Overnight, Seymour Hersh published How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline. Here are the key points.
The explosives were allegedly planted months earlier, during a mid-summer NATO exercise:
Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Planning for the operation began months prior to the war in the last quarter of 2021, and Navy divers were used in order to avoid Congressional oversight and the possibility of leaking to the press:
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. 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.
There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
Both Nord Stream 1 and 2 were a political and strategic threat to NATO:
America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famed Ostpolitik theory, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in World War II by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.
Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.
Events in the latter half of 2021 made some sort of decision inevitable:
The administration was floundering, despite getting a reprieve on the crisis in mid-November, when Germany’s energy regulators suspended approval of the second Nord Stream pipeline. Natural gas prices surged 8% within days, amid growing fears in Germany and Europe that the pipeline suspension and the growing possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine would lead to a very much unwanted cold winter. It was not clear to Washington just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, stood. Months earlier, after the fall of Afghanistan, Scholtz had publicly endorsed French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more autonomous European foreign policy in a speech in Prague—clearly suggesting less reliance on Washington and its mercurial actions.
Throughout all of this, Russian troops had been steadily and ominously building up on the borders of Ukraine, and by the end of December more than 100,000 soldiers were in position to strike from Belarus and Crimea. Alarm was growing in Washington, including an assessment from Blinken that those troop numbers could be “doubled in short order.”
The administration’s attention once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.
A number of ways of destroying the pipelines were allegedly discussed before finally settling on diving teams:
Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”
At the time, the CIA was directed by William Burns, a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.
German Chancellor Scholz was informed in early February 2022 and both Biden and Nuland indicated that as much in the press conference that followed and weeks earlier, respectively:
Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”
What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
The operation was allegedly based in Norway:
Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)
The Norwegian Navy identified the most efficient location for the attack:
The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.
BALTOPS 22 was chosen as cover for the undersea operation:
The Norwegians were key to solving other hurdles. The Russian navy was known to possess surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.
The Norwegians also had a solution to the crucial question of when the operation should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet, whose flagship is based in Gaeta, Italy, south of Rome, has sponsored a major NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea involving scores of allied ships throughout the region. The current exercise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Norwegians proposed this would be the ideal cover to plant the mines.
The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy’s “research and warfare centers.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.
The explosives were initially to be installed with a 48-hour delay, but Executive vacillation suggested a greater distance between BALTOPS 22 and the detonation was needed to maintain plausible deniability:
The Americans at work in Norway operated under the same dynamic, and dutifully began working on the new problem—how to remotely detonate the C4 explosives on Biden’s order. It was a much more demanding assignment than those in Washington understood. There was no way for the team in Norway to know when the President might push the button. Would it be in a few weeks, in many months or in half a year or longer?
The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives.
The decision is made:
On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.
Discuss.
So who’s surprised?
The European countries complicit will continue to deny involvement.
A class action against the US Government by citizens/businesses adversely affected by energy price increases would be up against it.
So now the Germans are beholden to US gas not Rus gas.
If this is all true, I’m astonished the Biden administration had the competency to pull it off.
Hersh is 85. Impressive work..
hmmm .. a bit sloppy on reporting the timing of the explosions and damage occuring
My understanding was there were 2 explosions, 17 hours apart .. not “a few hours”
just one of many references to this: wiki “The Geological Survey of Denmark said that a seismometer on Bornholm showed two spikes on 26 September: the first P wave at 02:03 local time (CEST) had a magnitude of 2.3 and the second at 19:03 had a magnitude of 2.1.”
Other “Remember that there were actually two distinct explosions – the first one to the south, on Pipe A of Nord Stream 2 alone, at 2:03 in the morning; and the second on both Nord Stream 1 pipes and again on Pipe A of Nord Stream 2, at a separate location miles to the north and exactly seventeen hours later, at 19:03”
This will be used I suspect, to discredit this book.
What the USA and its partners did there (UK etc) is despicable and is clearly to extend the conflict
It’s all backfiring as they didn’t at all expect Russia to weather the snctions and are astonished that only the western world, that is, Europe, USA/Canada and Australia NZ are supporting this war.
The rest of the world is watching and probably trying to get any foreign exchange out of the USA before it is “confiscated”, or stolen using another term, for whatever the USA decides about their country and the state of their politics.
I really believe the USA has overstretched this time and it going to pay dearly
In exchange for drones and drone technology from suppliers, if Russia trades hyper sonic missiles, then Europe and Israel could be in a spot of bother
such is life playing with fire eh?
Notice the Name that keeps cropping up
From above
Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Hoover Institution – What Is America’s Strategic Interest In Ukraine?
In October 2021, Russia tested its first submarine-launched hypervelocity missile and deployed the first S-500 air defense system around Moscow. If American strategists were not angling for advantage in a prospective nuclear exchange, as Putin believed, why then abandon Minsk II and the principle of Ukrainian neutrality? Regime change in Russia has been on the agenda of some senior Biden Administration officials for a decade. As Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, head of the State Department Eastern European desk, told a Congressional committee on May 6, 2014: “Since 1992, we have provided $20 billion to Russia to support the pursuit of transition to the peaceful, prosperous, democratic state its people deserve.”
Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call – 7 February 2014
Jonathan Marcus: The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that “ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future”. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. Russian spokesmen have insisted that the US is meddling in Ukraine’s affairs – no more than Moscow, the cynic might say – but Washington clearly has its own game-plan. The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow’s message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.
Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick.
So Biden’s willing.
‘Fuck the EU’: US diplomat Victoria Nuland’s phonecall leaked – video
Notice the Name that keeps cropping up
From above
Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Hoover Institution – What Is America’s Strategic Interest In Ukraine?
In October 2021, Russia tested its first submarine-launched hypervelocity missile and deployed the first S-500 air defense system around Moscow. If American strategists were not angling for advantage in a prospective nuclear exchange, as Putin believed, why then abandon Minsk II and the principle of Ukrainian neutrality? Regime change in Russia has been on the agenda of some senior Biden Administration officials for a decade. As Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, head of the State Department Eastern European desk, told a Congressional committee on May 6, 2014: “Since 1992, we have provided $20 billion to Russia to support the pursuit of transition to the peaceful, prosperous, democratic state its people deserve.”
Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call – 7 February 2014
Jonathan Marcus: The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that “ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future”. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. Russian spokesmen have insisted that the US is meddling in Ukraine’s affairs – no more than Moscow, the cynic might say – but Washington clearly has its own game-plan. The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow’s message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.
Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick.
So Biden’s willing.
‘[email protected] the EU’: US diplomat Victoria Nuland’s phonecall leaked – video
It makes sense but I’m not sure how you can prove this.
Anyway, who thought Syriana was actually Ukraine.
Bombshell documents reveal the Big Lie behind the Trump Ukraine impeachment
When President Trump called Ukraine’s president in the summer of 2020, he asked—without conditions—that Ukraine investigate whether then-Veep Biden used taxpayer money to force the discharge of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was coming close to Burisma Holdings, which had Hunter Biden on the payroll. Democrats called this an illegal quid pro quo and impeached Trump. It now turns out that Biden was lying big time when he claimed he needed to fire a “corrupt” prosecutor. In fact, the Obama State Department strongly supported the prosecutor. Biden was just giving Burisma its money’s worth.
In 2016, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, was investigating Burisma Holdings. Not coincidentally, Hunter Biden, whose father was then Obama’s vice president, was on the company’s board and getting $83,000 a month. Hunter did not speak a word of Ukrainian and knew nothing about Ukraine or the oil and gas business. His only benefit to Burisma was his father.
Most people might not have known or cared about these facts were it not for Biden’s inability to resist puffing about himself. He showed up at a talk at the Council of Foreign Relations in 2018 and boasted about how he had bullied Ukraine’s government into firing Shokin before he would release foreign aid money upon which Ukraine depended:
Once the video was made public, alert people figured out that, at the same time that Biden was strong-arming Shokin’s firing by threatening to withhold taxpayer money, Hunter was a stuffed animal sitting on the board of a deeply corrupt company Shokin was investigating. Hmmm.
Now, though, thanks to documents that Just The News and Southeastern Legal Foundation obtained via FOIA, we know that Biden’s statement was—surprise!—a bald-faced lie. The State Department was completely supportive of Shokin:
“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland personally wrote Shokin in an official letter dated June 9, 2015 that was delivered to the prosecutor two days later by then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.
Nuland, who is now Biden’s undersecretary of state, managed to keep this fact a secret during the impeachment. Indeed, she lied under oath to the Senate, telling them that she and other officials in the State department were frustrated by Shokin’s performance.
This is already all over the internet. As billie said, “playing with fire”……
The technical aspects were achieved, it remains to be seen what the geopolitical results are, and what they end up costing.
They outsourced the planning to competent people.
The actual deed was also done by competent people.
Where they got it wrong is they believed their own risk assessment and their belief in their own competence.
I’m interested to see how this is received in Germany. The claim that Scholz learned of this plan in February 2022 and acquiesced should be a huge blow, internally, especially if there wasn’t a proportionate quid pro quo from the US.
Don’t worry, a SEAL Team member will write a book about it soon….
But balloon.
Always with Hersch, best to keep a grain of salt handy.
The reviews of Hersh’s singularly tumescent account of the Kennedy presidency were savage. Gail Collins wrote in The Nation that Hersh’s book on JFK was “best read as a sort of journalistic tragedy.” In the Los Angeles Times, Edward Jay Epstein decreed that Hersh “must have invented” some of his facts and that the book “turns out to be, alas, more about the deficiencies of investigative journalism than about the deficiencies of John F. Kennedy.”
The above from a New York mag ‘he has a few warts’ profile.
Snowden comments on Nord Stream revelations
The NSA whistleblower seemed skeptical of White House denials that the US was responsible
Edward Snowden, who exposed the US government’s mass surveillance program a decade ago, appeared unconvinced by Washington’s stringent denial on Wednesday that it had anything to do with the bombing of both Nord Stream pipelines.
The explosive story, which was published earlier in the day by the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, described the September 2022 explosions as the work of US intelligence. He dutifully included the responses he received from the CIA and the White House, which denied everything and called the story “completely and utterly false” and “false and complete fiction,” respectively.
“Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied?” Snowden tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “Besides, you know, that little ‘mass surveillance’ kerfuffle.”
He attached a lede from an April 1961 news story, in which US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denied the Bay of Pigs had been “staged from American soil.” Rusk also told reporters that “the Cuban affair was one for the Cubans themselves to settle” but that the US was sympathetic to enemies of “Communist tyranny.”
Contrary to Rusk’s denials, the 1961 invasion was a CIA operation that used Cubans opposed to Fidel Castro’s government as proxies. In a social media post in May 2021, the US spy agency showcased a commemorative coin minted for “an anticipated (but never realized) Bay of Pigs victory.” The agency’s museum described the operation as “an unqualified disaster” which ended with most of the 1,400 invaders captured or killed within three days.
In addition to describing the details of the Nord Stream operation, Hersh’s article recalled the statements by US President Joe Biden and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland suggesting the US would “bring an end” to the natural gas pipeline connecting Germany with Russia. After the explosions, Western media quickly accused Moscow of blowing up its own pipeline to somehow spite the US and its allies, though never offering any evidence to back up that claim.
Snowden’s “kerfuffle” was a reference to his own experience in 2013. The former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor handed over a trove of classified documents to several media outlets proving that the government was warrantlessly spying on Americans, in direct violation of US laws. The top intelligence officials testified in Congress that this was not the case, only for evidence to later prove their perjury.
Washington responded by charging Snowden with theft of government property and giving classified information to unauthorized persons, among other things. The US also revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia, where he eventually received political asylum.
Sure, if he’s made this up or is being used by the source for other purposes, the details will expose the story.
Nuland pops up a lot in the Senate investigation into China Joe & his son.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC%20-%20Finance%20Joint%20Report%202020.09.23.pdf
The Committees learned, through document requests, that Victoria Nuland, then
Assistant Se cretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, also received a forwarded copy
of Kent’s September 2016 email outlining his concerns about Hunter Biden being on Burisma’s
board. Nuland testified that she “was always open to hearing the concerns of sub ordinates and
trying to address them in an open and transparent manner.” 45 Yet when the Committee asked
Nuland to explain what actions she took when she received Kent’s email, she said that Kent’s
concerns about Hunter Biden were “clearly, way deep down in an email, late in 2016” and “they
were not brought to my specific attention by George Kent who is an old friend and had plenty of
opportunity to do so, had he so wanted.” Despite senior State Department officials clearly
being made aware of the situation, Kent’s concerns remained unaddressed.
It’s a nice story, and it may even be true at a macro even if not micro level, but it doesn’t change anything.
Great Ders Of Hershstory.
This sounds like bullshit.
Hersh has come up with bullshit stories before in the New Yorker, and being a left-wing arsehole, I wouldn’t believe what he’s saying unless it was corroborated 35 times. He makes shit up usually about Republicans.
What’s the ‘anything’?
The Monkeywerks video
https://youtu.be/YpBZr9cTlC0
And
I guess there are two presumptions from this –
First that all 4 pipelines were mined?
Second is that the mine on the 4th line didn’t go off, the Swedes found it and definitely know who planted it?
The Russians knew this long ago (and so did everyone else ) . The pretence has been dropped , but we can expect other infrastructure to detonate mysteriously . The Germans are in a hole and are still digging .
I’d say the story is Legit, but a distraction squirrel.
The biggest story is Big Pharma killing millions with their Covid Vaccines, followed by 257,000 dead Officers and Soldiers on the Ukraine side, yet the Biden Admin is pouring $Billions in weapons into the country.
Hersh got his start due to muckraker I.F. Stone, long forgotten, but a Soviet agent of influence in America for decades.
Always with Hersch, best to keep a grain of salt handy.
Has he ever been caught out lying?
The example you provide is a book about JFK criticised by Washington Court Historians, but no rebuttal.
If you’re blowing up other peoples shit, are you the baddies?!
Old Goat says:
February 9, 2023 at 8:16 pm
I mentioned this very possibility previously, regimes have long memories and at the opportune moment, Boom.
Could be anything, from pipelines to windmills, and make it happen at the most inconvenient moment.
What goes around comes around.
Of course all plausible deniability.
Apparently being totally ignored by MSM in the US and no doubt here.If it doesnt get reported it never happened and any non mainstream reporting can be dismissed as misinformation.
The far right joins up with the far left …
Who thinks the US government is remotely competent enough to pull this off? It wouldnt’ be credible as the plot by Dan Brown or Robert Ludlum
Empire shill has entered the chat.
More seriously, the idea that US governments, past or present, ‘cannot pull something like this off’ is the most intellectually lazy and morally cowardly position to take. The article itself gave an instance from the 80s when the US identified an undersea communications cable in the Russian Far East, placed a device that could intercept the communications on the cable itself and continued to do so for almost a decade, but we are meant to believe such a capability or the like beyond them. Absurd.
And the hundreds of dudes who would’ve had to make this possible – all of them- kept it under raps until far leftist , Seymour Hersh comes up with the story. Okay. Totally credible.
And no one on the intel committee was ever consulted on this as a GOP congressman has said. Keep in mind the administration has to consult.
Total bullshit
How and when did we find out about MKUltra? The whole idea that operations such as this can’t be ‘kept under wraps’ is absurd.
That was addressed in the article.
MKUltra was a CIA operation. You’re now combining a spook operation with the US military and concluding that because the lone CIA operation was kept secret for a time, this one, involving hundreds of US military personnel (Navy), was comparable. And this last one was reported by a New Yorker veteran.
If the shoe were on the other foot—Ukraine—you would have disbelieved it, right?
The big surprise in this is the involvement of the Norwegians. I had never seen any speculation that they were involved. As soon as you hear it, though, the lights go on. The current wealth of Norway comes from North Sea oil. It’s being extracted from quite deep water, and ocean bed pipelines bring it to shore. Working on these things involved divers at down as far as 350 metres and more. Divers died in the process. Many foreign divers, including US divers, were involved.
Here’s are excerpts from a story about foreign divers who received no compensation such as was paid to Norwegian divers.
So close links between the US and Norwegian navies, centred around underwater activities, were established 50 years ago. And the Norwegian divers had experience at depths of down to 360 metres. The site of the attack is only 80 metres deep. It was a doddle for the Norwegians.
And the moon landing was filmed in a Hollywood studio. Biden had to be dragged kicking and screaming to support Ukraine at the front end of the conflict but he did this astonishingly risky action off his own back. How many bridges do you want to buy?
Kingsley
That’s a joke right?
I’m addressing your claim that operations like this can’t be kept under wraps because far too many people are involved. The fact that MKUltra was conducted in secret over two decades without becoming exposed undermines that claim.
If they gave an plausible motive and the means why would I disbelieve it?
Reading up on Sy Hersh [at Wiki]:
Sy shot to fame when he broke the My Lai story in 1969.
The story was legit, as I’m sure this one is, but there were quite a few things that Sy never mentioned.
1. Lietenant William Calley got Life for ordering the massacre of old people, women and children, but he served no time.
2. It turned out that Calley wasn’t there that day, another Lieutenant ordered the slaughter, but was himself killed a coupla days later.
3. The troops that did the killing [and raping] were all Black.
My conclusions:
#1 Sy is a Spook.
#2 The faction he’s working for want the U.S. to stop supporting Ukraine and let it fall over.
Okay, let’s just ignore the distinction between spooks and military. No difference at all in their training.
Point to one single item where you agreed with the Ukraine side that was negative to Russia.
Intelligence and military often combine in operations, Neptune Spear, for instance.
Sounds like a purity test.
Lol.
Your contra example was nothing of the sort.
It was run by the CIA using Navy SEALS.
This Wiki report says nothing about using Navy Seals either in partnership or as subjects. It talks about the CIA using overseas cover to test those drugs, but only one American ended up being doped up enough to commit suicide.
This appears to be a typical CIA operation, in which they used an overseas front to provide cover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
The CIA is cagey enough to provide cover for itself, and it would have most likely objected strenuously to having hundreds of American military personnel without security clearance undergo such action.
Finally, as MKUltra became public, the operation would cause the CIA to oppose getting involved for the reasons I expressed.
Operation Neptune Spear was CIA plus Navy SEALS.
Second paragraph of wiki:
I’m sorry, you brought up MKUltra and we’re now floating off to Neptune Spear? In your excerpt appraise me where it mentions Navy Seals?
Yes, I brought up MKUltra in an earlier comment as an example of covert operations being undertaken over decades and kept under wraps and then brought up Neptune Spear in a following comment as an example of intelligence and military often undertaking combined operations.
There is no mention of navy seals in MKUltra. Neptune Spear was a secret operation at the very beginning, but it was never intended to remain so after killing Bin Ladin. In fact, it was publicized to hell and back after the killing.
Neptune Spear is nothing like the alleged attack on the pipeline because of the reasons I mentioned. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people would be aware, and the end result would be leaks over leaks and more leaks. One GOP congressman sitting on pertinent committee said he’d hadn’t heard anything about it.
I never said there was.
What has that got to do with anything? I referred to Neptune Spear as an example of a combined intelligence-military operation, that was all. Still, if they could maintain secrecy as long as they wanted that is what is relevant; the fact that they publicized after the fact is neither here nor there because they did that on their terms.
To say its ‘nothing like’ is a gross exaggeration. Why would so many more be involved in Nord Stream attack compared to bin Laden’s assassination? Also, we did purportedly get a leak, that was the informant that spoke to Hersh.
Are we in fact in agreement that the pipelines got blown up? Was it all dezinformatsiya ?
If real, then how did it happen and who dunnit? Cui bono? Certainly not the Russians.
Hersh may have it right. I figured they were using command detonation with coded acoustic signals.
The folks at Lockheed’s Skunk works may be civilians but even they can keep secrets (F-117)for years. Same for those at Northrop – Grumman with the B-2.
Eyrie
The folks at Lockheed’s Skunk works may be civilians but even they can keep secrets (F-117)for years. Same for those at Northrop – Grumman with the B-2.
I have a long-held suspicion that the US engaged in a bit of active disinformation about the “stealth” designs.
In the early 1980s the MSM had a big “gotcha” moment, claiming that the stealth secrets had been leaked, and that a plastic model (Revell?) was available on the market.
The model featured lots of rounded surfaces and smooth curves, but turned out to be quite different to the F-117, all flat surfaces and sharp angles.
My theory, FWIW, is that the failed design was leaked, in broad descriptions, to the plastic model company, and that the Soviets probably spent wasted years and billions of roubles, before the F-117 was publicly unveiled after Gulf War I.
Quite likely, Boambee John. The real thing is that the stealth stuff all depended on some clever mathematics by a Russian. Somebody at Lockheed figured the implications and turned it into hardware.
Used to know a lady who worked in the wind tunnel group at Northrop on the B-2. We were staying with them for a few days when the B-2 was revealed. Her husband came home from TRW one day with a copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology purporting to show a sketch of what it really looked like. He and I said it couldn’t be like that and a couple of days later, it was. Despite two margaritas (she was a two pot screamer) she refused to say a damn thing until the big public reveal.