{"id":266041,"date":"2023-03-08T08:29:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T08:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=266041"},"modified":"2023-03-09T07:16:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T07:16:12","slug":"nord-stream-attack-white-house-counters-hershs-reputation-with-weak-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=266041","title":{"rendered":"Nord Stream Attack &#8211; White House Counters Hersh&#8217;s Reputation With Weak &#8216;Intelligence&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Moon of Alabama &#8212; March 7, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>On September 28 2022, a day after the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, I published the available open source evidence which strongly suggested that the U.S. had done it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/2022\/09\/whodunnit-facts-related-to-the-sabotage-attack-on-the-nord-stream-pipelines.html\">Whodunnit? &#8211; Facts Related to The Sabotage Attack On The Nord Stream Pipelines<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On February 8 the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published a remarkable similar tale of the story based on insider witnesses.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/2023\/02\/hersh-how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream-pipeline.html\">Hersh: &#8220;How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I then suggested some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/2023\/02\/some-small-corrections-to-seymour-hershs-new-nord-stream-revelations.html\">minor corrections<\/a> to Hersh&#8217;s version of the story.<\/p>\n<p>While Hersh&#8217;s story found an echo in Europe&#8217;s newspapers, U.S. mainstream media did all they could <a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/home\/major-us-outlets-found-hershs-nord-strom-scoop-too-hot-to-handle\/\">to avoid it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scores of hits from publications across the globe pop up from an internet search for veteran investigative reporter <a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/home\/politico-uses-anonymous-sources-to-attack-hersh-for-using-anonymous-sources\/\">Seymour Hersh<\/a>\u2019s claim that the US destroyed Russia\u2019s Nord Stream gas pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>But what is most striking about the page after page of results from <strong>Google<\/strong>, <strong>Bing<\/strong> and <strong>DuckDuckGo<\/strong> in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh\u2019s story isn\u2019t what is there, but what is not to be found:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">\u00a0The <strong>Times<\/strong> of London (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-claims-investigative-journalist-seymour-hersh-s730dnnfz\">2\/8\/23<\/a>) reported Hersh\u2019s story hours after he posted it on his <strong>Substack<\/strong> account, but nothing in the <strong>New York Times<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Britain\u2019s <strong>Reuters News Agency<\/strong> moved at least ten stories (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/white-house-says-blog-post-nord-stream-explosion-is-utterly-false-2023-02-08\/\">2\/8\/23<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/prize-winning-reporter-seymour-hersh-no-stranger-controversy-2023-02-09\/\"> 2\/9\/23<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/russia-says-nato-should-hold-emergency-summit-over-nord-stream-blasts-2023-02-12\/\"> 2\/12\/2<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/russia-says-us-should-prove-it-did-not-destroy-nord-stream-2023-02-16\/\"> 2\/15\/23<\/a>, among others), the <strong>Associated Press<\/strong> not one.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Not a word broadcast by the major US broadcast networks<strong>\u2014NBC<\/strong>, <strong>ABC<\/strong>, <strong>CBS<\/strong>\u2014or the publicly funded broadcasters <strong>PBS <\/strong>and <strong>NPR<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">No news stories on the nation\u2019s major cable outlets, <strong>CNN<\/strong>, <strong>MSNBC<\/strong> and <strong>Fox News<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is there justification for such self-censorship? True, Hersh\u2019s story is based on a single anonymous source. But <a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/home\/journalisms-dark-matter\/\">anonymous sources<\/a> are a staple of mainstream reporting on the US government, used by all major outlets. Further, countless stories of lesser national and international import have been published with the caveat that the facts reported have not been independently verified.<\/p>\n<p>Doubts about Hersh\u2019s story aside, by every journalistic standard, the extensive international coverage given the story, as well as the adamant White House and Pentagon denials, should have made it big news in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>More important, if Hersh got it wrong, his story needs to be knocked down. Silence is not acceptable journalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some papers later mentioned the Hersh story but only in other context. Still the pressure on the U.S. government and media to react to the story continued to build.<\/p>\n<p>The results came today, a full month after the Hersh story, with <em>New York Times<\/em> publishing another of the usual &#8216;intelligence&#8217; fairytales:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/03\/07\/us\/politics\/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-ukraine.html\">Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say<\/a><br \/>\n<em>New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>All fine &#8211; except that there is no &#8216;intelligence&#8217;. There are only claims by anonymous &#8216;officials&#8217; to <em>NYT<\/em> reporters that some vague &#8216;intelligence&#8217; may exist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"extended\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/2023\/03\/nord-stream-attack-white-house-counters-hershs-reputation-with-weak-intelligence-.html#more\">Cont. reading: <i>Nord Stream Attack &#8211; White House Counters Hersh&#8217;s Reputation With Weak &#8216;Intelligence&#8217; <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is most striking about the page after page of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh\u2019s story isn\u2019t what is there, but what is not to be found<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266044,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266041\/revisions\/266044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}