The White House on Wednesday denied a new report from controversial investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the United States was behind the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany.
Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and former New Yorker staff writer whose reporting in recent years has frequently come under scrutiny, wrote in a Substack post Wednesday that the Nord Stream blasts were a long-planned, covert operation carried out by Navy divers operating under the cover of NATO military exercises.
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“Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of [the NATO exercise] known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four [pipelines],” Hersh wrote.
He cited just one anonymous source in the lengthy post, whom he said had “direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
U.S. national security and intelligence officials denied the report.
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told the Washington Examiner the report was “false and complete fiction.”
CIA spokeswoman Tammy Thorp told the Washington Examiner in an email: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
Hersh’s article prompted Russia’s foreign ministry to weigh in on Wednesday, demanding that the U.S. respond.
“The White House must now comment on all these facts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted about the report Wednesday, writing, “If false, slander. If true, war.”
The twin Nord Stream gas pipelines were hit by four undersea blasts in September. European officials said the explosions caused “extensive damage” to Nord Stream 1, the main gas artery linking Russia to the EU and supplying the bulk of the bloc’s supplies until Moscow began throttling its deliveries last summer.
Construction on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was completed in late 2021, but was never brought online due to Russia’s looming invasion.
Swedish and Danish security authorities have been separately investigating the explosions, which occurred in their exclusive economic zones.
They also joined President Joe Biden and several other Western leaders in describing the blasts as an act of “gross sabotage,” though neither country has finished its probe or named a culprit responsible for the explosions.
Officials with both the Swedish Security Office and the Danish Security And Intelligence Service declined to comment on Hersh’s report, telling the Washington Examiner that they cannot comment on the status of a current investigation. European leaders vowed last fall that any deliberate act would be met with a “robust and united response.”
Germany is also in the process of conducting its own investigation into the blasts. German Attorney General Peter Frank told the local news outlet Die Welt in an interview Sunday that it is too early to draw any conclusions about who is responsible for the explosions.
He also stopped short of characterizing the blasts as sabotage. “[What] I can say is that the suspicion that this was a foreign sabotage action has not yet been substantiated,” he said.
Hersh, now 85, has become increasingly controversial for his reporting over the past decade.
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In recent years, Hersh has disputed the U.S. government’s account of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden and questioned the Syrian government’s use of sarin gas, a chemical weapon, in its attacks on civilians.
He said in a 2018 interview that he “doesn’t necessarily buy the story that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.”
