It has been 10 days since journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the Biden administration carried out an act of international terrorism directed against Europe’s civilian energy infrastructure. The Nord Stream pipeline was built to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany. Hersh wrote that US Navy divers planted the explosives that detonated the pipeline on September 26, 2022.

Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize journalist, who played a central role in some of the most important exposures of criminal activities by the United States government, including domestic spying, the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

But his revelation, published on Substack, that the United States directly destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines is perhaps his most significant report to date.

It is all the more telling that, to an extent greater than any of his previous stories, Hersh’s report has received effectively no coverage in the major US print and broadcast media.

Hersh’s original report included a response quote by Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, who declared, “This is false and complete fiction.”

These blanket declarations have been repeated multiple times by the White House, combined with ad hominem accusations against Hersh accusing him of making false assertions, which are never specified, in the past.

Beyond these blanket denials, the US government has not responded in any substantive way. Despite the multiple, concrete details reported in Hersh’s article, the Biden administration did not attempt to disprove a single one.

The Biden administration’s silence has been aided by the US media, which has deliberately suppressed any discussion of the story. This silence, more than anything else, serves as a confirmation of the fundamental correctness of Hersh’s assertion.

The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have not carried a single article devoted to the story.

The closest thing to a serious response was an article that appeared in Snopes “debunking” Hersh’s article, under the title “Claim That US Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines Relies on Anonymous Source.”

The central argument of the Snopes piece is that the article cannot be believed, because Hersh bases his reporting on the statements of a single anonymous source. The problem, however, is that the single most incriminating piece of evidence pointing to US complicity in blowing up the pipelines is the US government itself.

On February 7, ahead of the invasion, US President Joe Biden declared publicly, “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

In congressional testimony in January, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said, “I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

(Tellingly, the Snopes article does not cite Nuland’s testimony.)

Such statements are the equivalent of the quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

The statements by Biden and Nuland constitute probable cause to suspect the United States for having destroyed the pipelines. Not only did the US have a motive to destroy the pipelines—to cement European dependence on US natural gas—but US officials declared that they are “gratified” that someone brought their wishes into effect.

What Hersh did, however, was to explain the means by which the US actualized the motives and threats expressed by Biden and Nuland. In doing so, Hersh upended the central lie peddled by the media and Biden administration about the war in Ukraine.

According to the official narrative, the conflict that erupted in February 2022 was a “war of choice” by Vladimir Putin and was “unprovoked” by NATO. The United States and its allies have responded, according to this account, to the unspeakable evils perpetrated by the Russian government.

Hersh explained, however, that the United States began planning its attack on the Nord Stream pipelines months before the outbreak of the war. It did so in pursuit of a definitive policy targeting not just Russia but also its European allies. Explaining what would happen if the Nord Stream pipeline came online, Hersh wrote, “Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America.”

In other words, the US worked to provoke and instigate the war in Ukraine and undermine any diplomatic resolution, because it sought to benefit from the eruption of the war.

If the US media now joins the Biden administration’s silence on the Nord Stream bombings, it is because they too have been exposed by Hersh’s revelations.

For nearly a year, they have endlessly promoted the claim of the “unprovoked war,” aiming to drown out the most critical question: What are the US aims in the war?

Any examination of this question, in turn, would show that tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have lost their lives in a war provoked and instigated by the United States.

This is why the US media is silent on Hersh’s revelations.