The source article: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline, by Seymour Hersh.
This “reporting” seems to rely on a single source. And directly-published to Substack, I don’t think there is even an editor to double-check that single source.
My personal conclusion: “Russian Propaganda Operation”
Edit:
White House rejects report that US was behind Nord Stream sabotage
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson described the Hersh report, published on his page on the Substack web service, as "complete fiction."
A Central Intelligence Agency spokesperson echoed the White House denial, calling the report "completely and utterly false."
Edit 2:
...in short, the publicly available data does not corroborate Hersh's reporting. I should have additional vessel tracking data soon, and if that shows otherwise I'll update here
(Back to the original source article ...)
I’m just going to quote what I think are the most relevant parts (bolding mine).
Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
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What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President.
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“This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”
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Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”
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“It was like putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it,” the source said.
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According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
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Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress.
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The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”
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“He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.
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“They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said.
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“The best divers with deep diving qualifications are a tight community, and only the very best are recruited for the operation and told to be prepared to be summoned to the CIA in Washington,” the source said.
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“What they were told and what they knew were purposely different,” the source told me.
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“The clock was ticking, and we were nearing mission accomplished,” the source said.
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The source had a much more streetwise view of Biden’s decision to sabotage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as winter approached.