Report on Leak of NATO Sub Secrets Near Nord Stream Aims to Muddle Public Opinion
17:23 GMT 19.02.2024 (Updated: 17:29 GMT 19.02.2024)
© Photo : Screenshot / Expressen video
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German media has marched lockstep with its US counterparts amid Western countries’ ‘investigations’ into the September 2022 attack on Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline network, claiming the piece of infrastructure was targeted by amateur Ukrainian saboteurs, and not the United States.
Germany’s Federal Prosecutor General is reportedly investigating whether employees of the Stralsund Mining Authority deliberately disclosed state secrets relating to the operating areas of NATO submarines near the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline network.
A Bild report published Sunday indicated that the prosecutor’s office had informed the German Defense Ministry in December that a probe was under way “in connection with a possible publication of military information” in 2018, during the planning stages of Nord Stream 2’s construction. The MoD is said to have sent a confidential report to the Chancellery about the investigation last month.
The Defense Ministry confirmed to Bild that the Stralsund Mining Authority had published “classified – for internal use only” Bundeswehr documents on page 556 of a Nord Stream 2 planning approval resolution dated January 31, 2018. The newspaper claimed that the information was proof that Russia may have been trying to use the pipeline network’s construction to learn NATO secrets, namely the Baltic Sea deployment points of alliance submarines.
The mining authority said that the information’s publication in the report was accidental. Nevertheless, if found guilty of leaking state secrets, the suspected leakers could face up to five years in prison.
‘Strange Case’
“To be honest, it is a rather strange case,” German journalist and political analyst Dr. Gregor Spitzen, told Sputnik.
“The Baltic Sea is a very restricted area for naval operations. All patrol routes of NATO, Swedish and Russian submarines in the Baltic Sea are well known and I’m pretty sure that this information was no secret either for the Russian Admiral Staff in Kaliningrad nor the [Permanent Joint Headquarters] in Northwood,” Spitzen stressed.
Asking why reporting on the purported disclosure of these documents is only being reported on now, over six years after the fact, the journalist suggested it may be “an element of the targeted media strategy to confuse public opinion and distract it from the real perpetrator,” similar to earlier reporting on the Nord Stream attack being carried out by “rogue Ukrainian” elements using a rented yacht.
“I don’t believe the version about Ukrainian saboteurs, because only three powers in the world have the personnel, equipment and experience for such an operation: The USA, Great Britain and the Russian Federation,” Spitzen said.
As for release of the classified info’s release the journalist said it’s “no secret that the qualifications of most of its employees leave much to be desired,” with professional career military officers leaving the service after being fed up with incompetent, political appointee superiors.
US-born German journalist, author and political analyst Victor Grossman says that notwithstanding the legal trouble now threatening Stralsund Mining Authority employees, he can’t help but be “somewhat amused” by the mental gymnastics Western officials and media put themselves through to try to throw their respective publics off the scent of US responsibility for the Nord Stream attack.
“The detailed examination by Seymour Hersh – whom most people have respected for years as a highly reliable journalist - seemed to a layman like me completely convincing. The efforts of nearly the entire American, German and West European media to painfully ignore his report – without really even attempting to refute it – seemed to me a clear sign that it was correct, especially after he demolished the crude attempts to bring in some small sailing yacht as an impossible substitute,” Grossman told Sputnik.
“Most damning, I think, was the stated claim by President Biden not too long before the event, virtually boasting about the American will and ability to carry it out,” the journalist added.
Grossman is looking forward to more facts about the Nord Stream attack to come out, saying he hopes they are “even more embarrassing than the earlier revelations, and perhaps even force some kind of official reaction other than just silencing the matter and hoping it is soon forgotten. Of course I hope no one goes to prison – except possibly (but not likely) the deep sea swimmers who carried out the bomb-laying or those who ordered them to do so.”
In his viral interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was "clear to the whole world" that the US was responsible for the attack on Nord Stream, and that Germany's silence on the matter shows that the European country's leaders are "guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its [own] national interests."
