“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

All: Whether he is right or not or one likes him or not, Hersh reporting on this counts as significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), so I've turned off the flags on this submission.

If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.

If anyone else had written this, would it be significant?

Wouldn't it just be written off as a conspiracy theory that provides little to no evidence for its claims?

If the only thing that gets this on HN is Seymour Hersh's reputation (which has lately become somewhat questionable) then you might want to reconsider. Plus, the quality of the comments has not been very good so far.

No, I don't think it would be. Hersh is inevitably part of the story because of his historical significance and the network of government sources that he's cultivated for decades. It doesn't follow that his claims are true (even if he's accurately reporting, his sources must have their own agendas). That's why I added the question mark to the title above. The story being on HN doesn't imply anything about that—only that it's interesting.

Btw, I haven't gone back and looked at the history but I'd be willing to bet that the same things were said about Hersh's reputation from the beginning. That's standard fare for counterargument.

p.s. It's astonishing how narrow the space is for someone to say they don't know the truth about X but it's interesting. If X has any charge at all, you get pounced on by people who feel sure that they do know what the truth is. But if you think about it, it's a precondition for curiosity not to already know (or feel one knows) the answer—and this is a site for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). So I don't feel that this is particularly a borderline call from a moderation point of view.

a) I don't understand the relevance at all to Hacker News. There are plenty of interesting things going on in the tech world that aren't making the front page.

b) There is a lack of evidence in the article. I can claim that you destroyed the pipeline and it would be equally as valid at this point.

c) His previous reputation is important but history is littered with examples of people making mistakes and relying on their own hubris. That is why we demand evidence.

> I can claim that you destroyed the pipeline and it would be equally as valid at this point.

No, it wouldn't. The narrative provided by Hersh's source, whether it's true or not, explains many of the facts that demand an explanation. It provides plausible answers to the questions "How were the explosives placed", "How were the explosives triggered" and "how weren't they detected". Not necessarily true ones! But plausible ones that are internally consistent, and don't in themselves raise huge new questions.

If you want to be in the running, that's what you need to supply too.

This is not a defense of Hersh, it's a defense of his article. You should consider the claims in an article for their internal consistency, and consistency with public evidence, even if you don't trust the source.

This article is remarkable for how different it is from Hersh's Syrian gas claims. There, to the degree Hersh has answers at all to the similar questions how were the chemical weapons acquired, how were they placed and how were they triggered, they just raise impossibly hard questions (like "how was this coordinated", "how did all the participants go along with it" and "how did Russia and the Syrian government utterly fail to expose and document any of it convincingly")

>This article is remarkable for how different it is from Hersh's Syrian gas claims.

It really isn't:

>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 …

>… Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

>… Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City."

That's exactly the sorts of things from his other recent articles that people who know how things actually work would immediately know is BS.