ukraine post their own stuff, we wouldn’t notice any difference….
Agreed.
The readers here can look at the imagery and make up their own minds. That’s the point.
If you have Russian imagery, I would be very interested to see it?
But we don’t have to support the war at all. We live in a democracy.
A lot of the stuff being sent to Ukraine has a limited shelf life in any case.
Nevertheless this why so many of us, particularly those of us with children, support Ukraine
‘…a Russian defeat of Ukraine would turn the proactive Western strategy of economic and political engagement into one of retrenchment, where boundaries could be placed on Western ambition and internal divisions stoked to create paralysis. The question in Eastern European capitals would be that if guarantees to Ukraine were negotiable, where does this leave Article 5? Divisions would emerge between the proponents of stability, such as France and Germany – eager for pragmatic diplomacy – and those in the Baltic, Balkans and the UK who fear Russian aggression. With NATO fixed by the imperative to assure its internal cohesion it would have little capacity to ‘compete’. This would therefore open the door to a more coercive approach in Georgia and Moldova, where the objective would be to ensure that these countries remain dependent on Russia and within a Russian sphere of influence. Explicit or implicit assurances to consult Russia on European security frameworks, meanwhile, would demonstrate to Beijing that Moscow is an invaluable ally in preventing AUKUS and other alliances and/or regional security arrangements from being focused solely on the Indo-Pacific.’
And, again, we know a lot of this to be true from open source intercepts:
‘While the 9th Directorate of the FSB’s Fifth Service Department for Operational Information prepared for the occupation of Ukraine from July 2021, the 11th Unit of the Department for Operational Information, responsible for Moldova, was assessing plans for the next round of operations under the direction of Major General Dmitry Milyutin. In November 2020, the FSB’s strategic objective in Moldova was to bring about ‘The full restoration of the strategic partnership between Moldova and the Russian Federation’
FSB Outline of Operational Aims and Means, 21 November 2021.
Some important legal questions raised here:
WARNING: Patented humans???
The issue of patenting humans is now a live one given the evidence showing that the mRNA reverse-transcribes into the DNA of the human who has received the mRNA into their body.
“All you have to do is ask anybody that you know, friend, ex-friend or foe, who has received an mRNA therapy, to write to Pfizer or Moderna (whoever’s product they took) and request this :
“Please confirm that there will exist no circumstances following receipt of a Pfizer BNT162b2 or Moderna Spikevax mRNA vaccine (or other similar technology vaccination), that patent licensing rights or other means of trespass or claim of ownership – either in part or full – will ever be claimed by the company (or its derivatives or partners or any other related entity) on any human being who has received the said product either directly via administration or via inheritance, knowingly or unknowingly, from a recipient”.
https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/who-owns-who?sd=pf
I encourage everyone to write to Pfizer, Moderna and the other Pharma companies and ask them to explain their position in relation to attempts to patent humans.
See: ASSOCIATION FOR MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY ET AL.
v.
MYRIAD GENETICS, INC., ET AL.
“Held: A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA [complimentary DNA ie laboratory created synthetic DNA] is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring. Pp. 10–18.”
“We also address the patent eligibility of synthetically created DNA known as complementary DNA (cDNA), which contains the same protein-coding information found in a segment of natural DNA but omits portions within the DNA segment that do not code for proteins.
For the reasons that follow, we hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated,
but that cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring.”
“It is also possible to create DNA synthetically through processes similarly well known in the field of genetics.
One such method begins with an mRNA molecule and uses the natural bonding properties of nucleotides to create a new, synthetic DNA molecule.
The result is the inverse of the mRNA’s inverse image of the original DNA, with one important distinction:
Because the natural creation of mRNA involves splicing that removes introns, the synthetic DNA created from mRNA also contains only the exon sequences.
This synthetic DNA created in the laboratory from mRNA is known as complementary DNA (cDNA).”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_1b7d.pdf
Anna de Buisseret
U.K. Lawyer
Scary!
“Next U.K. Rebellion”
This is the one that worries me most. My word are they organised. As if the invisible hand of god had been instrumental in mobilising thousands of shiny-eyed fanatics to the streets to demonise oil and us car users (as if all THEIR clothes and fuel are grown in their back gardens and they walked from the far ends of the realms to get to London). The media will, of course, be reporting on this and the police will sort of stand back and practice their macarena moves. It all smacks of an agenda in full flow, the likes of which many of us could only have dreamt of while we were protesting against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. This sort of energy and organisation, piggybacking on a whole generation of frightened and misled youth who want to force us all to the Net Zero hinterlands without, it seems, any cognisance of what that actually means in practical terms, is unprecedented. Maybe the CND marches and the Greenham Common women attracted numbers but they were vilified in the press. This is another type of movement though. It plays neatly into the WEF agenda but I bet if you confronted some of these glassy-eyed idealists (and I can’t fault their passion only their blindness) with some WEF facts, they would ridicule you as another conspiracy nutter, a 5th columnist, an agent provocateur etc. They will happily use their phones to pay for goods with no thought as to the power of actual cash, they will, no doubt, embrace the Smart Cities initiative and get behind totally deluded people like George Monbiot, forcing us to get out of the country, forcing farms to close, forcing us to stop eating cheese, eggs, meat, butter and so on for the greater good, demonising the much-needed (by plants) gas of CO2, cheering for EVs (electric vehicles) with no thought as to irony that the charging stations are most likely powered by fossil fuels and the batteries include a lengthy process of extraction, pollution and cheap labour, hurrah at the wind turbines and solar panels that are created in factories requiring power from fossil fuels and are unrecyclable and scream ‘yay!’ at the likes of Greta Thunberg and her carefully orchestrated tantrums. All the while, this metaphorical locomotive has left the tracks and is ploughing through our lives, churning up our societies, never to return to the old normal. Pubs will close, businesses will close, people will starve and shiver to death, all the for the greater good. There is no debate or at least, like the Ukrainian nonsense, if you dare question the scriptures, you will be branded as a heretic and sent to social Coventry, there to ruminate of the error of your ways. After all their zeal and idolatry has reduced our society to ashes, a figure will emerge through the smoking ruins and say ‘Now is the time to re-build our world….but…build back better’.
I may, of course, be wrong but I can see this trajectory playing out. The key indicators will be the response of the media, the police and the politicians. If they do not oppose it but, like that wet blanket Starmer when asked what a woman was, mildly refuse to comment or act or say anything, then we know that this invisible hand of, not god, but someone like Soros is fuelling it. Such a well-organised event requires money – where did it come from? That should be the first question.
Terrific post. I agree 100%.
Thanks, HP! Kind of you to say so.
One elephant in the room not yet addressed in this post-lab leak COVID-19 era, where we know so much more about ‘virology’ (or bioweapons) labs: where did HIV/AIDS likely come from?
And if power bills are going to be so high, why are we running streetlights all night nationwide? Where I live, it’s unlikely anyone at all walks around at night locally from about 1am, most nights, until about 5-5.30am… It’s often so bright outside that birds are still singing at one in the morning. Turning off the lights for three hours in the middle of the night nationwide would save massive amounts of electricity…
I’ve noticed this too. It might be tempting fate to turn all lights out for a period – utopia for the thieving scroats prowling at night – but probably reprogramming to alternate lights on / off may be better?
I know what you mean about the thieves, but people don’t tend to appreciate quite how dark things get when the street lights go out. Having spent a lot of time working in a village pub a few years ago, which had no streetlights nearby, when we closed up for the night, we had to use torches just to walk down the pavement of the main street. For thieves to operate in complete darkness, they’ll have to start buying things like infrared goggles: torches and van headlights will be too obvious. I’m not too worried about total darkness: it would do the country good to go dark and sleep for a few hours.
https://summit.news/2022/09/01/power-company-seizes-control-of-thermostats-in-colorado/
I suspect that the ongoing push for smart meter installation will eventually result in similar happening here. More control of the poor plebs…
The control freak barstewards have installed a death tower at the edge of the village under ‘permitted development’ to enable full coverage for smart meters…. & LED lights throughout the village…..
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/exclusive-proof-that-the-top-israeli
IMPORTANT
This is the single most important article on my Substack because it shows that the vaccines are dangerous and that both the authorities and scientists collaborated to cover it up so the public would never find out.
This story is bigger than just corruption in Israel. It also shows that even after the cover-up was exposed, nobody came out and said “what they did is wrong.” So it’s evidence of widespread corruption in the medical community, government agencies, among public health officials, the mainstream media, and social media companies worldwide.
Excellent review by The Covid Physician.
Yet more revealing and distressing evidence mounting daily..
https://rumble.com/v1i7g05-grand-jury-petition-against-the-cdc.html
As I’m at a bit of a loose end today, I thought I would add to my previous post about Extinction Rebellion. I went and had a look at their demands…well, here they are:
And that’s it! Three rather woolly statements which could be interpreted in any number of different ways. Their first point ignores all the alternative climate science, ignores the fact that the ice caps seem to be growing, that the Great Barrier Reef is burgeoning with new coral. It’s not telling the whole truth at all. Point 2 with its ‘Net Zero by 2025’ and its ‘new precautionary paradigm’ is completely and utterly bonkers. The last point demands a culture of participation, fairness and transparency. It is calling for the government to be led by a Citizen’s Assembly (the constitution of is bound to be XR Citizens). All in all, I find XR to be a rather shadowy organisation. It is making huge demands on the government and is threatening to hold us all to ransom through its actions which are mainly designed to paralyse normal life, essentially bashing us into submission. Any other group holding a government to ransom with threats would most likely be deemed a terrorist organisation but XR seem to rise above that now. I see them as almost crypto-fascists – their tactics are akin to national socialists in the 1930 although they haven’t beaten anyone up, I’m sure they’ve brow-beaten a few!
What is extraordinary though is the fact that they do not have any one figurehead or a group of named people. They call themselves a movement of ‘ordinary’ people but I don’t buy that. If you look at how far they’ve gone in just a few years, they have grown exponentially. They are spread throughout the world. I find the way they communicate as if it’s all quite reasonable, very alarming. Although I agree that there is a real need for system change, there also needs to be a democratic process involved in so much as we can muster such a workable process without involving those tired useless old people who inhabit the House of Commons. We can’t let ourselves be dictated to like this.
Boll Ox to XR.