Jeremy Scahill at the Intercept has a fascinating article today about a Swedish engineer who investigated the Nord Stream pipeline explosion:
Andersson is not a professional investigator or a journalist, and his voyage was not sponsored by a government. By training, he is an engineer with a master’s degree in engineering physics. He had a successful career at Volvo and Boeing and worked on advanced programs used by commercial and military aircraft, including U.S. military aircraft. He had followed the developments of the Nord Stream bombing carefully, but it was not until journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell story alleging that President Joe Biden had personally ordered the destruction of the pipelines that he became obsessed with the mystery. The expedition to the bombing site grew out of that passion. Andersson freely admits that he was motivated by a desire to prove that Hersh’s narrative was correct. What he found was quite different.
[…]
Andersson had never heard of Hersh, but when he saw journalists and commentators he admired on Twitter defending the 85-year-old reporter from the almost immediate deluge of attacks on his credibility by prominent media and political figures, as well as the denials from the White House, his gut instinct was that the right people were attacking Hersh. “I saw he had a lot of respect. I mean, this is a very experienced journalist, and he knows how to deal with sources, to evaluate his sources.” Andersson’s sense was that Hersh’s story was “probably true,” but he was mostly interested in the voluminous details contained in his report.
I think we know who those journalists and commentators were … And people like this fellow are placing their faith in the wrong people.
Though it was not his aim, Andersson’s research directly challenges Hersh’s details, as well as the narrative preferred by analysts who believe Russia carried out the bombing. In short, his findings bolster the case that Ukraine — or private actors — could be responsible for the attack. As for his confirmation bias in favor of Hersh’s narrative, the expedition changed his mind. “It’s not the main hypothesis anymore in my mind. In my main story, they were fairly primitive divers going in with a big slab of explosives. They dug in next to the pipelines and they placed them. There were four separate dives, but there was simplified logistics. It could have been a small boat, and they made a big mistake, and they ended up putting one bomb on the wrong pipe. That’s the story that is in my mind.”
He still thinks the US might have been in on it (there are reports that the US Intelligence agencies had knowledge that Ukraine was planning such an attack in advance) but he doesn’t buy that it was a highly professional military operation. If anything it appears that is was slapdash and amateurish.
Read the whole thing if you’re into the details. It’s pretty weedy. But the upshot is that the widely held belief in certain circles that the US Military did it isn’t backed by the facts. But certain people ran with it anyway because it fits a certain pro-Russia Anti-Ukraine narrative. This guy went to a lot of trouble to prove them right and came up empty.