North Stream pipelines blown up by the US? The questionable investigation of the reporter legend

Of course, the West is behind the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, as many have always known. And then someone who once had a reputation as a reporter to lose comes along and confirms all the fantasies about the evil US and its vassals.

Secret operation with naval divers on the edge of a NATO exercise, explosives detonated remotely, supposedly helped the Norwegians, Sweden, Denmark and Germany somehow too – reads like a thriller based on the Cold War models: a bit simple, but very exciting.

In any case, what the very prominent journalist Seymour Hersh claims to have investigated is explosive. However, at the age of 85, he has long since turned from a legend of investigative interrogation into a murmuring writer who cannot be believed much anymore. That says nothing at all about the background to the explosion of the pipeline, because we know as little about it as before. Only Hersh’s version has little to say for a few reasons.

The problem with the anonymous “source”

So someone told him something, and that someone doesn’t want their name associated with it. Daily reporter work to make it a viable story.

In other words: check the credibility of the informant, substantiate his claims with further evidence and sources, then only write down what is certain, nothing more.

And the currency that gives value to protagonists who remain anonymous is trust in the journalist. This also applies to documents that are present but cannot be shown.

Hersh cites one person he just seems to believe. From the start, his distrust is not directed at his source, but only at the well-founded, if unproven, suspicion that Russia was behind the blowing of the pipelines.

So, despite numerous people involved, Hersh could only find one who “seems to know quite a bit about what was going on,” as he aptly told Russia’s Tass news agency. Hard to believe.

From investigative journalist to fact negro

But aside from these technical weaknesses and beyond the plausibility of this insane story that would involve so many governments, Hersh has long ceased to be a journalist to inspire confidence.

He draws on the revelations of the past, when he brought to light the massacre of the US army at My Lai in Vietnam in the late 1960s, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. In 2004, he helped expose the torture of US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

These are just a few examples of countless meritorious studies. Ultimately, however, this reputation only worked for those who primarily want to see nothing but lies and conspiracies from the US everywhere. Because Hersh repeatedly delivered explosive things at this point, but had to be refuted many times and great doubts arose about his work.

Most recently, especially with regard to Syria, Hersh claimed in 2017 to have discovered that there had never been a poison gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun. Instead, the regime bombed jihadists with Russian help, and then various chemicals exploded in their basements, so the dictator Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the poison cloud – debunked by several investigations, but with evidence to disprove him, he wanted to don’t hang out with Hersh.

He even portrayed a poison gas attack in Damascus in 2013 as a false flag operation by Turkish-instigated rebels to draw the US into the Syrian war — Hersh ignored the established facts that spoke against it. And as so often: everything is anonymous and extremely selective in its presentation. A pattern seemed to emerge: not to believe in the lying West, but in each of its opponents.

Perhaps most telling is the small anecdote about impressive images of an 11-year-old Syrian child among the rubble, covered in dust – Hersh follows Assad propaganda and wants to see it as rebel propaganda theatre, serving only to portray the regime as exaggerated cheeky. Since the girl appears in so many pictures, worn over and over again by different men year after year, she must be an actress.

Now on

Asked by journalist Steve Bloomfield that this had long since been disproved – videos show the child being passed from one helper to another and then to her father, the photos were all taken after the same devastating attack – Hersh simply replies: “If you look If you take the time to look, you’ll find a plethora of the same allegations I made.”

He doesn’t care about the evidence.

Because it fits so well

That doesn’t bode well for the gaudy story surrounding the Nord Stream pipelines. With the best fact check, which only takes place here in a few approaches, you can’t get rid of it. Anyone who wants to believe Hersh because his conspiracy fantasies are confirmed will take any word for the truth – simply because it fits so nicely.

The social media is already full of them. The denials of the accused governments and ongoing investigations don’t change that, and it goes without saying that the Kremlin is denouncing the allegations as “very serious” and that Russian politicians are calling the US president a “terrorist”.

Nor is it surprising which parties in Germany are now clinging to the allegations and investigations and demanding accountability from the federal government. With his stubborn publication in his own newsletter, which understandably no medium wanted to buy and publish, Hersh set some explosives himself. Out of conviction, of course.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.