White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion 'utterly false' | Hacker News Reader

White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion 'utterly false'

reuters.com

21 pointshammock46 comments

The blog post was submitted earlier today but flagged to death for some reason, even though the White House deemed it important enough to respond to themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305

> My Lai was first revealed to the American public on November 13, 1969—almost two years after the incident—when Hersh published a story through the Dispatch News Service. The article threatened to undermine the U.S. war effort and severely damage the Nixon presidency. Inside the White House, officials privately discussed how to contain the scandal. On November 21, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger emphasized that the White House needed to develop a "game plan", to establish a "press policy", and maintain a "unified line" in its public response to the incident. The White House established a "My Lai Task Force" whose mission was to "figure out how best to control the problem", to make sure that administration officials "all don't go in different directions" when discussing the incident, and to "engage in dirty tricks". These included discrediting key witnesses and questioning Hersh's motives for releasing the story. What soon followed was a public relations offensive by the administration designed to shape how My Lai would be portrayed in the press and understood among the American public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre

The problem is that this author now writes these conspiracy theory pieces with ZERO evidence.

The Lai massacre was well documented - Hersh was a photographer.

These recent conspiracy theory articles he publishes have ZERO evidence. This is just the most recent of many.

That's true. I don't think we will find out truth about this any soon, while all the conspiracy theories and speculations flying around.

Given your learning about this, who do you think is most possible author of this explosion?

I think speculation with literally no evidence is pointless at best, and actively harmful at worst, so we should really hold off on making guesses based on effectively nothing.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Hersh also referred to some of my friends as a “JSOC assassination squad” controlled by Cheney.

In light of him making these claims, I’m gonna believe the White House.

FYI - there absolutely was an approved "Disposition Matrix" which included assassination targets, some of which (like Anwar Al-Awlaqi) were American citizens.[1]

That's not a conspiracy theory.

[1] archive - https://archive.is/mfa9W | original - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i...

It was flagged for being misleading and conspiratorial. There's literally zero evidence in the article. Also, the White House did not deem it "important", it deemed it to be circulating widely across social media despite factual inaccuracies and zero evidence.

Seymour Hersh is notorious for his anti-American conspiracy theories. He leverages his Pulitzer Prize from the Vietnam War (which he mentions at every turn) to present these ridiculous theories with literally zero evidence.

He's promised evidence "coming soon" on a number of occasions to prove his conspiracy theories, and nothing ever comes.

Isn't this the same Seymour Hersh who we have to thank for exposing the torture at Abu Ghraib and the secret post-9/11 US assassination program?

Your take seems disingenuous.

So he's like the Adam Schiff of journalists?

Because Hacker News isn't a world politics website unless those topics intersect with technology. If I want general news about the war in Ukraine and related geopolitics, I'll go read the Times or the Post.

Which is also, by the way, why I'm flagging this.

Boo.

"Nothing is true until it has officially been denied."

The response talking points on this apparently included the words "serial fabulist," perhaps for the tracking value of such a rarely used phrase. Where this is being discussed those two words are being used with obtrusive frequency.

Seymour Hersh is not credible anymore. This is all based on a single anonymous source, that hasn't been supported by any other sources or evidence. He is known to have just made stuff up to suit, which is probably why the NY Times and other papers passed on this and he had to put it on a new substack.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...

Hersh claims that bin Laden's compound was controlled by Pakistani intelligence always seemed rather plausible to me given that Abottabad was an HQ for them.

What has Seymour written that you think been comprehensively disproven?

I grant you it's long, but it's not just about bin Laden. Give that article a read to start. Then ask yourself why you think assertions from this person should now be believed first, disproven later, rather than corroborated and proven first like journalism is supposed to be done.

I glanced over it. It tries to do the usual muckraking thing that was also tried on him over my lai by Nixon's lot.

I might be missing some specific, damning piece of evidence but I didn't see it. If you do see it, please draw my attention to it.

There are lots of conspiracy theories that haven't been disproved.

More importantly, none of Hersh's conspiracy theories have EVER been proven real.

He won a Journalism Prize literally 50 years ago for some photos that he took, and he leverages that fame to push anti-US conspiracy theories with zero evidence.

Abu Ghraib was called a tapestry of nonsense by the Pentagon when he broke it. It is, as you say, a conspiracy theory that hasn't been disproven.

There is reasons why non-Russia entities would sabotage it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabo...

My 12 year account was permabanned from r/news with no warning or recourse for speculating on this possibility when it happened.

Sabotage by Russia doesn't make sense from almost any angle you look at it. That doesn't necessarily mean the US government did it, but it's done far worse in the past.

Shortly before the explosions Russia had shut down Nordstream1 for “maintenance”. This was believed at the time to be an attempt to squeeze gas supplies in Europe in retaliation for sanctions and helping Ukraine. By September 2022 Nordsteam1 was operating at 20%. I think part of the issue for Russia is that contracts specified payment in euros but Russia was blocked out of SWIFT. This effectively meant Russia wasn’t paid for gas it delivered. If the pipes were inoperative then the contracts were void. Germany had already decertified Nordstream2 by this time.

I think it is unreasonable to believe that the U.S. attacked the energy sources of NATO allies as they scrambled to get enough energy before the onset of winter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/22/european-gas-prices-surge-as...

Shutting them down for maintenance means you have leverage because you can return the flow. Irreparably destroying the pipelines means you destroy the leverage Russia might have been able to use over Germany and others.

> I think it is unreasonable to believe that the U.S. attacked the energy sources of NATO allies as they scrambled to get enough energy before the onset of winter.

Why? Physically cutting off the flow of gas from Russia has been a hug boon to US LNG business. It's had the effect of decreasing their energy reliance on Russia and increasing their reliance on the US. That's not necessarily a bad thing in the long run, as this war has demonstrated.

It also gives European elites an out to avoid pressure from their common folk to make a deal with Russia as things get cold. Harder to do that when they can theoretically just flip a switch to return the gas flow and resolve the pain.

The part you are missing is that Russia has many other pipelines to send oil/gas to Europe. This was only one.

As stated it got Russia out of the Nordsteam1 contract without any legal repercussions. What you say is plausible. It’s also plausible Russia wanted this. I don’t know the truth of the matter. I don’t believe the U.S. decided that adding more energy uncertainty was a good thing just before the onset of winter. That doesn’t make any political sense to me and it’s not like Biden could reasonably expect that doing this could boost his political power or prospects.

> I think it is unreasonable to believe that the U.S. attacked the energy sources of NATO allies as they scrambled to get enough energy before the onset of winter.

You haven't read enough history of mankind, I think.

It’s clearly reasonable to believe that a major power would attack energy supplies against an adversary. It is not reasonable to believe that just before winter a major power attacks the energy supplies that its essential allies need. Especially when that major power desires a unified political and military response to said adversary. It defies common sense and logic to think the U.S. did this. Of course, there are lots of examples of countries doing things that defy common sense and logic.

On the contrary, it's exactly what said "major power" would do and has done in the past.

The United States attacked the energy supplies of an ally? When was this? It doesn’t seem reasonable that Biden faced with criticism at home for higher energy prices would exacerbate that problem by attacking the gas supplies of NATO allies. He had nothing to gain from doing this. The explosions didn’t bolster his political standing at home or increase his political capital.

It would be very counter to the suggested goals of the US for it to demolish just 3 of the 4 pipelines. Leaving one of the brand new, larger pipelines untouched. A pipeline that had just been completed but the activation of which had been put on hold due to the start of the war. Only so that Russia could turn around after the event and offer to jointly activate this new pipeline with Germany. An act that had Germany capitulated would be a major political win for Russia, and blow to the suggested US goals.

Perhaps the explosives misfired. Or they're still there waiting to be triggered.

It makes no sense for Russia to destroy infrastructure that delivers it's own products. It makes every sense for US to cripple Russian gas supply to Europe in the future, to be replaced by abundant US fracking gas. US has long bemoaned Europe's 'dependence' on Russian gas (or maybe 'independence' from US-controlled oil/gas). Now the US holds the leash again.

This is potentially the best counter argument I've seen so far. Do you have a source with stats that suggest that certifying the new line faster would have increased the total flow potential more than the other 3 combined?

Right, Russia already controlled the pipeline, by controlling the supply of gas, why destroy it?

IMHO it was a clear signal from the US to Europe that there's a new Daddy when it comes to gas; Russian gas is no longer available, and is never coming back, you buy our fracking gas from now on.

If you can’t trust the White House, who /can/ you trust?

But in all seriousness, our political system is thoroughly corrupt and the only reality one can hope to extract from any public statements out of DC is an idea of what the current agenda is.

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