President Biden said as much, and now a year later one of America’s leading investigative reporters, Seymour Hersh, confirms that Washington took out the Nord Stream gas pipelines. On February 7, 2022, Mr. Biden told reporters that if Russia were to invade Ukraine, “we will bring an end to Nord Stream 2.” 

While there had been widespread speculation of Russian sabotage, there was no conclusive evidence of such in connection with the three explosions under the Baltic Sea late last September. In a lengthy exposé he published today, Mr. Hersh describes “how America took out the Nord Stream pipeline.”

The super modern Nord Stream gas pipelines were financed largely by Russian energy giant Gazprom, part of a consortium consisting of mainly German construction and energy companies. In their intact forms, the two undersea pipelines stretched for about 745 miles between the Russian coast near St. Petersburg and northeastern Germany. 

Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelensky, had urged Washington to sanction the pipelines in January 2022 as a way, in his view, to prevent the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from launching an invasion of Ukraine. 

Under questioning from Senator Cruz, the Republican of Texas, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month,  the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, testified that she did not think sanctions on the $11 billion pipelines would have thwarted a Russian invasion. 

In a direct response to Mr. Cruz, Ms. Nuland said, “Senator, like you, I am and I think the administration is very gratified to know that, as you like to say, Nord Stream 2 is now a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

In his detailed account, Mr. Hersh wrote that last June,“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.” Mr. Hersh cited “a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”

Largely because of Mr. Biden’s “indiscretion” of February 7, 2022, Mr. Hersh wrote that “the plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support.” 

According to his source, the director of the CIA, William Burns, “comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”

Partly for reasons of geography, but also for maritime expertise, Washington is said to have worked in close coordination with Norway. The Norwegians helped clear hurdles posed by the Russian navy’s possession of “surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines,” and also are said to have advised on the timing of the attack.

According to Mr. Hersh’s detailed account, “on September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy” into the sea. “The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.”

According to Mr. Hersh, Mr. Biden decided to take out the pipelines just nine months after secret discussions within the National Security Council on how to carry out such an operation with the requisite patina of mystery.

Mr. Hersh, who covered the My Lai Massacre of 1968 and won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1970, is not one to shy away from controversy. While there was no immediate reaction from either the White House (or the Kremlin, for that matter), his reporting could give Ian Fleming a run for his money, and makes for some riveting reading. 

Speaking of money, repairs on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines have been estimated to be at least $500 million. It is not clear who will undertake the repairs or, particularly as Germany weans itself off dependence on Russian energy, whether they will be repaired at all.