Earlier in February, Hersh published a report saying that US Navy divers during NATO Baltops exercises in the summer of 2022 had planted explosives to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, which Norway activated three months later.
The report added that US President Joe Biden had decided to sabotage the Nord Streams after more than nine months of secret discussions with the national security team.
"He [US President Joe Biden] did it for political purposes. Period. It's not gonna help the war. And what it does, what he was doing it for was to prevent Germany and Western Europe, in case the winter came quickly, from opening up the pipeline. The German government, they have done the sanctions, they have stopped the pipeline, but the German government had the right to open the new one. And that was wanted by Biden," Hersh said in an interview with RT.
"That was the rationale for the mission: to make sure that Europe and Western Europe keep supporting NATO and keeps foundling arms into what it's clearly a proxy war against Russia."
Hersh said the team that planned the bombing of Nord Streams was upset when Biden publicly said that he knew how to stop the pipelines from operating. The sabotage was originally conceived as a covert operation, he added.
The journalist said that no one in the pipeline business would believe that Moscow arranged the blowing up of Nord Streams, adding that everyone understands that this would be "madness" on Russia's part.
21 February 2023, 18:53 GMT
In September 2022, underwater blasts occurred at three of the four strings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 underwater pipelines built to carry a combined 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe annually. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched separate investigations into the incident.