The First NatSec Response To Hersh

Breaking Down The NYTimes Report On The Nord Stream Attack

Today the NY Times published the US Intel community's response to the Sy Hersh story re: the Nord Stream attack. In it, unnamed "officials" speculate that it was carried out by as-yet unidentified Ukrainians perhaps operating "off the books" ... meaning, not directly linked to the Ukrainian government. This conclusion comes from new, unseen intelligence that "suggests" this explanation.

The story cites other seemingly "off the books" attacks on Russian targets to reinforce the validity or, at least, the plausibility of the assertion, such as the car bomb killing of Daria Dugina.

The trio of reporters (Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman) do mention Sy Hersh's story and default to the Biden Administration's dismissal of it, but also do not offer any independent reporting to undermine Hersh's claims. Rather, the tone of the story is, as noted above, one of default and deference to the official line of inquiry.

Of course, a cynic can dismiss this as a predictable response ... one without much meat on the bones, but with just enough gristle to keep mainstream reporters chewing away without ever having to really address or investigate the premise that the attack was not only conducted by the US, but ordered by the President.

Obviously, a skeptic should swallow this with a slab of Himalayan salt because, like Hersh's provocative and ultimately unsatisfying story, it relies on unnamed sources and unseen evidence. But also like Hersh's story, the premise is logical ... it makes sense that Ukrainian partisans would want to cut off a major source of revenue to Russia.

What I question about the Ukrainian partisan theory is capability ... we need to see evidence that they could pull off what sounds to me like a complicated operation and to do so without leaving much of a trace or trail behind them.

One possibility the NY Times story does not propose is that it could've been carried out by Ukrainians with US involvement or with "nod-and-wink" complicity ... you know, plausible deniability, and all that jazz. Or it is quite possible that "unseen Ukrainian partisans acting on their own, but forever unidentified" will become all the plausible deniability mainstream reporters need to sate their hunger to know the truth.

Either way, today's story offers very little in the way of answers ... it does, like Hersh's single-sourced story, lead to another set of questions.

SEE: Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say