“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

The problem is they lie all day, every day, even about trivial stuff that’s easily verified. This looks more like an admission of guilt.

Is there anything they could say or do, without providing undeniable evidence someone else did it that you would believe? If "we didn't do it" reads as "we did it", what do you expect them to do, not respond at all? That would be more suspicious to me.

Sounds like they should provide undeniable evidence then!

Even if they had it, they likely couldn’t share it for security reasons.

And of course, proving innocence is effectively impossible without proving someone else did it.

Sure. I'm just curious about who did it and hey if Hersh is providing one narrative, it's better than the lack of answers or even any attempt at an investigatory effort from any party, whether NATO or Russian.

The lack of real concern on all parties about trying to figure out who did it is essentially proof of who did it. You have multiple PMs and FMs saying in the days afterward that "everybody knows" who did it. Who did it? If it was Russia and "everybody knew" then that'd have entered the press.

They could definitely share or leak it to a trusted source without any real security implications.

What if they all did it as some sort of gentleman’s agreement

Then it was Switzerland. Nobody suspects them, everybody was fine with Nord Stream gone but there was no agreement on who gets to blow it up. So Switzerland volunteered. Proof me wrong!

Close. It was not the Swiss proper, but specifically the Papal Swiss Guard acting under the command of the Holy See. Since it is not a nation-state like Switzerland, this adds another additional layer of neutrality and deniability to satisfy all parties involved.

And the Swiss guard is made up entirely of single men with top notch training! Of course it was them!

> The lack of real concern on all parties about trying to figure out who did it is essentially proof of who did it.

Given that Nord Stream AG is (majority owned) by Russia, this would point at Russia since it's remarkably silent. But to me this doesn't make sense since I still don't understand how it benefits Russia. But perhaps it's another FSB plan which went wrong, as many others did in 2022.

No official or well supported narrative does not mean you should jump on whatever narrative is out there or offered. Be open minded, but not so open your brain falls out

I don't subscribe to Hersh's narrative but one cannot say that it does not present some intriguing content and gets the discussion flowing.

Russia would probably be silent if they had proof America did it, because they don't want WW3. And America would probably be silent if they had proof Russia did it, for exactly the same reason. Neither side wants to escalate this into WW3, because then everybody loses.

It's a lot more convenient to explain that you totally would retaliate if only you knew who did it, rather than claiming you knew who did it but you're not going to retaliate anyway because you fear escalation. So everybody plays dumb.

> Russia would probably be silent if they had proof America did it, because they don't want WW3.

That doesn't make sense. Russia can use this as a propaganda tool without having to act on it. And it's not like that Russia didn't accuse USA from blowing it up - they did, just not very forcefully. It's strange, because they could have used it in e.g. Germany to split the society: "bad Americans want you to freeze, they blew up your gas pipelines".

> That doesn't make sense. Russia can use this as a propaganda tool without having to act on it.

To acknowledge such an attack and not respond in kind would cause them to lose face, but responding in kind risks escalation. Ignoring the attack is their safest option.