The CIA fed The New York Times a story claiming "a pro-Ukrainian group" destroyed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in September in order to cover for President Joe Biden "lying" about ordering the attack, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported Wednesday.
"Two weeks ago," Hersh wrote, "after a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington, U.S. and German intelligence agencies attempted to add to the [media] blackout" from Hersh's original Nord Stream report "by feeding The New York Times and the German weekly Die Zeit false cover stories to counter the report that Biden and U.S. operatives were responsible for the pipelines' destruction."
Hersh reported in February that the Biden administration began orchestrating a plan as early as December 2021 to attack the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines.
"In early March," Hersh wrote, "President Biden hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington ... I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2. In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was 'to pulse the system' in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines' destruction.
"The agency did its job and, with the help of German intelligence, concocted and planted stories about an ad hoc 'off the books' operation that had led to the destruction of the pipelines," Hersh continued. "The scam led to a March 7 report in The New York Times citing an anonymous American official claiming that '[n]ew intelligence ... suggests' that 'a pro-Ukrainian group' may have been involved in the pipeline's destruction; and an online report the same day in Der Zeit, Germany's most widely read weekly newspaper, stating that German investigative officials had tracked down a chartered luxury sailing yacht that was known to have set off on Sept. 6 from the German port at Rostock past Bornholm island off the coast of Denmark."
In Hersh's original report, he reports that "on Sept. 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight" over the pipelines and dropped a "sonar bouy," which is a kind of advanced radar tech, that triggered the "C4 attached to the pipelines."
Hersh reported that "the information [the Times reporters] received originated with a group of CIA experts in deception and propaganda whose mission was to feed the newspaper a cover story — and to protect a president who made an unwise decision and is now lying about it."