Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made waves again Tuesday night as he excoriated the Biden administration and lambasted mainstream media coverage of the Nord Stream bombing, the Russiagate story, and the Democrat Party’s love of war at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Media reports said:
In a wide-ranging discussion, journalist Seymour Hersh doubled down on his explosive findings that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the Nord Stream pipelines to be blown up last year using C-4 charges previously planted by U.S. Navy divers, took his former employers at the New York Times to task for their uncritical reporting on the issue, and slammed top Biden officials as “lunatics.”
“We’ve got to cut; we’ve got these lunatics,” Hersh told audiences at the storied press center.
While he said he is “sure they’re high IQ,” the journalist noted that “[U.S. Secretary of State] Tony Blinken, [U.S. national security adviser] Jake Sullivan, [Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria] Nuland are just doing insane things.”
As for Biden, there is no doubt the commander-in-chief played a central role in ensuring that the Nord Stream sabotage took place, Hersh told event attendees.
“He did it. He did it,” Hersh reiterated. “I’m telling you, he did it.” And now, the legendary journalist said “the Biden game is to wait it out and never say yes.”
The decision to take out the pipelines was potentially taken due to Biden’s desire to secure reelection, Hersh said. “I think Biden also saw beating up Russia as a ticket. Jack Kennedy is a classic example – presidents always did well politically in wars.”
So in January of 2022, Hersh said, top Biden officials decided to “see if we can find a way to blow those pipelines, and put [the Russians] back in the dark ages.” But many Americans remain in the dark about the situation, he said, due to what he describes as the mainstream media’s dereliction of duty.
“We do not ever get news anymore,” Hersh lamented. “And the newspapers cover what they want” – mainly, “Biden.”
Asked why legacy media continues to ignore the bombshell report on the Biden administration’s responsibility for the Nord Stream bombings, Hersh was succinct: “they do not like what I am writing.”
He took aim at the White House Press Corp in particular. “I have a horror about the White House press corps” because “they are so tied to the beat,” Hersh explained.
It is the “job” of the White House press secretary “to produce pablum. And reduce everything to pablum. And that is not challenged by anybody.”
Media Subservience And Democrats’ Love of War
At the infamous February 2022 joint press conference in which Biden threatened to “bring an end to Nord Stream 2” if Russian forces entered Ukrainian territory, corporate media subservience was on full display, Hersh bemoaned.
When a German reporter pushed back and asked how Biden would “do that, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control,” the U.S. president was undeterred: “I promise you – we will find a way.”
As Hersh explains, the power dynamic on display was highly revealing.
“After that meeting with that unbelievably shoddy, embarrassing meeting with [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, who went home, you know, slunk his way back. I hope they put him at least in the Blair House and, you know, not in a Motel Six somewhere.”
“It was really unbelievable. It was so depressing to see this man coming like a lap dog and having 5 minutes in the sun.”
As a veteran reporter who cut his teeth covering the U.S. war in Vietnam, Hersh expressed surprise at the surge in militarism among Democrats in recent years.
“Ironically, in the Vietnam War, it was always the Democrats and a few moderate Republicans actually were the leaders,” he said.
“Now the critics are reversed. The Democrats are dead on this one. They want this war and they want to push [war] with China. And we do have a considerable body of Republicans who are against it, but they are not the majority.”
“It is a very strange position,” Hersh added. “I always thought the Democratic Party was more anti-war, but they are into this one big time.”
Russiagate, Twitter Files And U.S. Desperation
The Democrat-Republican switch on war matters can partially be traced back to the Russiagate hoax, which took hold in the imaginations of huge numbers of Democrats in 2017. That is when the Clinton campaign attempted to pin the blame for her surprise loss to former President Donald Trump on a supposed Russian influence campaign.
There was just one problem: the influence campaign in question never happened, as demonstrated by numerous reports debunking the conspiracy theory. But despite knowing it was not true, high-ranking political authorities continued to run with the narrative for years.
Yet, as revealed by American journalists like Matt Taibbi in a series of exposés that have become known as the Twitter Files, FBI officials continued to use the specter of Russian election interference to demand the censorship of private Americans for years afterwards.
“The basic theory is the media did realize the incredible power they had to manipulate on social media,” Hersh explained.
And now the Twitter Files have revealed exactly “what the government would [do], in its desperation to prove that Russia was behind the 2016 election,” Hersh said — and it is “not pleasant.”
“I have friends that I have trusted for 40 years,” Hersh said, and “there is not a shred of real intelligence” that Russia was behind Trump’s election. “It is really a mess. That story is a mess.”
Caught In The Crosshairs
But the course charted by American elites in the aftermath of Trump’s election was in many ways predictable, according to the journalist, who went on to state it is no surprise the U.S. would take any opportunity to go after another one of their long-term targets:
“I mean, we are big haters. We always, we learned to hate in World War Two. And we have had you know, everybody is on our hit list – Saddam, Bashar Assad.”
Though slain former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were erstwhile U.S. partners, both found themselves in the crosshairs of American foreign policy in the aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, when the U.S. began its rush to war with a number of Middle Eastern nations.
Since then, the American “hit list” has come to include a number of other foreign leaders as well, Hersh noted.
“Certainly all the people in Iran on our hitlist, we always have a big hit list. And of course, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is way up there.”
“[Putin] is very smart. And he knows his facts. And he spits them out and he knows certain things,” Hersh continued, later touching on the Black Sea Grain Initiative that was negotiated by Turkish counterparts and hailed as a win for those in the developing world facing rising hunger.
“He allowed” grain vessels to depart from the Black Sea “because he was promised that 30% of them would carry grain to the poor in the world,” Hersh explained, before going on to offer a prediction for how the conflict may conclude.
But, as Putin predicted at the time, little of the grain ultimately ended up in the neediest nations, and the deal’s fate is currently up in the air.
“At a certain point, [Putin] is going to want a suzerainty, is the word I am hearing.”
“It is the word in the [intelligence] community, is [it is] going to be suzerainty,” Hersh claimed, continuing: “the big deal is you cut a deal with the government and the deal is demilitarize.”
And for the U.S., Hersh predicted, “it’s going to be a no-go.”
Potential U.S. Plan B in Ukraine, Seymour Hersh Warns
Another media report said:
The U.S. could get directly involved in the Ukraine conflict if it sees that Kiev’s forces are on the back foot, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh suggested on Tuesday.
Speaking at an event in Washington, DC hosted by the Committee for the Republic, a non-profit organization, Hersh noted that the U.S. “did stupid things” during the Vietnam War, and suggested that Washington could “start doing something else” in the Ukraine conflict.
“I do not know what happens if it goes bad for Ukraine, you have all this manpower,” he said, pointing out that the U.S. has dispatched units of its 82nd and 101st elite airborne divisions close to the Ukrainian border, while “a lot of weapons and arms are coming” to Europe.
“I am told the game is going to be: this is NATO, we are supporting NATO in offensive operations against the Russians, which is not going to fool the world. It is us fighting Russia,” Hersh stressed, without disclosing his sources.
According to Hersh, “the big deal” is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to come to an agreement with the Ukrainian government. “The deal is demilitarize, and it is going to be a no-go for us,” the journalist said, adding that the Russian leader “has not put in his main force yet” in the conflict.
Summing up the Ukraine conflict, Hersh argued that “we just may be kidding ourselves what is going on there and what the results are going to be.”
He recalled the battle of Stalingrad during WWII, when Soviet troops suffered heavy losses but still emerged victorious. “Come on. Do we really want to mix up with those guys? I do not think so,” the journalist added.
In February, Hersh released a bombshell report on last September’s Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipeline blasts, accusing Washington of orchestrating the attack. The White House denied responsibility. Last week, several Western media outlets claimed the culprits may have been linked to Ukraine. Moscow dismissed the reports as “a coordinated media hoax campaign.”
