After Seymour Hersh’s article

Nord Stream, Norway and Prime Minister Støre

The steel pipe covered by concrete for Nord Stream 2. (Photo: Wikipedia) 

[This is a revised version of my article from 21 March 2023 about “Norway, the Poseidon and PM Støre – After Seymour Hersh’s Article”. It became necessary to add some more information to give more of a background. There is also a lot of more information of the P-8A Poseidon and the section about this aircraft has been taken out and made into a separate article. This revised article below is from August 2023]

Some basic facts

There was, at least up to 8 March 2023, a general unanimity about the fact that the attack on the Nord Stream 1 & 2 on 26 September 2022 was an act of “state terrorism”. The first explosion at 02:03 local time (02:03:24 CEST or Central European Summer Time or 00:03 UTC) in Danish economic zone had a magnitude of 1.9 on the Richter scale, while a second, “double explosion” at 19.04 (19:03:50 CEST) in the Swedish economic zone about 80 km further north was a small earthquake with a magnitude of 2.3. It was recorded in the far north of Sweden 1300 km north of Bornholm. Both the Danish and the Swedish authorities investigating the case said that the destruction was enormous. Norwegian institution of seismology, NORSAR, with a long experience of military and civilian underwater explosions, said that an underwater explosion with a magnitude of 2.1-2.3 corresponds 650-900 kg TNT. An “earthquake of 2.3 would be closer to 900 kg TNT. This is something a diver won’t easily bring down himself to a depth of about 80 meters. The operation demanded deep-sea divers with specialized equipment and a special ship with decompression chamber. It demanded specially trained divers that were able to bring several hundreds of kilos of explosives down to the seabed and to attach these explosives to the pipelines professionally. The attack was, according to the two Scandinavian countries, definitely carried out by a state agency. It would have been impossible for private individuals to accomplish it.

Topography of the relatively deep area of the Bornholm Basin east of Bornholm Island, where the bombs against the pipelines were detonated (Baltic Sea bathymetry, Stigebrandt et.al.).

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 were about 1200 km long parallel pipelines that went from the area of St Petersburg to Greifswald in Germany and each of them had two pipelines. In the southern Baltic Sea, the pipelines go from northeast to southwest. In the middle, you have the depression of the Bornholm Basin with a depth of 70-100 meters. The depth before and after the pipelines pass the Bornholm Basin is about 30-60 meters (see map of the Bornholm area topography). The perpetrator apparently chose to plant the explosives in a relatively deep area not easily accessible to regular divers. They could easily have planted the bombs, where the pipelines pass the rather shallow waters south or southwest of Bornholm or in the relatively shallow area northeast of the Bornholm Basin. One can conclude that this was a professional operation.

The pipelines were built in sections of 12 meters and with a diameter of 116 cm, an inner pipe of 4 cm thick steel pipe and with a cover of 6-11 cm thick concrete. Each 12-meter section had a total weight of 24 tons. The explosion had supposedly blown away 50 meters or about 100 tons of the pipeline. Debris or pipe fragments were found within a radius of 250 meters from the explosion and this debris does not travel through water easily. Danish and Swedish authorities immediately closed the area and established a “5 nautical miles safety zone”. The Swiss-based company responsible for the pipelines, Nord Stream AG, was not given access to the area and could not start its investigation until exactly one month later when much of the debris had already been removed. The Russian majority owner and the German authorities were kept out of the investigation.

Map of Nord Stream 1 with two pipelines (green) and Nord Stream 2 with two pipelines (blue). The explosions are in red. (Image: Wikipedia)

This was perhaps the most monumental attack on physical infrastructure in peacetime. Tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure were apparently demolished, but more importantly: the vital physical link between Russia and Germany was disrupted. The prospect of a Russian-European “union of gas and industry” was destroyed. This Russian-European cooperation was as important as the Coal and Steel Community of the 1950s, which had created mutual interests among former enemies (France and Germany) and developed into the European Union with its explicit goal of avoiding a future war in Europe. Similarly, the Russian-German integration was much more than an industrial enterprise, it was also a peace project to prevent a future war between the Cold War antagonists. Accordingly, the Nord Stream attack was not only an act of war against Russia (Gazprom) owner of 51 % of the pipeline and against Germany or German companies (and individual European companies) that owns the remaining 49 %, but also against their vital bonds that had opened for a new European integration. It was an act of war against the European reassurance policies and détente policies that around 1990 had made the end of the Cold War possible.

On 11 October 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that any attack on infrastructure critical to the NATO military alliance would trigger a “united and determined response”. Stoltenberg indicated that an attack on such infrastructure, such as gas pipelines, might trigger NATO’s article 5 and be considered an act of war. The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines should accordingly be considered an act of war against both Germany and Russia. Jens Stoltenberg was apparently worried that Russia might retaliate and attack Norwegian and others’ pipelines. Russia pointed to the Anglo-Americans responsibility for the attacks on 26 September. However, no country came forth to take responsibility for these attacks. Nor did any country expose their findings on the identity of the perpetrators of this act of terror.

Left: Defense Secretary (and later Vice President) Richard Cheney, who wanted to dismantle not just the Soviet Union but Russia itself. Right: Cheney’s protégé and present Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is the driving force for the US policy towards Russia.

A premeditated crime

However, this is not the whole truth. What we all know is that in January-February 2022 US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as well as President Biden himself had promised to eliminate the pipeline. If Russia enters Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” Biden said at a White House press conference. Reuters asked: “how will you do that, exactly?” Biden answered: “I promise you; we will be able to do it”. This seemed to imply physical destruction of the pipeline, and it is revealing to look at the debate that preceded these statements. In July 2020 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress that the US will impose sanctions on the companies that contribute to the Nord Stream gas pipeline, and he guaranteed that U.S. LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) would make it possible for Europe to replace its dependency on Russian gas with Western gas. A development of such a U.S. capacity presupposed the future elimination of the pipelines. Senator John Barrasso said: “I strongly support your recent announcement aimed at stopping this dangerous pipeline. As you know, Congress is working to quickly provide the Administration with additional tools to prevent Nord Stream 2 from ever being completed.” In December 2021, Senator Ron Johnson of the Foreign Relations Committee said in a hearing with Victoria Nuland that he wanted the Administration to take “action that will prevent [the Nord Stream 2] from ever being operational”. He said: “I certainly hope that the Foreign Relations Committee will take up legislation to go beyond just suspending it, but to end it permanently”, which would imply its physical elimination. President Trumps National Security Advisor John Bolton said: “We should cut it off. We should have cut it off in the Trump Administration. Trump talked about it, but he never actually wanted to do anything about it. That is not untypical unfortunately”, Bolton said. The US could have taken out the Nord Stream before 2020. And already in 2014, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the Europeans would have to replace their dependency on Russian gas with American gas, with US LNG, which presupposed the elimination of the Nord Stream pipelines. For Condoleezza Rice, most important was to put an end to Russian-European collaboration, to eliminate their “union of gas and industry”, in other words: to cut Russia off from Europe. The decision to take out the Nord Stream pipelines was almost certainly taken already at 2014.

It is unquestionable that major US forces wanted to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, but they were not alone. James Bamford wrote in June 2023 that already on February 22, 2021, a few weeks after the Fortuna began work off Bornholm Island, the Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers Zbigniew Rau and Dmytro Kuleba, respectively, wrote a joint opinion piece in Politico titled, “Nord Stream 2 has damaged the West enough. Time to put an end to it.” They claimed that “Russia is dangerously close to completing the twin pipeline, Nord Stream 2,” and jointly called on President Joe Biden “to use all means at his disposal to prevent the project from completion.” A few days later, Mykyta Poturayev, head of a delegation of Ukrainian lawmakers said, “Nord Stream 2 […] is about supporting Russia’s military machine.” The Nord Stream 2 AG consortium, complained about “regular provocations”. “We are talking about clearly planned and prepared provocations using fishing boats as well as warships, submarines, and aircraft to hinder the implementation of the economic project.” This is unprecedented, they said.

Pipelaying vessel laying the pipe for Nord Stream 2. (Photo: Gazprom)

The Polish and Ukraine elite certainly wanted to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, but they did not have the same capability as the Americans, and there is no doubt that the neoconservative security elite in the United States with Victoria Nuland, John Bolton and Condoleezza Rice wanted to cut off the pipelines once and for all to make Europe to develop into a US “Atlantic entity”, not into a “Common European Home” in collaboration with Russia. But equally important, the neoconservatives wanted to make Europe define Russia as its enemy, because this would force Europe to rely fully on the United States. The US decision to destroy the Russian pipelines was probably taken many years ago. The problem was how to justify it.

During the Cold War, from 1981, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey and National Security Advisor Dick Allen had all demanded that the German-Russian pipeline project had to be stopped, while all the European leaders were in favor of the pipeline. But not even the CIA attack on the Russian Yamal Pipeline to Germany in 1982 and the danger of a nuclear war in 1983 were enough to persuade the Germans and the Russians to rethink their pipeline projects. Despite the Cold War tension in the 1980s, Europe as a whole supported the Russian-German pipelines, and this was most likely a major reason for the Soviet-Western mutual understanding from mid-1980s, and for the fact that the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and some German leaders came to adopt the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’s concept of “Common Security”. The German Deutsche Bank financed the gas pipeline from 1981, and its Director Alfred Herrhausen (1985-89) was deeply involved in preparing for the financing of the Soviet reform process: for Gorbachev’s “Common European Home”. In 1987, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the removal of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles, and in 1988 Gorbachev opened for a “neutral zone” through Central Europe as a buffer zone between the major nuclear powers. In 1989, Poland and Hungary were given the right to act on their own, and the Russians did not try to stop the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The negotiations about German unification brought an end to the Cold War.

However, a month before Olof Palme was to meet Gorbachev in Moscow in 1986, he was assassinated and after Herrhausen developed his collaboration with Gorbachev in 1989, he was also assassinated. There were strong forces that wanted to disrupt the “Social Democratic” idea of “Common Security” and of a “Common European Home”.

When George H.W. Bush became president in 1989, several people in his Administration were unhappy with the ongoing reconciliation between East and West. The National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft wanted already from 1989 that the US should take advantage of the situation and move into Central Europe, in practical terms into Poland, and then Director of the CIA Robert Gates wrote that Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney in 1991 did not only want to dissolve the Soviet Union, but also to break Russia into pieces. This policy is now supported by forces in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States, and also by some in the UK and the US. After 2000, Cheney’s protégé Victoria Nuland and Scowcroft’s protégé Condoleezza Rice were both able to continue this policy of the early 1980s. The neoconservatives’ ambition was to finally eliminate the pipelines and to cut off Russia from Europe. However, it was obvious that if the danger of a nuclear war had not been enough to break up the German-Russian ties in the 1980s, to finally eliminate the pipelines would almost certainly pre-suppose a European-Russian war to justify an attack. The United States would have to convince Russia of going into a war before one could take out the pipelines. One had to arm Ukraine into a threat against Russia and let Ukraine push for the war against the Russian-speaking in eastern Ukraine to make a war between Russia and Ukraine inevitable. Russia would appear as an aggressor. It would open for NATO membership, Ukraine military advisor argued, and it would open for the destruction of the pipelines. And after the pipelines had been destroyed, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Under Secretary Nuland were both enthusiastic. Blinken said that the elimination of Nord Stream “is also a tremendous opportunity. It is a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the [European] dependence on Russian energy”, while Nuland told Congress that we are “very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”.

USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) was the largest vessel during the BALTOPS exercise (5-15 June 2022). It is able to carry some six attack or fighter aircraft and some 20-25 helicopters. Kearsarge returned to the Baltic Sea 2 August and left 22 September after having passed over the northern site for the upcoming explosions the day before.

Seymour Hersh and the BALTOPS exercise

On 8 February 2023, after months investigation, Seymour Hersh published a detailed article on the planning of the attack as well as about its execution. He wrote that President Biden, in December 2021, months before the Russian invasion, had appointed National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to chair an inter-agency group with participants “from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments” to solve the problem with the pipelines. They had a series of meetings on the “top floor of the Old Executive Office Building” at the White House. In early 2022, the CIA came up with a credible plan “to blow up the pipelines” with the use of special Navy deep-sea divers from the diving center in Panama City Florida, which “just happens to be the location of the CIA Maritime branch in the Directorate of Operations”, to quote former CIA officer Larry Johnson. Everyone understood that it was serious. If it is traceable to the US, “it’s an act of war,” one of Hersh’s sources said. In order to handle local problems in Europe, the group had turned to Norway, he said.

According to Sy Hersh, a “very competent American team went to Norway”, “sometime in March” 2022, “to meet with Norwegian Secret Service and Navy” to prepare for the destruction of the pipeline. The team approached the Norwegians, who were “quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island”. But one has to be more precise. We now know that they actually planted the bombs in the relatively deep waters of the Bornholm Basin (see above). Hersh had gathered information from the US team, and as a cover they prepared to use the NATO BALTOPS 22 exercise (5-17 June 2022), which was scheduled to take place east of Bornholm. The exercise was to be held in exactly the right area, where only deep-sea divers would be able to plant the explosives. The exercise was supposed to train NATO forces in “mine-warfare”, which was ideal as a cover to justify diving operations. They were training mine warfare also with the use of a UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles) carried by US ships like USS Kearsarge (257 meters), which was also capable of carrying small midget submarines that could have been used by the divers. There is a photo of the Norwegian mine hunter KNM Hinnøy (55 meters) carrying a UUV (Hugin) during the exercise. Hinnøy is almost identical to the Alta class Seymour Hersh spoke about, but Hinnøy, different from the Alta class, can carry a decompression chamber, which would be necessary for the survival of the divers, and she also carries two rigid inflatable rubber boats to use by the divers.

By the end of the exercise, the US special Navy divers had planted the explosives, Hersh writes. They had used very special equipment for deep-sea diving with a mixture of helium in the tanks, and these divers had nothing to do with the exercise itself. The very presence of such divers was confirmed by a BALTOPS coordinator for the divers, German journalist Thomas Röper writes. These divers were flown in by helicopter. But what was strange was that these divers “claimed to be looking for underwater mines, but they didn't have the equipment for such exercises. Their equipment consisted of the Navy's latest underwater diving equipment and some small hard-shell suitcases that we call pelicans”. They brought deep-sea diving equipment with them, which the coordinator believed was MK29, a rebreather system with a mixture of helium (that Hersh mentioned) and had been developed by the Naval Warfare diving Center in Panama City, Florida. Such equipment was neither necessary nor useful for divers in a mine warfare exercise, and their use of such equipment had surprised the coordinator. These divers also met with the US Admiral and “with a group of American men in plain clothes that had arrived a few hours earlier. We all suspected them to be some sort of intelligence officers.” The divers went out in their rubber boat to a totally wrong area, and “they disappeared under the water for over six hours. There is no self-contained underwater gear that I know of that could keep a diver under for six hours”. They must have met with a small submersible that could have brought them down for their job, all according to the diving coordinator’s letter.

Let say that the “coordinator’s” story is correct, then the divers must have participated in a very significant covert operation, because otherwise there would have been no reason for them to meet the Admiral, nor to meet the “men in plain clothes”. The coordinator did for obvious reasons not tell which ship the divers had operated from, but one can easily get the impression that he speaks about a larger vessel like USS Kearsarge or USS Gunstone Hall (190 meters). On the other hand, the divers wouldn’t necessarily have met the Admiral on the same ship as they were diving from, and Hinnøy could definitely receive divers and others from a helicopter. On the other hand, how the planning of the operation was carried out in real life may have changed and which ship they used man also have changed. Norwegian journalist Alf R. Jacobsen said that an Alta class vessel (that Sy Hersh spoke about), KNM Otra actually had run some training in the area of some major Norwegian pipelines on 31 May to 3 June, in the days preceding the BALTOPS exercise. The US Navy divers could have been training in Scandinavian waters for the upcoming operation in the Baltic Sea. Such specific planning may have been done at a later stage and Hersh sources may not have been informed about it.

However, there are too many things that fit with Sy Hersh story. It is almost impossible to believe that all this would be a coincidence: US Navy divers using state-of-the-art deep sea diving equipment from Panama City Florida. They were coming in at the end of the exercise and they clearly did deep sea dives that had nothing to do with the exercise. The coordinator’s letter appears as a confirmation of essential points in Hersh’s article. Röper wrote about it immediately after Sy Hersh’s article, and some people may have been hesitant to believe in it, since Röper presented the “diving coordinator’s” letter after Hersh’s article had been published. But the “coordinator’s” letter was actually brought up in a video already in October 2022 by Röper’s colleague John Mark Dougan without many people knowing about it.

In a common production in Spring 2023, all the Nordic TV-channels argued that perhaps the Russians had destroyed their own pipelines, and they argued that on 14-15 June there had been two Russian ships at the positions of the upcoming explosions, but these observers did not mention that there were at least 45 ships in the area from various NATO countries, and that the Russians always have followed NATO exercises. The TV-channels also argued that a Russian ship SB-123 (48 meter and 1000 tons) with capability to carry a midget submarine was seen close to the position of northern explosion only days before explosions on 21-22 September, without mentioning that the 40-times bigger ship, USS Kearsarge (40,000 tons), and the 25-times bigger ship, USS Arlington (208 meters and 25,000 tons), passed over and were present at this position the same day. These ships along with the USS Gunston Hall were back in the Baltic Sea in August-September and all of them could carry midget submarines. Two of them left Poland (Gdynia and Gdansk) between 19 and 22 September – and Kearsarge left the Baltic Sea on 22 September. According to the radar plot, a couple of its helicopters operated immediately east of Bornholm and one followed Nord Stream 2 pipeline for a few kilometers. There is no doubt that they were interested in the pipelines and had the capability to destroy them.

I wrote a couple of articles in Norwegian Ny Tid, already on 1 December 2022, where I pointed to the BALTOPS 22 exercise and the possible use of USS Kearsarge. The BALTOPS was the obvious cover, and almost everyone would understand that the perpetrators would have used this exercise to plant the explosives, particularly if the explosions had taken place shortly afterwards. But even if the Americans had delayed the triggering of the bombs for a couple of months, the US would anyway be the obvious suspect. The Americans certainly needed a more sophisticated cover.

Left: A US Navy Poseidon P-8A at Sola Air Base southern Norway in 2017 (Wikipedia). This aircraft is similar to the ones sold to Norway in 2021-23. They are based at Evenes in northern Norway. Right: Swedish Dagens Nyheter's presentation of the movements of two Swedish naval vessels (black and red lines) 22-24 September visiting the upcoming sites for the explosions. 

Norway and US need for “plausible deniability”

The Americans had to come up with another layer of cover, which leads us to Norway. One might ask oneself: why would the US need Norwegian help to find where to plant the explosives in the Baltic Sea? They could easily have found a suitable spot on their own. They could have run the whole operation themselves, and the ones who really knew the area were the Danes and the Swedes. It seems that the US had approached the Norwegians, not because of their detailed knowledge of the Baltic Sea, but for “plausible deniability”. They needed a plausible “suspect” if something would go wrong. They needed a gas producer, whose profits would increase radically if its major Russian rival and its Nord Stream Pipeline, was taken out. Norway was the perfect “fall guy”, the obvious suspect that the Americans could throw under the bus, if necessary.

After the West had sanctioned Russia, the prices of oil and gas increased. US LNG producers as well as Norway made a fortune, which increased even further after the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September. After the Sy Hersh article, people would say: “Of course, that is why Norway destroyed the pipeline”. However, this is not the way Norwegian political leaders think. It is not a very Scandinavian way of thinking, but it may very well be the reason why the US representatives would choose Norway for such very sensitive operations. The US would always seek “plausible deniability”. One will find someone with interest in the case that could be presented as the “primary suspect”. If the US primarily had approached the Swedes or the Danes, one would ask: “Why did they do that?” In the US, one would ask: who benefits? “Cui Bono?” And the answer would present itself readily: Norway. While the Norwegians, or rather a few senior officers, might have been convinced that they were making a valuable contribution to an extremely sensitive US covert operation that would give Norway some credit. It is the same logic as in the criminal world when the guy on the street does dirty jobs for the gang leader. This is the way you will gain acceptance and gain higher positions. This is deeply tragic.

According to Sy Hersh, President Biden wanted to be able to trigger the explosions at the time of his own choosing. It would have been too obvious if the explosions had been triggered by a timer shortly after the BALTOPS 22 exercise. Consequently, the American experts arranged for the explosives to be triggered by a specific “pulsed signal” from a sonar buoy that would be dropped in the area at any chosen time. By mid-September, the situation worried the Americans. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Germany against gas prices and against the sanctions policies. 70,000 demonstrated in the Czech Republic. In practice, the United States had launched an economic war against Germany and against Europe. Chancellor Scholz had apparently been forced to close Nord Stream 2. While many small industries had to close down, larger industries prepared to move out of the country. Vladimir Putin said on September 16, “If you want gas, you can open Nord Stream 2”. This must have created uncertainty in the United States. Would Germany now once again open for more gas deliveries from Russia? There was a concern in the US that the German political leaders would give in to public demands. The US President needed to act. At the very least, it must have made those leaders in the US who wanted to eliminate the gas pipeline to try to “cut it off” once and for all, and it was cut off ten days later.

On September 22-24, two or more Swedish naval vessels operated in the area of the pipelines east of Bornholm, also at the exact positions of the upcoming explosions. The two ships had turned off their AIS transponders, a technical device showing their location, for 22 hours indicating that their positions should not be revealed. Some Swedes had apparently been notified about the explosives. After the Russian ship SB-123 had appeared in the area, the Americans might have asked the Swedes to check if everything was in order and the Swedes may have wanted to check whether the explosives would damage the Swedish electrical cable to Poland, which passed in between and close to the two northern positions.

However, Sy Hersh also argued that the US had let a Norwegian P-8A Poseidon fly over the target area before 26 September to drop the sonar buoy, which sent a signal that turned on a timer that triggered the explosives that had been deployed in June during the BALTOPS exercise. The coded signal would make it impossible to trigger the bomb by mistake. This is what Sy Hersh’s sources had told him. For the Americans, it obviously was better to let a Norwegian Poseidon do it to give the US “plausible deniability”. The US would formally speaking not have the finger on the trigger. One can easily imagine that such a Poseidon would have turned off its transponder, because you wouldn’t let anyone track the plane’s trajectory during such a sensitive operation.

But we also have to admit that the problem is not that a Norwegian P-8A Poseidon could have turned off its transponder and gone “invisible” towards the Baltic Sea, the problem is that two US P-8A Poseidon operated in the southern Baltic Sea these days (22-26 September). If the Americans wanted to use a Norwegian Poseidon in order to blame Norway, then one should not have used a US Poseidon in the target area shortly before the destruction of the pipeline. It doesn’t make sense. It would just put the blame on the Americans. The first P-8A was arriving from the US Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy to Nordholz Naval Base, Cuxhaven, in northern Germany on 21 September. This P-8A was flying back and forth over Bornholm every night on 22-25 September, while another US P-8A was flying from Keflavik Iceland, passing Bornholm one hour after the explosion (02:03 CEST 26 September) took place. This P-8A was refueled over Poland for an hour and was then patrolling over the southern Baltic Sea for more than four hours in the night and early morning hours before it returned to Iceland.

The flights over the southern Baltic Sea on 24 September at 20:55 UTC (22:55 CEST) with a P-8A in red with its long blue trail showing its route from Nordholz, Cuxhaven, over Bornholm to the area east of Gotland, where it turns off its transponder. After more than four hours, it turns on its transponder and goes back the same route over Bornholm to Nordholz. (FlightRadar24).

If you let an airplane pass Bornholm just after the explosion, as in the latter case, you can prove that this Poseidon did not trigger the explosion. But why use a US Poseidon over the Baltic Sea and over Bornholm twice every night before the explosions? Everyone would put the blame on the US. This first US Poseidon could very likely have triggered the explosions. A US Seahawk helicopter, a Sikorsky MH-60R, was hovering for hours and days over the southern Baltic Sea, also during the passages of the P-8A over Bornholm. The Seahawk would have picked up the signal from a sonar buoy dropped by the P-8A. The Seahawk could then confirm that the signal had been sent to the timers of the bombs. The Americans would know exactly when the first and second explosion would take place. And to order a second Poseidon a couple of hours before the first explosion to go to the Baltic and arrive shortly after the most destructive attack on civilian infrastructure and to be refueled by a tanker aircraft to be able to cover the area for hours can only be explained by the need to confirm the attack and to investigate the fallout from the explosion (see article on P-8A Poseidon). The planning of this operation must have been made long before the pipelines were destroyed. This is definitely evidence of a US responsibility.

Perhaps the Norwegian role is less prominent than Seymor Hersh’s sources have told him. Perhaps is this leak also an attempt to give others and not least Norway a more important role. Sy Hersh says that some people “in Denmark and Sweden were also briefed”, which was indicated by the Swedish naval operation on 22-24 September as well as by the Swedish claim that their investigation was so sensitive that neither the Russians, nor the Germans or the Danes could be briefed. All in all, this could only mean that the operation was carried out in collaboration with close allies or friends. It points to the US operation with probably UK, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and perhaps also Polish support. Everyone should have their fingers in the cookie jar. This kind of information would be too sensitive to be shared within NATO. If we look at similarly sensitive operations in the 1980s conducted by the US (the CIA and the US Navy) and the UK, NATO as an organization was not involved although several US and British NATO officers were in the know (see article on the Underwater U-2). The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline was probably very much a “need-to-know operation”.

Sy Hersh is also right that the Norwegian intelligence and the Norwegian Navy have for a long time had very close US ties. When former chief of the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS), Major General Alf Roar Berg (1988-93) realized that people inside his Service did not make a distinction between the US and Norway, particularly among the technical staff, Berg had to point out to them that Norway is a sovereign state different from the United States and that Norway and the United States often have different interests. This became apparent in the 1980s, when the US pushed for its confrontational “Forward Maritime Strategy”, while Norway wanted to have low-tension and to avoid any provocative activity. However, this Cold War experience is now forgotten. At the top-level, Norwegians now speak about the US as Norway’s closest ally as if their interests were identical and as if Norway had to adapt to the US. When you talk with retired generals or admirals in Norway, they were not surprised that the US would try to use Norway for these kinds of special operations. The US always tried to test how far they could go.

Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates (1991-93) with Joe, wife of Norwegian Chief of Intelligence Alf Roar Berg, and Berg himself with Robert Gates wife Becky, June 1992. In the background, you can see the towers of Oslo City Council. Despite the very close US-Norwegian intelligence ties, there was, at the time, a recognition of the two states very different interests (Photo: Private Archive).

If we assume that Seymour Hersh is right and that it was a Norwegian involvement, some senior Norwegian officers would perhaps have known about the operation in some detail. But to what extent had the political leadership been informed? Had Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre got a general briefing about the necessity of letting the US use Norwegian platforms in a covert operation to receive some advanced equipment? Did he know that they were going to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline? And in that case, when did he know that the pipeline would be taken out on the 26^th of September?

The inauguration of the Baltic Pipe between the Norwegian gas fields and Poland with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The Norwegian Prime Minister and the destruction of the pipeline

The inauguration of the new Baltic pipeline from Norway to Poland over Denmark was scheduled for the following day, the 27 September, in the Polish city of Szczecin, with the Norwegian, Danish, and Polish prime ministers and president. Because of Jonas Gahr Støre’s cancellation of the trip, we now know almost exactly when and who had briefed him about the upcoming attack. Present at the inauguration in Szczecin were the Polish President Andrzej Duda, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and some others like the minister of energy including Norwegian Minister Terje Aasland, but not Prime Minister Støre, despite the fact that this was a most highly profiled Norwegian-Polish-Danish event, probably the most significant inauguration for Norway these years. Jonas Gahr Støre should have been present, but he wasn’t. Euronews, Reuters, The New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine as well as Polish, Italian and other news agencies, all showed the three top leaders: Duda, Morawiecki and Frederiksen but no Norwegian.

On 20 September, the Norwegian Prime Minister’s Office had announced that Prime Minister Støre would go to Poland to Szczecin on 27 September for the inauguration of the “Baltic Pipe”, the Norwegian-Polish pipeline. All Norwegian media published it (Regjeringen.no, NTB, ABC Nyheter, Nettavisen, Adressavisen, Dagsavisen and Bergens Tidende [23 September]). However, the Prime Minister’s Office changed this announcement on 22 September, saying that the Minister of Oil and Energy, Aasland, would replace Prime Minister Støre. This notice was not published on the regular Government Calendar. The original notice about Støre’s trip to Szczecin was removed from the Calendar.

What was Prime Minister Støre’s whereabouts these days? On Sunday the 18^th of September, Støre and his defense minister Bjørn Arild Gram went to the United States. The following day they visited the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and the NATO Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, close to Washington DC. They were guided by the US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro. They visited the headquarters of US Second Fleet and of the NATO Command, where they also spoke with its Norwegian officers. In the evening, Prime Minister Støre met Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell at the US Congress. On 20 September, Støre attended the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York and had a meeting with the UN Secretary General António Guterres. Støre delivered Norway’s speech before the General Assembly on 22 September, and at the Security Council the same day. In the evening, he participated at a transatlantic foreign ministers’ meeting led by Anthony Blinken before returning to Norway.

In Norway, on 22 September, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a notice that Støre would be going to southern Norway (Arendal/ Kristiansand) on 26 September to mark the founding of a new battery factory and to meet pupils at a school competition. On 23 September, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Støre’s schedule for the next week. Nothing was said about the inauguration of the Norwegian-Polish pipeline on 27 September, but the Ministry of Oil and Energy announced that Minister Terje Aasland would attend the ceremony in Szczecin on 27 September. Støre may, similar to the Polish President have returned from the US on 23 September. There are no reports for the weekend of 24-25 September, but he could very well have been to his summer house, because the following morning, on 26 September, Støre was as scheduled to be in nearby Arendal and at lunch to see pupils in Kristiansand. Nothing is stated about his whereabouts on 27 September. He would have had plenty of time to attend the inauguration in Szczecin. On 28 September, Støre gave two press conferences, one at 08.30 accompanied by the Minister of Finance and one at 15.30, where Støre spoke about the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines. He brought up the increased threat towards Norwegian pipelines and the increased readiness to protect them. Støre also had a telephone conversation with President Emmanuel Macron.

Støre’s problem was that an attack on the Nord Stream pipeline on 26 September would make it impossible for him to attend the inauguration ceremony in Poland. His participation in Szczecin would have appeared as a Norwegian celebration of the destruction of the Nord Stream. It would have appeared as if Norway was celebrating the elimination of Russia as Norway’s major gas competitor and as if Europe now was entering a new era with Russian gas being replaced by Western gas (by the Norwegian-Polish pipeline).

We know that Polish leaders were more than happy to celebrate the destruction of Nord Stream. Polish Member of European Parliament and Chair for its Delegation to the US, former Defence and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on Twitter on 27 September after the attack on the pipeline: “Thank you, USA”. Shortly afterwards, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki criticized him for doing it, saying it was irresponsible, but had a Norwegian minister or politician expressed such a sentiment, it would have caused a major outrage. A Norwegian prime minister would never make a similar statement, not even secretly. Støre’s presence in Szczecin would be similarly outrageous drawing attention to Norway’s increased profits after the destruction of the Russian-German pipelines. This would have been extremely embarrassing for Norway. It was therefore completely out of the question for Støre to attend the inauguration in Poland.

Member of the European Parliament and former minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski’s Twitter comment “Thank you, USA”, 27 September 2022. 

Subsequently, we have to ask: when did Støre make his decision to cancel his trip to Szczecin? Or more precisely, what happened between 18 September, when Prime Minister Støre left for the US, while the Prime Minister’s Office soon announced his attendance at the inauguration in Szczecin the following week, and 22 of September, when the Prime Minister’s Office notified that Støre had cancelled his participation in Szczecin? The time difference indicates that Støre most likely informed Oslo about the cancellation on the 21 September, while he had his first meeting in the US on the 19th. He must have been given some crucial information between 19 and 21 September by the Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, by the US Naval Command, possibly by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and perhaps by State Secretary Anthony Blinken, who was at the UN these days already from the General Assembly started on 19 September. Støre meeting with Secretary General Guterres the next day would hardly have been relevant in this case. We can thus conclude that the only credible explanation to Støre’s cancellation of his visit to Szczecin must have been a briefing about the upcoming Nord Stream attack, and he was almost certainly briefed by Secretary Del Toro on 19 September and possibly also by Secretary Blinken on 20-21 September. Støre would then need some hours to decide what to do and to cancel the inauguration in Poland.

To destroy Nord Stream on 26 September, the day before the inauguration of the Norwegian-Polish pipeline in Szczecin, could have been something the Polish leadership was happy about and even could have proposed, but it was the ultimate insult to Norway. It would point to Norway as responsible and make Norway the “fall guy”. Even worse, it would be a US-Norwegian declaration of war against Russia and Germany. This was a total turnaround of Norwegian policy from its former policy of reassurance and low tension during the Cold War, to a blunt attack on Russia, which would open Norway for Russian retaliation. The US Ambassador to Norway, Marc Nathanson, declared in March 2023: “Norway has been the best example. It’s not just me who thinks so, but everyone in the Biden administration says the same: Norway has been best in class as an ally. You have taken responsibility, and even changed your policy of not sending weapons [but this is true for several countries, the author’s comment]. Norway has also changed its security policy […] Norway has been a first-class ally”, Nathanson said.

The Prime Minister's Office press announcement from 20 September about Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre´s trip to Poland on 27th September for the Norwegian-Polish-Danish inauguration of the Baltic Pipe. Two lines are added on 22th September saying that Minister of Oil and Energy, Terje Aasland, will replace Støre, who had to cancel his trip to Poland (Norwegian Government Historical Archive).

The Times attempt to bury Hersh’s article.

Exactly one month after Seymour Hersh’s article, The New York Times, the London Times and the German Die Zeit and ARD presented information pointing to a group of Ukrainian citizens (five men and one woman) that supposedly destroyed the pipeline using a small Polish sailing boat. The New York Times referred to anonymous “intelligence sources”. The boat departed from the German city of Rostock on the 6^th of September to plant the bombs, they said. This was presented as “news” all over the world. Very different from the Hersh article, all major news media took this story seriously, despite that they, similar to Hersh, referred to “anonymous sources”. It was obvious that some very influential people pushed for this latter version in an attempt to bury the Hersh article. However, these new articles can easily be disproved for at least six reasons.

Firstly, there was already after the early Swedish and Danish investigations a consensus that the attack was executed by a state, a state with capabilities for large deep-sea underwater operations. The destruction on the bottom was enormous. The explosion triggered “an earthquake” with a magnitude of 2.3, which would demand up to 900 kg TNT. This is not something a couple of divers would be able to bring down easily. Secondly, for divers to go down and work on these depths, you will need a decompression chamber for the divers to survive. This is something you cannot bring with you on a small sailing boat run by six people. Thirdly, a small team lacking equipment for deep diving would not plant their bombs in the deep area of the Bornholm Basin. There were plenty of areas along the pipelines with a depth of 200-40 meters, where the diving team easily could have planted the bombs, but they didn’t. Fourthly, the Swedish Navy operation on 22-24 September in the exact positions of the upcoming explosions is difficult to explain unless Swedish intelligence was notified in advance. Why did the Swedish naval vessels turn off their transponders for 22 hours? The Swedes must have been briefed by allied services. This does not point to some private individuals. Fifthly, why was the Swedish investigation so sensitive that the Swedes could not share this information, neither with the Russians, nor with the Danes or the Germans? If the perpetrators had been a team of private individuals, this would not make sense. Sixthly, it is almost impossible to imagine that Norwegian Prime Minister Støre would have cancelled his participation at this very important inauguration of the “Baltic Pipe” in Szczecin if he hadn’t been briefed about the upcoming attack on the Nord Stream, probably at the US Naval Base in Norfolk on 19 September. The cancellation would not make sense if the perpetrators had been a small private group. There is indications that some Norwegians were involved in one way or the other.

There is enough evidence to say that the story of The New York Times, Die Zeit and Times was launched as a cover to divert attention from the Seymour Hersh story. The “Times Story” is definitely proven false, although it may have included some factual correct information. When such very sophisticated covert operations are conducted, there will always be deliberate leads that point in different directions. Some journalists have claimed that the British had trained Ukraine divers for deep sea diving, and for an attack on the Nord Stream. This may very well be the case, and this is not done in a few months’ time. The planning must have started a year or so earlier, and it is most likely right that the British were onboard already at an early stage. But that does not alter the general analysis about who planted the explosives and who triggered them. One would always utilize other players to create a few layers of cover stories that would provide necessary “plausible deniability”.