Influential Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs says that there is substantial evidence and motive that the U.S. was behind the Nord Stream pipeline terrorism attacks during a UN Security Council meeting and is now calling for a UN-led investigation to determine who was behind the blasts.
“The White House has described Hirsch’s account as completely and utterly false, unquote. But did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account and did not offer any alternative explanation. Senior US officials made statements before and after the Nordstrom destruction that showed the US animus towards the pipelines,” said Sachs during the UN Security Council meeting.
In a separate interview with Chinese media, he also said that Seymour Hersh’s report that the Biden administration planned and ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines is “credible”
“I think the Hersh article is very credible, and while it has been rejected by the U.S. and other governments, they haven’t provided any single detail disputing the article. It’s just been a flat rejection saying this is a fantasy, this is false,” said Sachs.
Sachs is no fringe figure. He is the director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and belongs to the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He also holds the position of University Professor, which is Columbia’s highest academic rank.
During the UN Security Council meeting, Sachs also pointed out that U.S. officials made a number of remarks that reveal the Biden administration’s motive and desire to “end” the pipelines.
“On January 27, 2022, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tweeted, ‘If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nordstrom 2 will not move forward.’ On February 7th, President Biden said, ‘If Russia invades again, then there will be no longer Nordstrom 2. We will bring an end to it.'”
Sachs continued by saying that due to the difficulty of Russia being able to plant the explosives in NATO waters, it means the U.S. or some other Western actors working with the knowledge of the U.S., are really the only suspects that could have possibly carried out the attack.
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“Ukraine lacks the necessary technologies as well as access to the Baltic Sea. A recent report by the
Washington Post revealed that the intelligence agencies of the NATO countries have privately
concluded that there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia carried out this action. This also
comports with the fact that Russia had no obvious motive to carry out this act of terrorism on its
own critical infrastructure. Indeed, Russia is likely to bear considerable expenses to repair the
pipelines.”
Sachs also elaborated in his interview with CCTV that either the U.S. conducted the attack or another state actor with the U.S.’s cooperation.
“To my mind, that leaves the United States, the UK, as I say, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Poland, perhaps as those who carried it out. I can assure you that if any of the others carried it out, they did it with the knowledge and cooperation of the United States,” said Sachs.
Sachs made headlines earlier last year when he spoke with Bloomberg News, saying that the U.S. was most likely the state actor that blew up the German-Russian pipeline in the Baltic Sea before he was cut off by Bloomberg hosts. A video of the exchange has garnered over 4.3 million views in one post on Twitter.
The professor says that no matter what, it is clear that the attack was conducted by a state actor, and among states, there are very few with the means to pull off the attack.
“The Nordstrom 2 pipelines, some 1,200 kilometers in length, contain around 200,000 pipes. The
pipelines sit on the sea floor. Destroying a pipeline of heavy rolled steel encased in concrete at depths of 70 to 90 meters requires a highly advanced technology for transportation of the explosives, diving to install the explosives and detonation,” said Sachs. “To do so undetected in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden adds greatly to the complexity of the operation. As a number of senior officials have publicly confirmed, an action of this sort must have been carried out by a state-level actor.”
According to Sachs, given the attack occurred in NATO waters, whichever state actor carried out the attack would have to be able to operate freely in NATO waters, which are heavily monitored. In fact, this makes it even less likely it was Russia and more likely it was a NATO state, as NATO ships and operators in the area would less likely be caught and flagged by sophisticated surveillance equipment operating in the area.
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Hersh’s report was first published on Feb. 8, where he wrote that U.S. Navy divers, under direction from the CIA, planted C4 explosives targeting the pipes in June 2022. The divers used the widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22 as cover for their operation. After the explosives were planted, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane on Sept 26 dropped a sonar buoy that sent a signal to detonate the C-4 three months later.
Sachs said during the UN meeting that the UN must also investigate instead of just NATO countries.
“I hope that the United States together with all other security council members will condemn this act of international terrorism and join together in an urgent UN Security Council-led investigation of this international crime in order to determine the truth. The truth is not yet known by the world, but it is knowable. More than ever, the world depends on the UN Security Council to do its work to stop the escalation to a new world war,” said Sachs.
As Remix News has previously reported, Western powers, including Germany’s left-wing government, have substantial motive to keep any potential Western role in the explosion secret. Most likely, news of the U.S. being behind the explosion would rock the NATO alliance and fuel the rise of parties like Altenative for Germany (AfD) and other populist parties across Europe.
“As the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims to have learned from a source involved in the operational planning, the United States of America is said to have planned the demolition of Nord Stream and carried it out jointly with Norway,” wrote the co-chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla, earlier this month.
“The Pulitzer Prize winner’s suspicions must be investigated. Has NATO’s leading power carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters? Then one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The consequence would be the withdrawal of all U.S. troops,” he wrote.
