Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even knowledge – an operation that began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Based on interviews with national security insiders, Hersh – the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai Massacre, the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal – claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. By September, President Biden himself ordered its destruction. But, according to Hersh, all understood the stakes and the gravity of what they were doing, acknowledging that, if caught, it would be seen as a flagrant “act of war” against their allies.
Despite this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter’s bombshell. A MintPress News study analyzed the 20 most influential publications in the United States, according to analytics company Similar Web, and found only four mentions of the report between them.
The entirety of the corporate media’s attention given to the story consisted of the following:
- A 166-word mini report in Bloomberg;
- One five-minute segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Fox News);
- One 600-word round-up in The New York Post;
- A shrill Business Insider attack article, whose headline labels Hersh a “discredited journalist” that has given a “gift to Putin.”
The 20 outlets studied are, in alphabetical order:
ABC News; Bloomberg News; Business Insider; BuzzFeed; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; Forbes; Fox News; The Huffington Post; MSNBC; NBC News; The New York Post; The New York Times; NPR; People Magazine; Politico; USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Searches for “Seymour Hersh” and “Nord Stream” were carried out on the websites of each outlet and were then checked against precise Google searches and results from the Dow Jones Factiva news database.
This lack of interest cannot be explained due to the report’s irrelevance. If the Biden administration really did work closely with the Norwegian government to blow up Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars worth of immediate damage and plunging an entire region of the world into a freezing winter without sufficient energy, it ranks as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history; a flagrant act of aggression against a supposed ally.
Therefore, if Biden did indeed order this attack, it is barely possible to think of a more consequential piece of news. Indeed, according to Hersh, all those involved – from Biden, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – understood that what they were doing was “an act of war.”
The Nord Stream attack was also one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, constituting the largest single leak of methane in history – a gas 80 times worse for the planet than carbon dioxide at accelerating climate change.
“The media system has, predictably, tried to marginalize the report,” Bryce Greene, a writer and media critic who has closely followed the press’ lack of interest in scrutinizing the Nord Stream story, told MintPress, adding,
They don’t want to deal with the repercussions. It also reflects poorly on the profession…Even Jeffery Sachs in his Bloomberg interview said that journalists he knew personally understood that evidence, but also understood that the media system they worked in wouldn’t respond kindly to any suggestion of US complicity, so they kept quiet.”
Greene explained that bothersome facts about the war have consistently been swept under the rug, noting that,
This is indicative of the entire Ukraine War coverage. From hiding the history of NATO expansion, to calling Ukrainian Nazis Russian propaganda, to CBS even retracting a story about Ukrainian corruption. The fact that US media figures want to be seen as ‘on the good team’ or ‘on the right side of history’ means that they’re unwilling to confront reality as it exists.”
RADIO SILENCE
This complete radio silence from most of the country’s most influential news organizations is all the more remarkable, considering Hersh’s revelations have been all over newswire services. Reuters, for example, has published 14 separate reports on the topic since Thursday. Every large media outlet in America (and many medium-sized and even small ones) subscribes to Reuters, republishing content from their newswires.
One of the main tasks of a newsroom editor is to follow the newswire and follow up on Reuters’ content. This means that editors around the country have been bombarded with this story every day since it broke, and virtually every single one of them has passed on it – 14 consecutive times. Thus, even when repeatedly presented with free content to monetize, almost every newsroom in the U.S. decided against it. Independent, reader-supported media, however, have covered the story much more closely.
This is not to say that Reuters has been supportive of Hersh’s assertions. Its first article on the subject, for example, was entitled “White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion ‘is utterly false,’” thereby allowing the Biden administration to set the agenda and downplay Hersh’s investigation as a mere blog post – something those in alternative media were quick to highlight. Hersh self-published his report on the online platform Substack – a fact that either undermines his findings or the credibility of the corporate media apparatus, depending on one’s perspective.
“The most incredible thing about the backlash against Hersh’s article on the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is the fact that it’s clear no establishment media outlet has any intention of carrying out the basic journalism needed to confirm or refute what he’s reported,” wrote journalist and MintPress contributor Jonathan Cook.
Other journalists, particularly those connected to the Western intelligence services, were scathing of the report. “The only people Hersh impresses any more [sic] are the sort of people who carry water for Putin and Assad, or the terminally dumb,” quipped Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins. Christo Grozev, another Bellingcat writer, labeled Hersh “senile,” “corrupt,” and an “obsessive liar” whose “irresponsible single-anonymous-source reporting by a name with legacy authority is among the worst damage to journalism anyone ever caused.”
Fact-checking website Snopes also sprung into action, calling Hersh’s claim a “conspiracy” that rested on a single “omnipotent anonymous source.”
In an interview with the Radio War Nerd podcast, Hersh fired back, claiming:
The New York Times and the Washington Post have just ignored me. What they think I should do is use [the source’s] name, get him put in jail, stuff like that, which would end my career. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. My Lai started in 1969, and I will tell you something…I will protect people.”
He also noted that he actually cultivated multiple corroborative sources for the story.
Thank God we got Snopes on the case. Notice that they had absolutely nothing to say when random people were saying Russia blew their own pipeline. Now when there’s a credible accusation of US complicity, they have to intervene to protect the discourse from “conspiracy”
A STORY LIKE NO OTHER
According to Hersh’s source, last June, under the cover of an international NATO exercise happening in the area, U.S. Navy divers based in Panama City, Florida, planted remotely-triggered C4 explosives on a section of the pipeline. Then, three months later, the order was given to blow it up. Navy divers were assisted by the Norwegian military, who found the perfect location; calm and shallow water just off the coast of Bornholm Island, Denmark.
An earlier Nord Stream pipeline was already supplying Germany and Western Europe with Russian gas, providing a cheap and readily available source of fuel to heat and power the continent. With the introduction of the second pipeline, Europe would have become effectively energy-independent of the United States, raising the possibility that the continent might move in a neutral or independent political direction too, creating a powerful regional bloc of its own rather than the current Atlanticist (i.e., U.S.-dominated) model that prevails. The 760-mile pipeline travels along the Baltic Sea floor, from western Russia to northeastern Germany, transporting liquified natural gas into homes and businesses throughout Europe. As such, it represents a vastly more cost-efficient form of energy than purchasing American liquified national gas or fracked oil – something Washington had been leaning hard on Europe to switch to.
Successive White House administrations had long made their opposition to the new, multi-billion dollar project publicly known. But Hersh alleges that the Biden administration began planning the sabotage in 2021, many months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The choice to use Navy divers rather than members of America’s Special Operations Command was reportedly down to secrecy. Unlike Special Ops, by law, Congress, the Senate and House leadership do not need to be briefed about Navy operations. “The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks,” Hersh wrote.
Nevertheless, many in the know had cold feet. “Some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out,’” Hersh’s source said.
In the end, Biden himself gave the mission the green light, and three months after it was completed, Washington pressed the button, destroying the pipeline.
In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, Western corporate media were coy about the culprit, even suggesting that Vladimir Putin himself was by far the number one suspect in the case. They also actively suppressed any other opinions on the matter, sometimes to a near-comical degree. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, for example, was abruptly taken off the air by Bloomberg as he ran through circumstantial evidence suggesting Western forces could be behind the attack.
CAN WE BELIEVE THIS?
Hersh’s account adds weight to Sachs’ assertions. But is it credible? On the one hand, Hersh is a veteran investigative journalist who has built a stellar reputation over decades, working closely with government sources to break important news stories. On the other, his bombshell relies almost entirely on unnamed sources. It is standard journalistic practice to name and check sources. The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics states that “reporters should use every possible avenue to confirm and attribute information before relying on unnamed sources” and that they must “always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity” because too many “provide information only when it benefits them.”
Without a name to go with a claim, there are no consequences for sources (or journalists, for that matter) simply lying to further their agenda. Hersh, therefore, is implicitly asking readers to trust his credibility and his judgment. Moreover, Hersh’s sources are government and intelligence insiders. Part of their role is placing false or inaccurate information into the public domain to further the state’s agenda. Journalistically speaking, then, anonymous government or intelligence officials are about the least credible sources imaginable.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that, given Washington’s war on whistleblowers, no source would ever publicly disclose this sort of information unless they were ready to risk decades in prison. Therefore, they could reasonably qualify for anonymity.
Greene took a nuanced position on the story’s credibility, stating,
Is everything Hersh alleged correct? While it would surprise me if there were evidence of any other power being behind the pipeline explosion – which would mean Hersh’s report is a complete fabrication – it would not be surprising if a few of Hersh’s details don’t line up, but that is common in journalism, and not always the result of bad faith or incompetence.
“The thing to remember is Hersh’s sources are in the world of military and intelligence. They will lie, exaggerate, obfuscate – and of course get things wrong by mistake,” Greene added, “But The compartmentalized nature of any bureaucracy – and the intelligence world especially – means that the full picture is sometimes murky, even to those considered to be ‘in the know.’ The fact that Hersh’s source knows so much detail is remarkable but certainly not implausible given the history of high-level leakers.”
Establishment journalists in US and UK hate and traduce Seymour Hersh for same reason they hated and traduced Robert Fisk: their work exposes our “free press” as glorified state propagandists who follow the party line 99% of time. Truth hurts.
WHO BENEFITS?
If the United States did indeed sabotage Nord Stream II, it was one of the least well-hidden and most signposted attacks in history. The U.S. and NATO had, for years, publicly made clear that they were exploring options to stop the project.
A few weeks before the Russian invasion last February, Biden summoned German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the White House, where the president made him participate in a bizarre press conference in which Biden stated, “If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine — then there will be no longer a Nord Stream II. We will bring an end to it.”
The event had the air of an adult chastising a misbehaving child, yet Biden was, in effect, telling Scholz to his face that his country’s infrastructure might face a U.S. attack.
To be fair to the president, he was merely repeating what many in his administration had been publicly saying for months. Both Victoria Nuland and State Department Spokesperson Ned Price had independently stated that “one way or another, Nord Stream II will not move forward.”
Likewise, after the attack, the U.S. barely tried to hide its satisfaction. “This is a tremendous opportunity,” Antony Blinken beamed. The Secretary of State continued,
It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity.”
Other prominent officials thought U.S. culpability for the blast was so obvious that they assumed that they would take credit for it rather than claim Russia carried out a false flag attack. Member of the European Parliament and former Foreign Minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, for example, tweeted out a picture of the blast with the words “Thank you, USA.” Sikorski, married to U.S. national security state insider Anne Applebaum, later deleted his post.
For Greene, the United States is near the top of the list of potential culprits. As he explained,
The charge of U.S. complicity is supported by a good deal of circumstantial evidence: The clearest answer to the ‘cui bono’ [who benefits?] question is obviously the U.S. Even before Hersh’s reporting, German officials reportedly said they were open to the idea of Western complicity. So in that sense, Hersh’s reporting is in line with what we already know (and what the mainstream media refuses to seriously discuss).”
Certainly, Washington has significantly benefited from the explosion. Its major competitor (Russia) has been seriously economically weakened, and European purchases of expensive American liquified natural gas have more than doubled since last year. Norway, too, has gained from the blast and is now Germany’s principal supplier of gas, allowing it to make billions in profits.
In light of the Seymour Hersh bombshell on the U.S. and Norway blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, let’s recall how U.S. officials openly incited against it for months, then blamed… Russia. https://uncaptured.substack.com/p/watch-2-minutes-of-us-official-incitement…
A REPORTER LIKE NO OTHER
Born in 1937 into a working-class Jewish immigrant family, Hersh cut his teeth as a crime reporter in early 1960s Chicago. He first came to national attention in 1969, however, when he exposed the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops at My Lai – a scoop that won him the Pulitzer Prize. His revelations were far from welcome in establishment media, though, and he had to fight to get even a small startup newswire to take a chance on his story.
In 1974, Hersh again caused a national scandal after exposing a massive Nixon-era CIA spying operation targeting hundreds of thousands of left-wing activists, anti-war dissidents and other anti-establishment figures. Again, far from being heralded, the majority of the corporate press attempted to defend the national security state and discredit him and his reporting.
Thirty years later, he dropped yet another bombshell on the American public, exposing the U.S.’ widespread torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Whether it was reporting on the U.S.’ role in the 1973 coup in Chile or undermining the Obama administration’s claims on chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Hersh has courted controversy and attracted flak throughout his career. Yet his fearlessness has won him respect the world over. As journalist Glenn Greenwald stated,
Seymour Hersh is beyond any reasonable dispute one of the two or three most accomplished, important and courageous journalists of his generation. Very few journalists on the planet – and virtually none who still work inside the nation’s largest media corporations – can even get close to him when it comes to having broken more major, history-changing stories.”
https://cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?app=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpressnews.com%2Fhow-seymour-hersh-became-one-of-todays-greatest-most-controversial-journalists%2F205542%2F&key=bab15327a66f873fa9c0d80b90a8205a
SEVERE CONSEQUENCES
It is for this reason that Hersh’s reporting is so important – and why corporate media’s steadfast refusal to cover it is so noteworthy. If Hersh is correct, the United States and Norway essentially attacked their supposed NATO allies, something that could have gigantic geopolitical implications. Article 5 of NATO’s treaty states that if a NATO member is attacked, then all other NATO members must defend said country. Several NATO members, including the United Kingdom and France, possess nuclear weapons.
Of course, NATO will not declare war on the United States, precisely because it is, since its very inception, an unequal alliance. As Lord Ismay, the organization’s first secretary general, explained, “NATO’s role is to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in”. In other words, it is a U.S.-dominated confederation meant to stifle the pan-European project that sought to reorient the continent away from serving the U.S. and towards becoming an independent regional bloc.
While the culprit of the attacks still remains in doubt, many of the consequences are not.
Germans – like much of Europe – have had to endure freezing winters amid enormous fuel price spikes. The dearth of energy has helped spark double-digit inflation in Germany that has eroded the savings of tens of millions of people. Energy costs are causing vast numbers of businesses to permanently close and presents a crisis of competitiveness for European industry, which is struggling to compete with American and Asian manufacturers enjoying cheap fuel.
Moreover, huge numbers of European businesses are closing or reducing their domestic workforce in favor of moving production to the U.S., where, alongside cheaper energy costs, the Biden administration is offering them financial incentives to do so. The European Union has accused Washington of breaching World Trade Organization rules.
Thus, it could be said that the invasion of Ukraine has marked a turning point in geopolitical history, whereby the United States is not only carrying out a proxy war against Russia, but engaged in an economic war against the entirety of Europe. If Hersh’s Nord Stream story is true, it could send a shockwave throughout Europe and should cause long held beliefs about the nature of Europe’s relationship with the United States to be challenged. Therefore, given the massive negative consequences of all this for Washington, perhaps it is no surprise that the revelation will not be televised.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
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26 CommentsFEBRUARY 15TH, 2023
ALAN MACLEOD
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HOW ISRAELI CYBER WEAPONS ARE TAKING OVER LATIN AMERICA
In January, Salvadoran newspaper El Faro revealed that the country’s police have purchased three Israeli surveillance tools. Through the approximately $2.2 million contract, El Salavador’s police acquired the Wave Guard Tracer, from Wave Guard Technologies, designed to trace calls, text, and data, the GEOLOC system sold by an unknown Israeli firm, which intercepts signals between […]
In January, Salvadoran newspaper El Faro revealed that the country’s police have purchased three Israeli surveillance tools. Through the approximately $2.2 million contract, El Salavador’s police acquired the Wave Guard Tracer, from Wave Guard Technologies, designed to trace calls, text, and data, the GEOLOC system sold by an unknown Israeli firm, which intercepts signals between SIM cards and cellular towers in order to do physical surveillance, and Web Tangles, made by Cobwebs Technologies, which uses a person’s social media account to create an identity report.
Israel is notorious for selling arms and cyber surveillance technologies to governments around the world, and Latin America is no exception. But in countries like Mexico, where government corruption is rampant, these Israeli exports become even more insidious.
THE ISRAELI MIDDLEMEN OVERSEEING LATIN AMERICA’S CYBER MARKET
Salvadoran police bought the cyber surveillance technology through EyeTech Solutions, one of the main Israeli intermediaries selling spyware across Latin America. The majority of the offensive cyber market’s transactions are executed through intermediaries, who often receive a 12-15 percent commission. The Mexico-based Israeli firm is run by Yaniv Zangilevitch, a former spy official in the Israeli army and personal friend of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
Often intermediaries establish contracts due to their connections with government officials, as is the case of Samuel Weinberg. Weinberg’s relationship with former Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna helped him secure several business agreements. García Luna was found guilty in the United States last week for drug trafficking and organized crime. Now, the Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit is investigating the Weinberg family for their relationship with García Luna, as well as their involvement with companies selling products involved in political espionage scandals.The Weinbergs could not be reached for comment.
Former Mexican public security official, Tomás Zerón de Lucio, also holds relationships with Israeli cyber tech middlemen like Avishay Samuel Neriya. Neriya is partners with another Israeli businessman, Uri Emmanuel Ansbacher, at BSD Security Systems, which sold espionage systems to Mexican security agencies. According to Mexican magazine, Proceso, Ansbacher was the main intermediary for Israeli companies selling cyber surveillance technology to Mexican security agencies like the Attorney General’s Office, the National Defense Secretariat, and the National Intelligence and Security Center.
Zerón’s connections to Israel allowed him to travel there in order to escape authorities looking for him for in connection to charges of torture, forced disappearance, and embezzlement.
Mexican security analyst Paloma Mendoza-Cortés explained that offensive cyber technology is being used by the Mexican government in several illegal ways, including to track journalists, human rights defenders, academic critics, and other opponents and by political opposition groups to spy on the government or other parties.
“These practices are widespread precisely because of the legal vacuum,” Mendoza-Cortés told MintPress News, “Consequently, there have been cases of security officials who work simultaneously as consultants, a situation that in other countries would be illegal.”
Another intermediary, Balam Security, headed by Asaf Zanzuri, has sold numerous espionage systems to the Mexican government. These include a tactical unmanned aerial system and an intelligence-gathering drone made by Israeli arms manufacturer Aeronautics. Balam Security has boasted their clients include Mexico’s Secretariat of the Navy, Secretariat of National Defense, federal and state Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection, and the Federal Police.
CYBER SURVEILLANCE, A PERMANENT RISK IN LATIN AMERICA
According to the Mexican embassy in Israel, 30 cybersecurity companies operate in Mexico, with some providing services to the government such as Toka Cyber, InElint, and Centraleyes (formerly Cygov).
In 2020, Toka was selected by Chile and the Inter-American Development Bank to advise Chile on its national cybersecurity readiness. In response to queries from MintPress News regarding its operations in Central and South America, Toka said in a statement:
The Inter-American Development Bank contracted with Toka for a short consulting project in Chile three years ago. Toka no longer provides consulting services and does not have, nor is seeking, any business in Central or South America.
InElint didn’t have contact information or an available website to verify its work in Mexico. Centraleyes did not respond to MintPress News’ queries.
Additionally, the aforementioned intermediaries and other firms orchestrate sales from Israeli cyber companies like Cognyte, Circles, and Cellebrite Solutions, which operate in Mexico and in other Latin American countries.
“State governments acquiring technologies that could be used for unlawful purposes is a permanent risk in Latin America,” Mendoza-Cortés said, explaining the largest markets for offensive cyber weapons are in Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Central America. “[This is] thanks to significant security budgets—bolstered by U.S. security assistance funds, which increases the market’s attractiveness.”
Cellebrite’s customers include law enforcement agencies in Colombia, including the national police, law enforcement in Mexico, and Argentina’s border patrol. Law enforcement often relies on Cellebrite to extract mobile data and use it for evidence, raising legal and security concerns. Moxie Marlinspike, founder of encrypted messaging app, Signal, claimed Cellebrite’s software is unreliable and the data can be corrupted — potentially putting innocent people behind bars.
Concerns have also grown that this technology could be used to prosecute journalists, with police forces around the world using it when arresting reporters. In 2019, the government of Nicolás Maduro purchased over $54,300 in Cellebrite tools for Venezuela’s police. According to trade database ImportGenius, Cellebrite’s technology has also been imported into Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, and by the British Embassy in Panama in 2018. The British Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on why and how it’s using Cellebrite. Cellebrite also did not respond to MintPress News’ inquiries on its operations in the above countries.
Through a U.S. State Department contract, Cognyte, once part of Verint Systems, wiretapped Mexican telecommunications and provided the country’s government access to that information. In 2021, social media giant, Meta, said it removed around 100 accounts linked to Cognyte for targeting journalists and politicians around the world. Meta said Cognyte’s software is designed to exploit human error in order to collect a person’s data. Its investigation identified Cognyte customers in Colombia and Mexico.
A recent Haaretz investigation found the company pitched its Open Source Intelligence system to the Chilean army, but leaked documents did not confirm if these pitches materialized into sales. According to ImportGenius, Cognyte has also been sold in Ecuador and Panama. The company did not respond to MintPress News’ requests for comment.
Mendoza-Cortés explained Israeli cyber weapons have become immensely popular in Latin America due to corruption. “It is incredible that Israel, one of the countries with the best intelligence services, is unaware of the level and depth of corruption in Latin America,” she said.
And in that regard, she explained, “technology is susceptible to falling into the wrong hands, increasing violence, violation of human rights, and insecurity in the region.”
