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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

(seymourhersh.substack.com)
688 points hunglee2 | 3 comments | 08 Feb 23 12:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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mmastrac ◴[08 Feb 23 19:03 UTC] No.34713024[source]▶
It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing.

The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story.

What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".

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1. klrtwm ◴[09 Feb 23 00:26 UTC] No.34717883[source]▶
Initially I had the same reaction. After reading the piece slowly again my impression is:

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is very carefully and lucidly written, with so many details, each of which can be refuted. How does he know about all the meetings between the CIA, Sullivan, etc. Why does no one refute individual facts?

I think he did have a source who provided all this. If the source lied, tough. Investigative journalism is always a gamble. If mainstream media worked, they'd try to press the government on the myriads of claims presented in Hersh's article. Perhaps this would lead somewhere. But the days when mainstream opposed the U.S. government like in the case of Abu Ghraib are over.

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2. graedus ◴[09 Feb 23 00:29 UTC] No.34717913[source]▶
Yes, he refers to his source throughout the piece. I believe it's just one anonymous source for the entire thing though.
3. _djo_ ◴[09 Feb 23 12:03 UTC] No.34722710[source]▶
> If the source lied, tough. Investigative journalism is always a gamble.

That's not how it works. The onus is on the journalist and the editors to ensure that any source they're relying on is credible, in a position to know what they're claiming, and not playing you. That's why most will insist on dual-sourcing any particularly sensational claims unless they really trust the source.

In the past journalists have been fired for relying on non-credible sources, most recently James LaPorta, so this is no small thing.

If Sy Hersh is not verifying anything about the source he's relying on, he's just being a transcriber not a journalist.