In a wide-ranging discussion, journalist Seymour Hersh doubled down on his explosive findings that US President Joe Biden ordered the Nord Stream pipelines to be blown up last year using C-4 charges previously planted by US Navy divers, took his former employers at the New York Times to task for their uncritical reporting on the issue, and slammed top Biden officials as "lunatics."
"We've got to cut; we've got these lunatics," Hersh told audiences at the storied press center.
While he said he’s "sure they're high IQ," the journalist noted that "[US Secretary of State] Tony Blinken, [US national security adviser] Jake Sullivan, [Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria] Nuland… are just doing insane things."
The decision to take out the pipelines was potentially taken due to Biden’s desire to secure reelection, Hersh said. "I think Biden also saw beating up Russia as a ticket. Jack Kennedy is a classic example – presidents always did well politically in wars."
So in January of 2022, Hersh said, top Biden officials decided to "see if we can find a way to blow… those pipelines, and put [the Russians] back in the dark ages." But many Americans remain in the dark about the situation, he said, due to what he describes as the mainstream media’s dereliction of duty.
"We don't ever get news anymore," Hersh lamented. "And the newspapers cover what they want" – mainly, "Biden."
Asked why legacy media continues to ignore the bombshell report on the Biden administration’s responsibility for the Nord Stream bombings, Hersh was succinct: "they don't like what I'm writing."
He took aim at the White House Press Corp in particular. "I have a horror about the White House press corps" because "they're so tied to the beat," Hersh explained.
It’s the "job" of the White House press secretary "to produce pablum. And… reduce everything to pablum. And that's not challenged by anybody."
Media Subservience & Democrats’ Love of War
At the infamous February 2022 joint press conference in which Biden threatened to "bring an end to Nord Stream 2" if Russian forces entered Ukrainian territory, corporate media subservience was on full display, Hersh bemoaned.
When a German reporter pushed back and asked how Biden would “do that, since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control,” the US president was undeterred: “I promise you – we will find a way.”
As Hersh explains, the power dynamic on display was highly revealing.
"After that meeting with that unbelievably shoddy, embarrassing meeting with [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, who went home, you know, slunk his way back. I hope they put him at least in the Blair House and, you know, not in a Motel Six somewhere."
"It was really unbelievable. It was so depressing to see this man coming like a lap dog and having 5 minutes in the sun."
As a veteran reporter who cut his teeth covering the US war in Vietnam, Hersh expressed surprise at the surge in militarism among Democrats in recents years.
"It's a very strange position," Hersh added. "I always thought the Democratic Party was more anti-war, but they're into this one big time."
Russiagate, Twitter Files & US Desperation
The Democrat-Republican switch on war matters can partially be traced back to the Russiagate hoax, which took hold in the imaginations of huge numbers of Democrats in 2017. That’s when the Clinton campaign attempted to pin the blame for her surprise loss to former President Donald Trump on a supposed Russian influence campaign.
There was just one problem: the influence campaign in question never happened, as demonstrated by numerous reports debunking the conspiracy theory. But despite knowing it wasn’t true, high-ranking political authorities continued to run with the narrative for years.
Yet, as revealed by American journalists like Matt Taibbi in a series of exposés that have become known as the Twitter Files, FBI officials continued to use the specter of Russian election interference to demand the censorship of private Americans for years afterwards.
“The basic theory is the media did realize the incredible power they had to manipulate on social media,” Hersh explained.
And now the Twitter Files have revealed exactly "what the government would [do], in its desperation to prove that Russia was behind the 2016 election," Hersh said — and it’s "not pleasant."
"I have friends that I have trusted for 40 years," Hersh said, and "there's… not a shred of real intelligence" that Russia was behind Trump’s election. "It's really a mess. That story's a mess."
Caught in the Crosshairs
But the course charted by American elites in the aftermath of Trump’s election was in many ways predictable, according to the journalist, who went on to state it’s no surprise the US would take any opportunity to go after another one of their long-term targets:
"I mean, we're big haters. We always, we learned to hate in World War Two. And we've had you know, everybody is on our hit list – Saddam, Bashar Assad."
"Certainly… all the people in Iran on our hitlist… we always have a big hit list. And of course, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's way up there."
"[Putin] is very smart. And he knows his facts. And he spits them out and he knows certain things,” Hersh continued, later touching on the Black Sea Grain Initiative that was negotiated by Turkish counterparts and hailed as a win for those in the developing world facing rising hunger.
"He allowed" grain vessels to depart from the Black Sea "because he was promised that 30% of them would carry grain to the poor in the world," Hersh explained, before going on to offer a prediction for how the conflict may conclude.
But, as Putin predicted at the time, little of the grain ultimately ended up in the neediest nations, and the deal’s fate is currently up in the air.
"At a certain point, [Putin] is going to want… a suzerainty, is the word I'm hearing."
"It's the word in the [intelligence] community, is [it’s] going to be suzerainty,” Hersh claimed, continuing: “the big deal is you cut a deal with the government and the deal is demilitarize."
And for the US, Hersh predicted, “it's going to be a no-go."