[createdapril24]

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends".

I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however. There are specific details that journalists can dig into in the future to find validating hard facts. This may ultimately press a government to cop up to involvement over time, once enough evidence has mounted. That's not to say there aren't possible false leads and inaccuracies in his report.

For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen the author makes the strongest possible case that there's not merit to Hersh's argument - but for me it comes across as Sophomoric.

In terms of who destroyed the pipeline it is clear that the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine had strong motives - and the US and UK capability. It's difficult to read commentary that dismisses these motivations out of hand as outrageous. Or at least, I'm coming in with priors that significantly diverge from these commentators.

[notafraudster]

There's nothing wrong with anonymous sourcing, but if your thing is based on a _single_ anonymous source, AND you've cultivated a reputation for being a credulous crank (see also the sourcing on the alternate universe Bin Laden writing Hersh did), AND you don't have any kind of editorial machine to back up your sourcing, AND the claim is incredibly inflammatory, then probably that's going to present a problem.

[0xDEF]

>For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen

Like what? Give some examples.

Hersh's article is just made up fiction. Hersh has a habit of making up "anonymous sources":

>As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In every case this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances. ... By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government.

[usrusr]

Doesn't have to mean that he makes them up though: when a group of professional "truth fabricators" (or rather "doubt fabricators", they don't really need their stories to be water-proof) has learned that he makes for an effective mouthpiece eager to believe he'll be swarmed with "sources".

[koheripbal]

> anonymous officials. ... this is the standard for journalism on these topics

Unfortunately, it's also standard for planted false stories.

It's notable that Hersh won the Nobel prize for producing photographic evidence of war crimes.

None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true

[nkurz]

> None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true

While not "confirmed true", I think this piece shows that later evidence strongly supported Hersh's anonymous claims in this case:

https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemi...

It's an interesting style of analysis. You'll need to click on "Show more" below each section to see their actual evidence and reasoning.

[bananapub]

it's a useful heuristic of mine to massively distrust anyone who makes silly claims like assigning probabilities at 1 decimal point to things like this:

> 1 Opposition: Opposition forces in Syria (Liwa al-Islam) carried out the chemical attack. 96.4%

> 2 Syrian army: The Syrian army carried out the chemical attack. 3.6%

though it helps when they also explain the process with nonsense like:

> The few prior instances of chemical attacks against civilian targets contain factors that make them poor comparisons to the attack in Syria, leaving motivation as the primary factor. An analysis of the motivating factors behind such an attack results in the Syrian army being twice as likely to launch such an attack compared to an Opposition group, i.e. 67%-33%.

[notafraudster]

I really hate this style of analysis. It's transparent, yes: it's a prior being updated by evidence to produce a posterior, and you see where the rabbit goes in the hat. But this just puts a sciencism gloss on what are basically qualitative arguments.

A short version of their argument is "You might think for any number of reasons that the Syrian government launched the missile, but other peoples calculations of the launch location were wrong and ours were right so it couldn't be the government." Their prior begins at 95-5 for the government doing it, then it becomes 69-31 for the government doing it when they show a video of an anti-government guerrilla wearing a chemical hazard suit, then it becomes 7-93 in favour of the opposition once they decide they know the launch site. The launch site evidence is supposed to mean the Syrian government's probability is divided by 3 and the opposition's probability is multiplied by 15. That's the whole argument, that's where the rabbit is in the hat. After that point, no other evidence can adjust anything.

Most of the other evidence is just conjecture: they assign a 90% confidence to the evidence point "No western countries shared their evidence that the Syrian government did it" and they feel this fact is enough evidence to half their confidence in the Syrian government doing it. As proof for this, they literally say "The US says they have signals intercepts saying the Syrian government did it, but what if they actually have signals intercepts from the Syrian government asking if they did it or maybe they did admit to doing it but they were lying" This is not evidence.

This really seems like crank people trying to apply a rational choice / scientific skeptic veneer to a process of qualitative reasoning. And frankly I flicked through another ten or fifteen pages on the blog and almost everything discussed was discussed in the exact manner LessWrong/Slate Star Codex commenters would, and many of the issues being discussed were the exact issues discussed on those sites.

(I have no prior at all on the Syrian gas attacks, as I don't pretend to know anything about Syria or chemical weapons)

[DeLeeuw]

I agree with you, but I would take Ukraine off the list, although they had a strong motive.

Ukraine's strategic cornerstone is international relations, without which they cannot win the war.

Ukraine would never risk upsetting Germany, the EU's biggest economy, with such a drastic operation.

[kspacewalk2]

Also, how would Ukraine pull off such a mission in a sea it has no access to?

[GolfPopper]

A boat, some underwater explosive charges, underwater ROVs, and a team to operate all the above seems likely to be well within Ukraine's capabilities.

The first underwater ROV I found via googling is $10K: https://www.deeptrekker.com/shop/products/dtg3#

It seems like something within the technical capabilities and resources of any functioning non-microstate.

[mopsi]

And risk getting cut off from further military and economic support from allies? Highly unlikely.

[croes]

How many people do you need to blast a pipeline?

Don't have to be in line with the government of a country.

[aredox]

Russia also has that capability.

And one of the pipelines remains operational.

[kspacewalk2]

None of what you said mentions of any specific details of either article, whatsoever. What specifically is an example of an insinuation you object to? Maybe pick one straw man and point it out? Otherwise, what's the informational content behind all this verbiage?

[rexxxmi]

Until someone else can corroborate Hersh's story, or Hersh provides hard evidence, this is whole thing is a nothing burger.

[DeLeeuw]

The US was always opposed to Nord Stream and for good reasons. I'm in fact glad it's gone.

Many people already speculated it was the US, because Biden himself literally says "we will bring an end to it": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8

With a smirk. Even when pressed how he is going to do it.

For me, Hersh' story is the secondary corroboration.

[smcl]

Seems to me equally likely he's saying they'd pressure Germany to not use it or introduce sanctions (to bring an end to Nordstream 2, as a source of foreign currency for Russia and as leverage over the EU). Additionally wasn't Nordstream 2 not yet operational, and mostly Nordstream 1 that was sabotaged?

[AnonymousPlanet]

Nord Stream 2 was operational. It was also targeted but one of the pipes was hit twice, leaving the other intact.

Up to that point, the Russians clearly communicated to Germany that the flow of gas could be resumed either by dropping the sanctions to "repair" Nord Stream 1 or by opening Nord Stream 2.

The reason given by the Russians as to why Nord Stream 1 wasn't running at capacity was technical problems. First it was a turbine which eventually was replaced by Germany. Next it was allegedly damage to a control unit. The Russians claimed the repairs were impossible because of the sanctions.

So up until the bombing, Nord Stream 2 was always there as a possible fallback. Had Germany run into difficulties procuring gas from other sources up until winter, there was this dangling bait in reach of the German government. A freezing population would have been very unkind to a government that refused to open the second pipeline just for political stance.

Since the bombing it has become clear that operating any pipeline through the Baltic might only last for a short time.

[smcl]

Nordstream 2 was not delivering any gas at that point, Germany had refused the offer to open NS2 (after a series of comically timed "repairs" that just happened to require the new sanctions to be broken) and showed no signs of relenting. I think it is an enormous leap to assume that Germany would in this alternate reality inevitably relent and do what amounts to a pro-Russia stance in backpedalling and using NS2, that would not only fracture the country internally but would cause a foreign policy nightmare at the heart of the EU and NATO. As we have seen it was well within the world of possibilities to stand up LNG terminals for delivery by tanker, this would've been known to both Germany and the USA who would have been in discussion about this the entire time Nordstream was being discussed.

My position is: we just don't know yet, nothing is completely certain. I am surprised that people seem 100% convinced because they read an article by Hersh that paints a nice story and uses an as-yet unnamed source as proof and are prepared to take it all at face value. It may well turn out that the USA was responsible after all. But this recent article is, as it stands, no more than a story. It's still completely possible Nordstream 1/2 was blown by the Russians or the Ukrainians or the Brits or the Poles...

We don't know shit, let's not pretend we do.

[AnonymousPlanet]

> Nordstream 2 was not delivering any gas at that point

I agree. I meant "operational" as in "ready to operate". Sorry for causing confusion here.

> I think it is an enormous leap to assume that Germany would in this alternate reality inevitably relent and do what amounts to a pro-Russia stance in backpedalling and using NS2, that would not only fracture the country internally but would cause a foreign policy nightmare at the heart of the EU and NATO.

I live in Germany. Through the entire summer I heard more and more people (and from surpising directions) voice their frustration that Nord Stream 2 wasn't opened in the face of gas shortages. Where I live, every week protests gathered that demanded NS2 to be opened and sanctions to be lifted.

The signs of a weak polar vortex came in around that time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32985927. Had Europe seen the kind of winter that eventually befell North America, matters would have shifted dramatically. From the outside there was no way of knowing whether an already weak looking German government would not flip whith riots at the door.

[kcplate]

“Put an end to it” seems to carry a bit more finality then “we are going to encourage to not use it, or introduce sanctions to not use it”. Especially in light of the damn thing actually being destroyed…and an end being put to it.

The action that was taken, even though it’s not acknowledged, has brought weight to the statement.

[smcl]

I think if they were planning to do this they wouldn't have sent Joe Biden out and said "alright, drop a little hint that you're going to bomb Nordstream in the event of a Ukraine invasion". And if they were planning to do so and Biden blurted it out (because ... he's Joe Biden) I imagine any plans to bomb the pipeline would surely have been scrapped as he'd have just given the game away.

More realistic is the old man who has famously delivered gaffe after gaffe, who has repeatedly stumbled on his speeches and said dumb shit, said something a bit inelegant that everyone's now seizing on like a bunch of qanoners baking the latest q-drop on 8chan

[kcplate]

Even a gaffe doesn’t change the core strategic value, it only adds another variable to consider as part of the possible blowback of the operation.

Regardless, it’s apparent that even with a Biden gaffe in the mix, if the US was responsible it was done in a way that preserved enough mystery to minimize the blowback.

[rexxxmi]

A general criminal law principle known as the corpus delicti rule provides that a confession, standing alone, isn't enough for a conviction.

I am not taking a position. I'm saying no one has presented hard evidence. And until they do, if ever, both sides will play hot potato and nothing will happen.

When someone presents hard evidence for either position I'll listen to them happily.

[marcusverus]

It may not be sufficient for a conviction in criminal court, but it goes a long way in the court of public opinion. As well it should.

[aredox]

Yes, it overtly said he would do it. Even though it was a very secret operation that had to be hidden from Congress'gang of eight.

Totally how Biden rolls.

Oh, and they forgot to blow one of the pipes. Whoopsy!

[fakethenews2022]

Until someone else takes credit for it, I'll take President Joe Biden's threat as evidence. Video link: https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share

[abracadaniel]

He said that in the context of sanctions, and which did end up shutting it down long before it was blown up. It only appears to be a threat of destruction retroactively because it was later blown up. There were no articles claiming he was threatening to blow it up at the time. Everyone knew the context was with regards to sanctions at the time.

[marcusverus]

> He said that in the context of sanctions

Do you have a different transcript or something? There's nothing in the video that provides such a context.

Regardless, "There will be no more Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it" is a weird way to threaten sanctions, don't you think?

[abracadaniel]

You're looking at a youtube short that explicitly cuts out any semblance of context. The entire world had been discussing nothing but Russian sanctions for weeks at that point. And no, it wasn't a weird way to threaten sanctions, and no one at the time thought any differently, otherwise there would've been a flurry of articles saying Biden threatened to blow it up. But that never happened.

[marcusverus]

You're looking at a youtube short that explicitly cuts out any semblance of context.

> Lol. Here's the video.[0] The 'context' you're arguing for was a question posed to someone else. The question she asked to Biden--the immediate context for his comment--clearly strengthens the argument that this was a threat against the pipeline.

> The entire world had been discussing nothing but Russian sanctions for weeks at that point.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

> And no, it wasn't a weird way to threaten sanctions, and no one at the time thought any differently,

Listen to the lady in the video above. Why's she so flabbergasted after Biden's answer? How does her follow-up question make sense if she thought he was talking about sanctions?

> otherwise there would've been a flurry of articles saying Biden threatened to blow it up.

Articles like this[1]?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s [1] https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will...

[rexxxmi]

Like I said, until someone can provide hard evidence, which that is not, I'll continue to hold reservations as any reasonable person would.

[fakethenews2022]

Yes. We can continue to hold reservations but that can be considered evidence. It is akin to someone getting killed and someone else prior saying they would kill that person. It doesn't mean they actually did it, but it is suspicion and motive that should lead to further investigations. That Germany and other countries aren't looking into it can also be considered circumstantial evidence.

[quonn]

It‘s not evidence because the pipeline wasn‘t that important anymore. They also looked into it. And finally any of them could have done it themselves as well. Nothing points to the US specifically.

For the US such an operation would have a huge amount of risk and they have to gain nothing until the war is over and even after that very little or nothing. (Potentially they can sell their gas - but others as well.) So why do it?

On the other hand, Germany had to gain a bit (shutting down the voices calling for it being opened) and Russia had to gain a lot (sowing distrust within NATO; forcing a change from NS1 to the remaining NS2; as a show of power and a threat; making a strategic change impossible to shut down future opposition within the power structure of Russia) or just to complete their shift to trade with China now instead. The NS2 project was already dead.)

[fakethenews2022]

Did any other nation threaten to take out the pipeline? Was any other nation thanked for taking out the pipeline?

[nostromo123]

The US runs no risk at all in doing something like this.

They've been doing war and killing innocents ("collateral damage", sorry...) for decades, all in the name of some doubtful "freedom and democracy", and what has happened to them? Nothing whatsoever.

[mistermann]

Your original claim, which was an opinion stated in the form of a fact, was that it is a Nothing Burger.

Stating one's opinions on social media is generally fine, but stating them in the form of facts is dangerous in that it can cause other agents in the system to have incorrect state, which can have very serious causal consequences, up to and including death, which most people claim to be "a big deal".

It is counterintuitive to think in this way, but many useful things are counterintuitive.

[sdwr]

A (moving) picture is worth 1000 words!

I'll take that little smirk as evidence any day of the week

[pydry]

>I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials.

Nobody much wanted to talk on the record about My Lai or Abu Ghraib when it happened either.

[not2b]

Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up.

Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.

[djur]

By the time Hersh first wrote about Abu Ghraib there had already been reporting on abuses by Amnesty International, and several days earlier some of the photos had been shown on 60 Minutes (as he mentions in the piece). The piece cites an Army report, credited to two named generals, and names seven suspects, six of whom were under active criminal prosecution. His report was published (and vetted!) by The New Yorker. The difference between that piece and this one in terms of sourcing and credibility is like night and day.

[JackFr]

Really? People absolutely went on the record about My Lai.

[waffleiron]

Potentially people are more careful after Snowden and Assange.