White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the claim that the United States played a role in the explosions along the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines is a “completely false story.”
Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and former New Yorker staff writer, released information in a Substack post on Feb. 8 claiming that the Nord Stream pipeline bursts were carried out by U.S. Navy divers disguised as a NATO military exercise.
WHITE HOUSE DENIES REPORT THAT US BLEW UP NORD STREAM PIPELINES
However, several White House staffers, including Kirby, have denied the claims.
“It is a completely false story; there is no truth to it, Shannon,” Kirby said to Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. “Not a shred of it; it is not true. The United States, and no proxies from the United States, had anything to do with that. Nothing.”
Hersh wrote that the Navy divers placed remotely triggered explosives three months prior to the pipeline bursts in September that caused extensive damage to Nord Stream 1, the main gas link between Russia and the European Union. Construction on Nord Stream 2 was completed in late 2021, but it was never brought online.
Speculation about the U.S.’s involvement began to rise after clips of President Joe Biden’s comments from February 2022 regarding the pipeline began reentering the public sphere, where he hinted that the Nord Stream pipelines would be shut down.
“There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” Biden said, later adding, “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”
When asked if Congress would be informed if an operation like the one Hersh claims occurred, Kirby said on Sunday that the National Security Council continues to inform Congress “appropriately” on both classified and unclassified situations.
“I can tell you, now, regardless of the notification process, there was no U.S. involvement in this. None. Zero. It’s completely false,” Kirby said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Swedish, Danish, and German officials are conducting their own investigations into the explosions. After Hersh’s report was released, Russia called on the U.S. to prove it was not involved, calling it an act of “international terrorism.”
“We qualify the incident as an act of international terrorism that requires a comprehensive and independent investigation,” Igor Girenko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy to the U.S., previously said in a statement.
