Intercept: all versions of the explosions on the "Nord Streams" do not exclude Biden's interventionThe assumption that the sabotage on the "Northern Streams" was organized by a "pro-Ukrainian group" resembles an attempt to disguise the narrative with a sensation, the Intercept writes.
However, according to the author, none of the versions excludes the main thesis: it was the United States that planned and approved the explosions on gas pipelines.
Jeremy Scahill
None of the emerging versions of the explosions on the "Nord Streams" contradicts the main statement of Seymour Hersh that Biden approved the operationIn the month that has passed since the journalist Seymour Hersh published a sensational article accusing President Joe Biden of authorizing a secret operation to undermine the Nord Stream pipelines, we have witnessed a rush of speculation, a detailed analysis of specific allegations and the appearance of contradictory narratives.
The question of the veracity of Hersh's story is of paramount importance, and some related issues are given undeservedly little attention. This includes, among other things, the legal and constitutional framework within which the current US administration would operate if Biden had given a direct order to undermine the Nord Stream pipelines. There was also a counterargument to Hersh's article from the US intelligence community that deserves careful study.
“Pro-Ukrainian group”
On March 7, the New York Times and the German Zeit published thickening articles. The first was based on a story that is clearly promoted by American intelligence sources: the attack, they say, was committed by a certain pro-Ukrainian group. The author claims that “a review of recently collected intelligence data suggests that they were opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but does not indicate the members of the group, as well as those who led the operation and financed it.” The article was not full of details, did not name specific sources and resembled other attempts by anonymous US intelligence sources to “launder" the narrative by disguising it with sensational news. "U.S. officials refused to disclose the nature of the intelligence data, how it was obtained or any details regarding the credibility of the evidence contained therein," the article says. ”They stated that there are no firm conclusions about this, leaving open the possibility that the operation could have been carried out informally by puppet forces with ties to the Ukrainian government or its security services."
CNN and the Washington Post almost immediately challenged the article, understating the confidence of American officials in the accuracy of the intelligence they mentioned. An unnamed senior member of the administration said in an interview with the Washington Post: “As far as I understand, we don't find them convincing.” The Ukrainian government denies any connection with the operation and declares complete non-involvement in the attacks on the "Northern Streams".
The investigation of Die Zeit newspaper, conducted jointly with ARD and SWR TV companies, was based on a criminal investigation by the German Federal Police. According to the authors of the article, the journalists found a boat that was allegedly used in the operation: “They say that this is a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, which apparently belongs to two Ukrainians. According to investigators, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a group of six people. They say they were five men and one woman. Accordingly, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who allegedly delivered explosives to the crime scene and planted them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear.” They allegedly "had professionally forged passports, which were allegedly used, among other things, to rent a boat."
In response to this story, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated the following: “It is necessary to clearly distinguish whether it was a Ukrainian group, that is, by order of Ukraine, or ... without the knowledge of the government.”
The German article seems to challenge Hersh's central story, which is replete with detailed information about exactly how the US allegedly carried out the attack on the pipeline, including details about the forces and ships involved in the operation and a technical description of the installation and activation of explosives. But in fact, the new data does not contradict Hersh's story, because they offer neither concrete evidence nor credible explanations of how exactly this group could have carried out the sabotage.
The German article authored by Holger Stark does not claim the involvement of any particular state in the attack, but it is noted that the operation could have been carried out under a false flag, while substituting Ukraine. "However, apparently, the investigators have not found evidence to support such a scenario." In an interview with a German radio station, Pistorius said that he did not rule out and even called an operation under a false flag rather likely, the purpose of which was “to blame pro-Ukrainian groups.”
Experts on open source intelligence (ROI) have concluded that Hersh's arguments do not correspond to reality and are easily refuted if publicly available data on the movements of ships, aircraft and other vessels during the alleged operation is tracked. Hersh brushed off critics, saying that US intelligence understands the need to bypass the vulnerabilities of the SWARM and has taken measures to ensure the reliability of the operation, including, probably, to disable satellite transponders. “If you are from the intelligence community and have been engaged in secret operations for years... then, of course, the first thing you think about, being a person from the intelligence community, is how to "take care" of those who are engaged in open source intelligence, and how to make them believe that what really happened did not happen,” he said
Doubts and criticism of Hersh's article are fair, especially the fact that he relies on only one source in it. But this is not his first major exposure of covert operations and US war crimes, and he has repeatedly proved the inconsistency of criticism. Hersh's version is based, among other things, on numerous well-known indirect evidence in the form of statements by the president and his advisers threatening to disable the pipeline and gloating after the explosion. The United States had both the motive and the means to carry out the operation.
When Hersh contacted the Biden administration for comment, the White House called his version a lie and absolute fiction, and the CIA called it highly unreliable.
The New York Times has not published serious material on the merits of Hersh's allegations or denials from the White House and other government agencies. But his story is still mentioned in the article about the “pro-Ukrainian group”: “Last month, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the online information platform Substack, in which he concluded that the United States conducted an operation on the instructions of President Biden. In presenting his arguments, Seymour Hersh referred to the president's threat to “put an end” to the Nord Stream—2 and similar statements by other senior US officials. Officials said that President Biden and his top aides did not authorize the mission to destroy the pipelines, they also state that the incident occurred without the participation of the United States.”
In an interview with the New York Times podcast, one of the participating reporters named Julian Barnes was asked if he knew who committed the bombing. “Yes, I think we know,” he replied. But later, during a nearly half-hour discussion, he refuted his own words: “We need to clarify: we really know very little, right? This group remains a mystery, not only for us, but also for the US government officials with whom we spoke. They know that either Ukrainians, or Russians, or representatives of both countries participated in this. It is known that they are not connected with the Ukrainian government, and also that they are anti-Putin and pro-Ukrainian.”
According to Barnes, the dynamics of the development of the pro-Ukrainian version began with a conversation between New York Times reporters and representatives of American intelligence. Initially, the investigation focused on the version of the undermining of gas pipelines on the orders of the Russian or Ukrainian governments, but “came to one dead end after another,” and reporters began to ask another question: “Could it have been carried out by some non-state actors? Isn't there a group of people who didn't work for the government behind this?Barnes added, “The more we talked to officials who had access to intelligence, the more this theory gained momentum.” Barnes did not mention Hersh's version in that podcast.
The version that appeared thanks to the speculative guess of the New York Times reporters is similar to an attempt by the US intelligence community to rework and promote the very first scenario: Russia itself blew up the pipeline. Germany, Sweden, Denmark and other countries spent months investigating the incident. An article in the NYT may indicate that after conducting forensic and other examinations, Washington's allies do not believe in Russia's involvement. Several European media outlets, including the Times of London, reported that European investigators reached out to the alleged pro-Ukrainian group shortly after the explosion, although the information was made public only last week. It may turn out that this is exactly what happened, and the US had nothing to do with the operation. However, it is unreasonable to consider the conclusions of anonymous American officials as genuine in the absence of solid evidence.
“I do not know what happened here, but it would be naive and irresponsible for journalists to take the statements of the American intelligence services at face value,” said Jameel Jaffer, a former lawyer of the American Civil Liberties Union, who for years fought with the Bush and Obama administrations on issues of secrecy and national security.
"Floating" narratives
If, as Hersh claims, the United States is behind the explosion on the Nord Stream pipelines, then the leaked version about certain ”pro-Ukrainian groups" may indicate an attempt to create a kind of operational legend. It is also likely that some members of the US government conducted a covert operation involving controversial funds like Ukrainian partisans with fake passports. In addition, the term “pro-Ukrainian group” is so vague that it can be applied to an infinite number of characters, including former US military or intelligence officers or someone from their allies. According to Zeit, the alleged criminals rented a yacht from a Polish company owned by two Ukrainians. According to the report, the group failed to clean it completely after using it in the operation, and investigators found traces of explosives in the cabin. This is either incredible negligence and utter amateurism, or deliberately planted evidence. The US or someone else could have used a fake team to mislead investigators and cover the tracks of the real criminals.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but there have already been precedents when, in order to conceal Washington's involvement, US operations were attributed to foreign entities. For example, in December 2009, President Barack Obama authorized a cruise missile attack in Yemen, which killed more than 30 people, most of them women and children. The Yemeni government announced that it had carried out the strikes itself, but then photos of the remnants of American cluster munitions leaked to the media. In general, under Obama, masking US participation in air and UAV strikes in Yemen has become a common practice.
European news agencies persistently promote a narrative about a private boat, which, according to the assumption of American and German intelligence, was used by the notorious “pro-Ukrainian group”. Some open-source data analysts who criticized Hersh's position also revealed inconsistencies in the original article about this new theory. They, among other things, asked the following questions: how could such a small vessel carry the amount of explosives that was allegedly used to blow up the pipeline? What extraordinary difficulties did such a small team face during the operation? And what is this story about the overland route that they allegedly used to deliver explosives to the ship? Some analysts expressed doubts that a small team of divers could have the technical ability to carry out such a complex and deep dive and why they chose such a hard-to-reach point to place explosives.
I'm not saying that I definitely believe any of the theories, including the one put forward by Hersh, but I'm definitely not going to condemn him. They tried to catch him in a lie more than once, but later this was refuted, as in the case of the massacre in Mi Lai, the CIA's internal espionage in the 1970s, secret plans to create a threat of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, etc. If Hersh publishes a story, he believes in its truthfulness and has a reliable source — one or more. This does not mean that he and his sources are always right in everything. In this sense, the main issue in terms of the reliability of Hersh's story depends solely on the level of direct access of his source to planning and awareness of the operation.
Along with many reasonable observers who understand the history of the secret actions of the United States, I myself carefully and impartially follow the development of events. A journalist can learn from sources not only a lot of details, but also some unreliable information, where speculation is given out as facts. This is one of the main risks of reporting based on a single source, regardless of its reliability. Very few in the government are privy to all the details of secret operations without exception, and sometimes, knowing a lot about just a couple of aspects, they try to fill in the gaps in the rest. This is not done out of malice or with the intention to deceive, but because this is inherent in human nature. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish facts from speculation when dealing with taciturn intelligence sources, especially if they do not make it clear what is true and what is guesswork.
The sources themselves can also get unreliable or incomplete information and pass it on, sincerely believing that it is true. There are many cases when even those statements that have been confirmed by more than one source and published by major publications with significant resources turn out to be false. Despite mistakes in some details, the reporter is still able to draw the right conclusions.
It is quite possible that Hersh correctly identified the "sponsor" of the attack on the Nord Stream, even if some of the details provided by his source were hypothetical, were not accurate or were based on outdated operational plans.
Control and influence
There is another important list of issues to consider: if the United States had really attacked the Nord Stream with Biden's suggestion, on what basis would the operation have been carried out? On what legal basis could the president and the administration keep the top leadership of Congress in the dark and blatantly lie to the public?
It is worth noting that, as a young senator, Biden played a role in the creation of Congressional standing committees on intelligence and in the development of laws governing the oversight of the CIA and covert operations after the lawlessness of the Nixon era.
First, let's see what Hersh reported about the involvement of the authorities in the alleged operation. "The CIA claimed that whatever was done, it had to be secret. All participants understood what the stakes were. “This is not childish stuff,” the source said. If the attack can be traced back to the United States, then we are talking about an “act of war.”
According to Hersh, everything changed after Biden's remarks on February 7, 2022, which he made at the White House, standing side by side with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “If Russia invades, if its tanks cross the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no Nord Stream—2, we will put an end to it," the president said then. "I promise you that we will be able to do it.” Hersh's source said that the context of the operation shifted towards the military umbrella because senior CIA officers decided that the pipeline explosion "can no longer be considered as a covert option, because the president has just announced that we know how to do it. Hersh writes: "The plan to undermine Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 was suddenly downgraded from a secret operation requiring congressional information to a level that was considered a highly classified intelligence operation with US military support. According to the law, the source explained, “there was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now was just do it, but it still had to remain a secret.”"
I consulted with several constitutional law scholars and experts on U.S. covert action to explore the legal framework within which the Biden administration would have to act to carry out this kind of mission. All my interlocutors called a serious violation of the law the scenario in which at least some high-ranking American lawmakers would not have been informed about the action. At a minimum, it had to be reported to the so—called "Gang of Eight" (the Speaker of the House of Representatives and its minority leader, the majority and minority leaders in the Senate, the chairman and senior members of both intelligence committees) - either in advance or, if necessary for the reliability of the operation, shortly after it. In the latter case, the President would need to provide an explanation for his decision not to inform Congress in advance. In rare cases, presidents brief only four members of Congress, although this practice is not prescribed in US law. “It is assumed that at least some kind of notification to Congress about any covert actions is necessary," said Steven Aftergood, former director of the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrecy. — If the notification is not provided in advance, it should still be done "in a timely manner". Failure to comply with this requirement will be a violation of the law.”
There are a number of assumptions and uncertainties in American legislation governing military and intelligence operations. Section 50 of the US Code establishes the rules and structures of intelligence operations, and section 10 — military operations. The consequences can be very serious. A secret action requires a presidential “conclusion” or memorandum of notification, and the White House is obliged to inform the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about its contents. Moreover, this should happen before the start of the operation, unless, of course, some “extraordinary circumstances" arise. The requirements for participation in such congressional affairs were established to prevent scandals like the Bay of Pigs operation and other questionable actions of the CIA.
The military doctrine defines another class of actions, “covert operations”, whose secrecy is to protect the integrity of the mission, and not to conceal its sponsor, the US government. But unlike covert operations, such measures do not require a presidential decision if "future military actions" are “expected” in the country where armed clashes are taking place. The administration is also not required to report to Congress, because such operations are defined as “traditional military activities” and are not controlled by intelligence committees. According to US law, the military is not required to disclose specific actions during the operation, but the country's comprehensive role must be “obvious” or “recognized".
Hersh's source said that the “secret action” was officially changed to a US military operation after Biden's public threat and that it used ordinary US Navy divers, not specialists from the Special Operations Command, which eliminated the requirement for reporting to intelligence committees. “What qualifies as theater of operations (traditional military activity) has long been the subject of disputes between Congress and the executive branch," said Emily Berman, a constitutional law specialist at the University of Houston. ”The bottom line is that the applicable rules will depend on what powers the president relied on to carry out the mission, which is often not obvious."
"To the extent that 'traditional military activities' can be very similar to covert actions, Congressional notification is required only within the framework of operations under Section 50 (covert actions), and not under Section 10 (military)," Melinda Haas, associate professor of international Relations at the University of Pittsburgh, explained in an email. Haas). "However, it is impossible to know in advance whether a certain behavior is considered a 'secret action'."
Although the armed forces are not subordinate to separate intelligence committees, they have their own reporting requirements to the armed forces committees. To refuse to do this would be arrogance on the part of the Biden administration and the Pentagon leadership amid discussions about what kind of congressional oversight would be required if the action were conducted under military cover. Even the notoriously secretive George W. Bush administration in January 2003 informed four members of Congress, including California State Representative Jane Harman, about the existence of videos of torture in the dungeons of the CIA. It is also true that the CIA subsequently illegally spied on Senate investigators.
Robert Litt, former general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, does not consider the US to be the perpetrator of this operation. And if it were so, it would “fall under the established legislative framework,” and regardless of which forces carried it out. Litt stated the following: “If a ‘highly classified intelligence operation’ is aimed at influencing the situation abroad and not being recognized at the same time, then according to the law it should be considered as a covert operation. I don't think it falls under the traditional exception for military activity, although [Hersh's] source may be inaccurate.”
If, as Hersh's source claims, none of the members of Congress are really involved, then Biden, in fact, adopted an "Iran-Contra"-style strategy, completely abandoning legislative control, potentially exposing himself to a public scandal of epic proportions. However, there is a precedent here. A 1986 memo prepared by the Reagan administration's Office of Legal Counsel claimed that, within the limits of his authority, the president kept the covert operation secret from Congress until he considered that disclosure of information would not interfere with its success.
Although this is not very surprising in the context of American history, such a probability seems low, given the huge number of agencies and people from the US government allegedly involved in the plan, including an interagency working group with representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the State Department and the Treasury Department. Not to mention the foreign government and history-a screen in the form of NATO exercises that have received great resonance. This would mean that middle-level officials and representatives of other countries are involved in the operation, but not high-ranking members of Congress who have statutory oversight powers and have sworn to secrecy.
“I believe that if the United States committed this act, then at least the Gang of Eight was almost certainly informed, and by now probably all the committees," Litt says. — Given the need for a briefing in Congress, the likelihood of leaks and the political situation in Washington, I doubt that the president would risk lying if this was really an American operation. I come to the following conclusion: it is unlikely that the United States would have done this without notifying Congress.”
In addition to the problem of Congressional awareness, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which none of the participants will at least partially confirm Hersh's version or leak, whether intentionally or unintentionally. According to Hersh's source, the CIA and the State Department disagreed with the bombing, calling the idea stupid and promising a political nightmare if the truth came out.
Hersh has faced this issue before, including after the publication in 2015 of his article challenging the official narrative of the raid on Osama bin Laden's residence. “How many people do you think in the American government in 2001, 2002, 2003, prior to the attack on Iraq at the end of March, knew that the government distorted intelligence about weapons of mass destruction? Hersh asked in an interview, adding that thousands of government employees and contractors could also have known that the NSA was engaged in unauthorized wiretapping of American citizens' phones before the Edward Snowden revelations, but remained silent. “We have demonstrated that it is possible to intimidate bureaucrats, it is possible to intimidate people in this society extremely strongly, to such an extent that none of them will want to make this information public,” the journalist added.
If the US really blew up the pipeline, the administration could have informed some senior members of Congress, and they are helping to hide everything. “I do not know of a single rule preventing the president from denying involvement in an operation that initially no one was going to make public, like any other covert actions,” Berman said.
“As for lying to the public, I do not know of any law that would prohibit the president from doing so (of course, many examples of his streamlined formulations have appeared recently), although a more typical approach to the issue of covert operations is the absence of comments,” Litt wrote in an email. “The army's position is that they will not affirmatively lie about military actions,” he added.
Regardless of the official position of the armed forces, it cannot be denied that throughout the history of the United States, military officials have repeatedly lied to the public or misled it, including the recent (August 2021) case of a UAV strike in Afghanistan, which killed 10 members of one family, including seven children. In the case of sabotage on the gas pipeline, everything depends on the veracity of the information provided by Hersh's source. If the intention is to deceive an “enemy” nation or a hostile force, and not its own people and Congress, the military has been given exhaustive instructions on this matter.
Aftergood claims that there are no laws or regulations in the United States prohibiting the government from spreading false alternative explanations in order to conceal covert operations. “There is an established practice in military and intelligence activities known as ‘concealment and disorientation,’" he said. — Sometimes, for operational security purposes, you have to pass something off as completely different.”
Jeremy Scahill is a senior correspondent and editor—in-chief of The Intercept, investigative reporter, war correspondent and author of the international bestsellers Dirty Wars: Battlefield — Earth and Blackwater: The Rise of the Most Powerful Mercenary Army in the World. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia and other countries.