Did White House Officials Conspire to Destroy Nord Stream a Year Before the Russian Invasion?

Photo: Swedish Coast Guard

The Global Energy Conference meeting this week in Houston will find the United States has risen the top position of world exporters of LNG (liquefied natural gas), in no small part due to aggressive US tactics such as sanctions against oil and gas producing countries and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.

The thoroughly-documented revelations of world-class investigative reporter Seymour Hersh (September 26, 2022) of how top US officials conspired to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines has profound market implications as well as legal entanglements which could rock the foundations of American government and international legal systems.

The blowing up of Nord Stream was not a retaliatory act for Russia’s invasion, it was a market heist.   The prohibition of, and ultimately the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were contemplated for years as official Washington nervously watched Russia’s rise as an energy provider to Europe.

Low-cost energy provided to Germany, for example, help stabilize the German industrial economy, enhance German-Russian relations, enable Germany to resell gas throughout western Europe and extend Russia’s economic reach west through Europe. But it also became a factor in revisions of the National Security Strategy of the United States which derived from the ill-fated (for Americans, that is) ‘Project for A New American Century,’ an ideological cabal dedicated to doing whatever it takes to destroy economic competition to keep the US the number one geopolitical power.

The end of Nord Stream was both predicted and proudly celebrated by the Biden Administration, carefully linking it in the public mind to a retributive action for the war in Ukraine.

Confession is the ultimate evidence and President Biden practically confessed when he said on February 7, 2022, many months prior to the bombing of Nord Stream:  “If Russia invades… Ukraine…there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it… I promise you we will be able to do it.” 

But when Seymour Hersh’s report surfaced, concerning  top White House officials conspiring to destroy Nord Stream, a year before the Russian invasion, White House denials gushed like Russian gas spewing from ruptured pipelines along the Baltic seabed.  Confession might be good for the soul, but convictive for the Biden Administration.

Presidential National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, chief concoctor and purveyor of Russiagate nonsense, placed the blame for blowing up Russia’s pipelines…..on Russia.  Yes, we are led to believe by America’s top expert on national security that Putin destroyed billions in Russian pipeline infrastructure, cut his country off from a growing market in Europe, and by implication blew up his own economy, just to spite…. whom?

I was chair of a congressional investigative subcommittee.  Every investigation is begun with a theory, then documents are gathered, timelines are established, questions are asked, hearings are conducted, testimony is taken under oath, reports are issued and further legal action can ensue.

My theory, based in part by the comprehensive work of Seymour Hersh, (and my own direct experience with Executive Branch lies which brought us to war against Iraq) is that the Biden Administration took it upon themselves to use a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea as a cover to achieve the goal of destroying Nord Stream pipelines to obtain a powerful hold on the lucrative western Europe energy market, inflicting economic damage to Russia, filling the vacuum created in the lucrative German and associated markets and then rocketing to the top of the global gas industry, a kind of stolen energy valor.

How does one test such a theory, or more importantly definitively confirm or dismiss Hersh’s provocative report? 

Congressional investigations must ensue.  The bombing of Nord Stream, (owned 51% by Russia’s Gazprom and 49% by four European partners)  instantly cut off an energy supply for 83 million Germans, and destroyed a multi-billion dollar infrastructure was clearly an act of war.  Under the United States Constitution, Article One, Section 8, the war power is clearly vested in Congress. 

If any President proceeds to commit an act of war, absent congressional approval, it is an impeachable offense.  Likewise all top officials in an Administration who participate in the planning and execution of such action are similarly vulnerable to impeachment. 

Article Two, Section 4 of the Constitution states impeachment can reach not only the President and Vice President, but also “civil officers of the United States,” easily implicating everyone involved in a Nord Stream conspiracy at the executive level. 

It is vital for the Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, all prominently mentioned both in Hersh’s account, and in news reports both prior to and subsequent to Nord Stream, to be called before Congress to testify about what they  knew and when they knew it.

Let’s suppose for a moment that Congress, for whatever reason is reluctant to peer into the Executive conduct regarding Nord Stream. In that case, this matter clearly comes into the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, Rome Statute, which permits investigations of war crimes if the act occurred in a country which was a signatory to the statute. 

The attack on Nord Stream occurred off the coast of Denmark’s Bornholm Island, within that country’s territorial waters.  Denmark was a signatory to the ICC Rome Statute in 1998, so the matter would properly present to the ICC.

It is noteworthy that neither the UN Security Council, nor the US, nor Germany, nor Sweden, nor Denmark, nor any other country having investigated the Nord Stream pipeline destruction has produced any public report on their findings, further making the case for the necessity of an ICC public investigation.

If the Nord Stream bombing remains unquestioned, US Constitutional checks and balances and international structures of law will be severely eroded. We must get the facts and follow where they lead.