In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s detailed accounting of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, sponsored by a state actor (the United States with the collaboration of Norway) employing a technical team of divers with the demonstrated capacity to do the job, a stream of media sources have printed several coordinated variations on the yarn that “unknown, non-state actors hired a couple of divers and a boat.” The Times of London article of March 8, “West kept quiet about Nord Stream attack to protect Ukraine,” provides, however, admissions that, independent of the questionableness of the non-state actor account, are damning, if true.
Times correspondent Maxim Tucker, based in Kyiv, relates that a Scandinavian delegation to Brussels received a NATO briefing a week after the Sept 26, 2022 sabotage. The Brussels authorities allegedly already knew, in the first seven days, that the sabotage had been staged “by a private venture originating in Ukraine.” Further, the plan, in the very first week, was to ‘slow walk’ (stonewall) any investigation. NATO officials instructed the Scandinavians that they should deflect questions about the slowness of the investigation.