On April 5, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Sy Hersh took to Substack again to analyze the Western media's story about a six-member "pro-Ukrainian" gang with forged passports that allegedly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
On March 7, The New York Times and Die Zeit published two separate articles claiming that international investigators had managed to trace the September 26, 2022 sabotage attack to a "pro-Ukrainian" group operating from the Andromeda, a 15-meter chartered yacht. However, the same week, Der Spiegel and Bild questioned the story.
Later, Die Zeit quoted the chair of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, Konstantin von Notz from the Green Party, who argued that the Nord Stream sabotage does not look like an attack by a group of unaffiliated volunteers, but has all the earmarks of a "state-backed act of terrorism."
For instance, the German media outlets appeared skeptical that a 15-meter chartered yacht could carry the 1,500-2,000 kilograms of explosives needed to destroy the pipelines, adding that the Andromeda does not have a crane to hoist such quantities safely into the water. Likewise, it appeared to be impossible to transport 1,500 to 2,000 kg of explosives through Poland and Germany and not be caught.
Another problem, cited by the press, was that at the site of the explosion, the Baltic Sea is about 80 meters deep, requiring special diving equipment including a decompression chamber for the divers – something that the yacht is not fit for. Eventually, The Washington Post reported on April 3 that some European investigators now doubt that the Andromeda could have sabotaged the pipelines without the help of a second boat.
Another question is how the Andromeda managed to find the pipelines in the Baltic Sea, given that they are not that big and not on the charts that come with the lease. Having a small yacht and two divers, who could stay about 15 minutes under water, it would take four years to search one square mile, Hersh wrote, citing the expert.
"So you have six people on the yacht—two divers, two helpers, a doctor and a captain leasing the boat. One thing is missing – who is going to crew the yacht? Or cook? What about the logbook that the leasing company must keep for legal reasons?" the expert continued, stressing that no Western journalist ever asked any of those questions. What's more, it appears that none of them has ever set foot on the much-discussed vessel.
Furthermore, photographs of the Andromeda, circulated by the Western press, indicate that the vessel has no license number where it legally should be. On top of this, the assumption that the gang of saboteurs returned the yacht unclean and even left a couple of fake passports on board make the story even fishier.
11 February 2023, 15:39 GMT
The investigative journalist suggested that the yarn was fed by the CIA to their German peers and the press on both sides of the pond: the two separate stories released by the US and German press are nearly identical both in detail and absurdity.
Hersh specified that there's nothing surprising about the CIA inventing a cover story to distract the public's attention from the real one. In fact, the agency followed "protocol." The question is why the story was so dubious that it started to fall apart at the seams immediately after its publication.
The investigative journalist does not rule out that it was made intentionally. Hersh quoted the intelligence expert as saying: "In the world of professional analysts and operators everyone will universally and correctly conclude from your story that the devilish CIA concocted a counter-op that is on its face so ridiculous and childish that the real purpose was to reinforce the truth."
In early February, Hersh dropped a bombshell by saying that the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines were destroyed by American and Norwegian operatives at the request of the Biden administration. According to Hersh, US Navy divers during the NATO BALTOPS 22 exercises in June 2022 planted explosives to blow up the pipelines, which Norway activated three months later. According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, US President Joe Biden decided to sabotage the Nord Stream pipes after more than nine months of secret discussions with his national security team.