Historien eller kilden til Hersh holder jo ikke vann i det hele tatt når ting blir ettergått i sømmene…
During his introduction of Norway, Hersh makes a very strange remark about NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg implying that he has worked directly with the US intelligence community since the Vietnam War. Jens Stoltenberg was born March 16th 1959. The US involvement in the Vietnam War ended April 30th 1975, meaning Jens had just turned 16 when Saigon fell to the PAVN troops. I doubt Jens Stoltenberg was a US intelligence asset in his early teens.
Immediately after this Hersh begins to mention some of the details of the diving aspect of the operation. He starts of by mentioning that the divers would deploy off a “a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter”. No Alta-class minesweepers took part in BALTOPS22. One Oksøy-Class mine hunter, the Hinnøy, did take part in the exercises though. The two classes of ship are very similar, though not identical.
While this ship took part in the exercise, its positioning during the time period does not match what would be expected of a ship supporting deep sea divers.
Joe Galvin used open source AIS data to track the Hinnøy during BALTOPS22 and as we can see from the map in his tweet, the movements of the Hinnøy are not consistent with three lengthy dives at the locations of the three seperate blasts.
According to Hersh’s source, at some point the Americans and Norwegians decided to brief senior officials in Denmark and Sweden “in general terms about possible diving activity in the area”. This I do not in anyway understand. Either the same insulated highly secretive operation that must not have any leaks is now bringing further outside actors into the fold or this means that they were just briefed that dives would be taking place. If it was the latter, then why brief them on diving activity when they had supposedly already orchestrated the entire mine clearing part of BALTOPS22 as an excuse for the diving activity.
Hersh later states that the charges would be detonated by a “sonar bouy” (sonobouy) dropped as a “Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight”. Many problems with this, firstly the Norwegian P-8s are operated by the Norwegian Air Force. Secondly, while they have been delivered per the link he used as a source earlier, this link forgets to mention that they won’t enter into active service until later this year. Here I assume that Hersh thought they were in service as they had been delivered and then proceeded to add this detail to his story, without knowing that they were not yet in service. There would be nothing “seemingly routine” about a Norwegian P-8 dropping sonobouys just off the coast of Bornholm.
Open Source ADS-B Exchange information also does not show any Norwegian P-8 activity on September 26th. While it is possible for aircraft to operate without showing up on ADS-B Exchange, it would make little sense in this case as Hersh states it was meant to look like a “seemingly routine flight”. The timeline for this also does not match up, as Hersh states after the P-8 dropped the sonobouy, “A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.” The first explosion was recorded at 02:03 local time, meaning that there was no way for the flight to be on the 26th as he stated while there also being a few hour delay on the explosives.
There was one P-8 Poseidon aircraft in the vicinity of the Bornholm around the time of the explosions. This was a US Navy P-8, not Norwegian Air Force P-8. Again though the timeline does not match what Hersh described. The P-8 passed over the area of the Nord Stream 2 leak almost exactly one hour after explosion took place. The explosion happened at 02:03 CEST, while the P-8 flew over at 03:10 CEST. It would later return an circle the area several hours after the explosions took place.
osv, osv, osv…