 There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring it into it. How will you do that exactly since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control? We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it. And I want to be clear with you today. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward. Ultimately, this is also a tremendous opportunity. It's a tremendous opportunity to, once and for all, remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. I am, and 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. Get out your notebook, please. Welcome to season five, episode three of CN Live, Sy Hirsch, American sabotage. I'm Joe Lawyer, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Boss. About his story on the sabotage last year of pipelines running from Russia to Germany, investigative reporter Seymour Hirsch says a friend has told him that all he's done is to deconstruct the obvious. It was obvious because there was logically only one possible suspect for the destruction of three of the four major Nord Stream 1 and two pipelines under the Baltic Sea on September 26th last year. President Joe Biden, with Chancellor Olaf Schultz by his side at a White House press conference said in February of 2022 that if Russia invades Ukraine, quote, they will no longer be a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it. Asked by a reporter how the U.S. could do that, given that it was controlled by Germany, Biden said, I promise you we'll be able to do it. The month before January, 2022, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland said, quote, if Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward. On the day of the explosion, the very day, Radik Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister and husband of the Archdiocese of Conservative writer and Applebaum tweeted a photo of the explosion under which he wrote, thank you, USA. Four days after the explosion, which caused the largest emission of methane gas into the atmosphere in history, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, quote, it's a tremendous opportunity to once and for all, remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. Earlier this month, the near-conservative Nuland told the U.S. Senate hearing that, quote, I am and I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea. Instead, the U.S. blamed Moscow, saying it was weaponizing gas to gain leverage over Germany and other European countries dependent on cheap Russian gas. But all Russia had to do was turn off the valve, not destroy pipelines worth more than $11 billion, that is 51% owned by the Russian state-owned company, Gazprom. The other 49% is owned by a consortium of German, Dutch, and French companies. Russia has announced, said, or repair the pipeline that the U.S. says it blew up. The destruction of the pipelines opened financial opportunities for Norway. On the very next day after the explosion, Norway opened its own gas pipeline to Poland. Since the explosion, the U.S. has increased much more expensive liquefied natural gas exports to Germany and other parts of Europe. Germany was 50% dependent on Russian gas and the sabotage has hurt German business and citizens trying to heat their homes. The obvious has become more concrete with the reporting of Syhersh, who has sketched out the details of how the U.S. and Norway carried out the covert operation to destroy Nord Stream 1 and 2. The plan was cooked up according to Syhersh in September 2021, months before Russia entered the war in Ukraine and planning continued throughout the period in which the U.S. said it wanted to stop Russia's intervention. Under a cover of NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea, U.S. Navy divers out of Panama City, Florida planted seaport explosives on the pipelines in June of 2022. Syhersh reports that Biden did not want the detonation to occur so soon after the exercise, fearing it would point to NATO's guilt. Instead, the explosives were set off on September 26, 2022 when a Norwegian plane dropped a device into the sea that sent audio signals to set them off according to Syhersh, citing a, quote, source with direct knowledge of the operational planning. Syhersh reports that the plot was masterminded by Newland, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Joe Biden himself. It was run by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State and Treasury departments were also involved. The United States has been angry about Europe buying Russian gas since it began in 1973 under Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. Even before that, John F. Kennedy got NATO to ban German exports of pipes to the Soviet Union. The U.S. has for decades tried to stop Russian gas to Europe. So this would not be the first time the CIA led an operation to blow up a Russian pipeline. The Washington Post reported in 2004, quote, in January, 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline. According to a new memoir by Reagan by a top Reagan White House official, Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in the book at the abyss and inside its history of the Cold War. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of, quote, cold-eyed economic warfare, close quote, against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War. At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. This is 1982. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way that they would not detect. Sire Hirsch brings a history of bringing some of the biggest stories in the history of American journalism, among his major scoops for the Milai massacre in 1969, for which he won a Pulitzer, a 1974 expose of CIA domestic spying on hundreds of thousands of U.S. leftists and anti-war activists, which led to the church committee investigation of U.S. intelligence abuses and the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004. And now we welcome Sire Hirsch to CN Live. Welcome, Sire. Thank you for being with us. Well, glad to be here, Joe. And Elizabeth, I'm gonna just ask you first about the timing of the attack in September. Let me just, Joe, let me make one, not so minor adjustment. Okay. The president's responsible, but masterminding isn't right because actually the planning was kept pretty separate. In other words, it was very, very covert and it was a limited group. In other words, the president only learned we can do it. And I'll probably write more about the mechanism. Right. Well, who initiated this idea? Was it Blinken, Nuland? Who initiated the idea of doing this? Oh, well, I don't know who initiated, but I know that the views of the president were that Ukraine was obviously more important to me than anything else at this point. He wanted to keep the war going in Ukraine. And the support for the war, there was always a worry that Germany, what happened is the Nord Stream one came alive, the first pipeline came alive in 2011 and it produced so much gas that Germany could actually resell some of it at a profit, they had that much gas. And now a second one was coming. Nord Stream two was ready, it was built, it was completed by just about to 2021. And it was sanctioned at the request of the German government sanctioned, so they had control of the second pipeline, Nord Stream two. That's why they kept on talking about Nord Stream two. The Russians that are already stopped Nord Stream one as punishment for the beginning of the war, Putin was doing that. And nothing I'm saying should minimize, the decision to start, Putin's decision to start the bloodiest war in Europe, West in Europe since World War II, there were factors behind it. There was some justification in a sense, certainly in his eyes, it wasn't with our complete no justification, the expansion of NATO, the thought that NATO that might bring Ukraine into NATO, that was all worrisome stuff that we put missiles on the border with China that we call defensive that could be very easily converted into missiles that could take up Moscow in seven, eight minutes. So we did a lot of aggression that's too, that doesn't, starting a war is a hell of a thing to do, but that's okay, you can only fault him for that. But having said that, I think Biden presidents, I think history shows that presidents who have wars and win them are our most famous presidents, Lincoln, of course, Roosevelt, et cetera, et cetera. And so presidents always, you know, this guy more than most wars, you know, Clinton's best day as president, when he got an office in what, 60 in 1992, 93, after winning the election the year before, he had terrible times. It was, don't tell, don't ask. You remember he was in trouble with the military for his gay position. So in May, was it in the spring anyway, but I don't know the dates. I think it's May of his first year in office. He bombed Baghdad, and he was not in good shape with the public. He bombed Baghdad, he killed eight people, they hit the city, and then it was on a Saturday. And the next day when he went to church across the street, there's a wonderful little church. So the next day when he went there, it was the best day he's ever had. The press was there, he was hailed. Well, Trump too, when he bombed Syria, they declared he became president. So it's a disturbing thing. It's the same press that's not writing now about this thing. Yeah, we're gonna get to that. Well, but I don't know what kind of a standard we wanna hold the press to, but it isn't very high one right now. Anyway, the press has diminished. Guys like you, shows like your show, have more influence now than they would have 10 years ago because the press has completely polarized. You're either working against us. You're either like Fox News or you're like CNN or whatever it is, you know, it's, I won't go in any of them. We don't like any of them. I won't go in any of them. I don't want to. We don't like any of them. Nope, I don't like any of them either. And you mentioned in your peak, the timing of this attack was because the US was worried that with winter coming, the Germans may reopen the pipeline because of the political costs. But also there was talk then, and if you remember the Saudis were gonna try a peace deal. There were all these efforts and Germany did say that if the war ended, if there was a settlement, they would reopen Nord Stream too. So I wonder if that was part of the reason why they did it then. How about 95% of the reason? You wanted to keep, you wanted to prevent what as, as Luther said in the opening, Tony Blinken said, we now have stopped the weaponization of Russian gas. And this has been a theme. I was great to see you go back to the Kennedys. And certainly this happened again. Condoleezza Rice talked about this a lot, which was vice president. He chaired a committee group in 2014 for the most overrated president. I think right now we have is Obama because all this stuff happened under him too. I mean, I don't, not what's going on now, but the whole notion of keeping Russia away from having the gas, potentially use gas as a weapon. And that certainly was Russia's intention. I mean, obviously the reason they were selling gas so cheaply is because that gave them leverage in Europe. And so, but the interesting date for me is the date he picked. He was told in January it was possible. That's why they started talking. And of course, neither he nor the undersecretary of Nuland. I mean, as far as the community was concerned, it was just the people doing the actual planning who were removed from the White House. They were wherever they were in their bureaucracy. They were horrified. This whole thing was supposed to be secret. Here's the president and the undersecretary just going blah, blah, blah. And but the advantage for them was what probably could have been legally considered to be a covert operation because it was so secret. But now that they had announced that they could just make it a highly classified one. No reason, and they're definition of that. And by using the Panama drivers in Panama City, it's a Navy training facility and not the SEALs. The SEALs are in the special operations command. Everything the SEALs does is automatically a covert. It has to be briefed to the Congress. So being just classified, even highly classified, the CAs allowed to bring military people in as long as they're not in special ops. So it all fitted. So they went along, that was a plus for them. So they went along with not worrying about Congress ever having to be briefed about it. Not that they might have not briefed them anyway. I mean, I assure you that's probably happened before violation of the law. But what you had was, what you had as a president that was very worried, as you said in the opening about the Germans decided they'd rather have gas, cheap gas, keep the industry going. They're very, very mercantile. Part of the German game after World War II, this goes back to Willie Brown to Nassapolitik, was they'd spent 10 years, a decade, destroying Europe and killing people. They wanted to prove to Europe that they could be good partners. So the idea was we're gonna be a manufacturing base. We're gonna be great traders. We're gonna produce things and we're gonna lower the cost of stuff. We're gonna show you we can really, we belong in Western Europe. And it took a long while. The French in particular, can you imagine? Not wanting a thing to do with them. But by 1990, Germany was in NATO, West Germany. And when East and West merged to become one Germany, they know a different entity. And we wanted to join. We wanted that entity in the NATO. And Gorbachev said, I'll make you a deal. I'll let them in NATO. You make a commitment that you will not expand NATO to the East. At this time, NATO started with 19 countries. Now, I was gonna look it up. I think Montenegro is one of the UN countries, one of the NATO countries. Now it's gone away. Nobody envisioned that Italy and Spain would be part of NATO. It was always Western Europe. So it'd become a colossus. And if you remember, in 2007, it's sort of a famous, one of those international conferences they have. Putin even said- The UN Security Council. The UN Security Council. No, it might have been Davos, it might have been the UN. It's one of those two. You said, I volunteered to join NATO. Anyways, of course, that wouldn't happen. And anyway, the whole point of all of this is that where does responsibility lie for what we do? And you're not gonna get a settlement on this. I've got more to write. No matter what I say right, whatever I talk about or whatever specific details I have, it's, this government's never gonna admit it, did it? Yeah. Well, so, you know, the Russians, you said the Russians started the war, but they would argue that it started in 2014 after the US back coup and overthrew a democratic elected President Yanukovych. Then they started the war against the people of the Donbass, largely Russian ethnic Ukrainians who disagreed with this coup. They voted for Yanukovych. And when they declared independence, which was five days after this horrible massacre by neo-Nazis of Russian ethnic Russians in a union building. Well, there's no one on the union, that's for sure. No, I know, I know. I'm sorry. I misspoke. So the Russians, they stayed eight years trying to implement Minsk. We now know that Merkel, Oland and Peter Schenkov all said they never intended to do that. They wanted to build up NATO. So my question to you now is, do you believe the US needed this invasion? Because Biden says if they invade, we're gonna take out Nord Stream. Nuland said the same thing. The fact was that they were in September, just starting to discuss this thing as if they were expecting or wanting, in my view, this invasion. Why? So that without a cause, they needed a cause. Russian tanks to cross the border. Once they did, they could have launched their economic war, where they targeted the central bank, their proxy war with the Ukrainian soldiers who had been trained then for eight years by NATO. And this information war, which there's complete demonization, even of Russian cats and Russian orchestra conductors. This all geared towards overthrowing Putin. Why do I say that? Because Biden said it in Warsaw. And on the day of the invasion, he was asked at the White House press conference, why we're gonna do sanctions when the sanctions you put didn't stop the invasion. And Biden said they were never intended to stop the invasion. They're intended to show the Russian people who he is. So that was an admission right there that they were not trying to stop this invasion. I think they needed this invasion and it played a trap that they tried to lay for Russia. Just like Saddam Hussein was trapped to go into Kuwait when April Gillespie said we had no view on whether you do anything about your dispute with Kuwait and also Brzezinski in that interview in 1999 where the French magazine admitted that they trapped the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. He used the word trap. So this is a history of this. What do you think of this? Did they need this invasion? By the way, they trap has entrapped the West because the sanctions have not hurt Russia. It's just hurting Europe much more. They're losing the war on the ground or at least a stalemate and the information war is only believed in the West not by the rest of the world, Africa, India, China, South America, none of them have put sanctions on Russia. None of them believe the story and in fact, they're creating a new economic and commercial and financial system as an alternative to the US system. And the US is on the outside looking in and they don't realize it yet. Do you think that the US wanted this invasion to among other things be able to blow up this pipeline? Well, let's put it this way. If I gave that talk you just gave I'd be getting more mail than you ever wanted to know about being pro-Russian. So I have to watch that because, you know I haven't done an interview with Russia and now the Chinese are getting active in it without getting, look there's no what I think doesn't matter but the facts seem to support everything you said it doesn't matter what I think. What I would say about it is I just look at it from this way Putin needed a reason to get the people behind him. We gave Putin the argument that got the Russian people behind him and that was the really dumb thing to do. You know, there was Putin always how many, what 22 mean Ukrainians they murdered and then saved the Famians in 1932. Remember that story, you know all that. So we, they've always treated it sort of as they've always considered Ukraine to be sort of a subculture. And so, but you know how is he going to get the people behind him? You know, he's Putin's I've been reading his speeches for a long time. If you remember when this years back when this all began he was dying of all kinds of cancer. Remember he wasn't going to live for another day. That story appeared the Brits were doing much more of it than we were but we were doing a lot of it too. He looks sick, he's taking, you know just drugging that a lot of speculation it's pretty amazing to listen to him. He's quite concise this isn't to say I applaud starting a war but what we did with the behavior you're describing just to turn around what you said we gave him the argument that made the people support him. He needed I agree. So we put, we lit the fuse and threw it right in right there. If these guys with their language on this government this I call Winken I saw Blinken and Sullivan and Nuland well, they're very hawkish. Let's put it that way. I can't figure Biden out because he supported very much the war in Iraq you know, in 2001 but he's been sometimes he didn't support right away. I know that some inside he was more ambivalent about Afghanistan and he did in the war in Afghanistan which is a gutsy thing to do. There was a bombing that cost him some foolishly that bombing was used to sort of diminish what he did but he did do something useful and he did get some social programs through and he wasn't Trump but so why the pushing I think by his very much more hostile aids the three of them Nuland and Blinken and Sullivan I think they pushed him very hard. They all have longstanding incredible hatred of Putin that's almost personal. I would guess, I don't know. And so it was a slippery slope that began. The one question for me is that interests me is he didn't do it. He had the option the people who did the mission understood they were doing what they were doing getting a formulating a plan that they could put into effect with Norway, Norway's now a mini America in terms of weapons and we've been building up there forever. But they did so the bottom line is I don't wanna go as far as I was gonna go I was just gonna say this it was suicidal to think you could win that war that Ukraine could win the war there was just too much corruption. It was a very, very bad decision. We should have been pushing for peace we should have made an agreement with we should have gone right away it's just silly not to right away assure the Russian government that we were not interested in making a Ukraine a member of NATO didn't want Ukraine anyway because of the corruption and there was just so many bad mistakes made and I didn't it's impossible to believe how just dumb this leadership was it's just dumb and then they stick to the war and then they took a plan that never should a program they never should have authorized to study of how to blow up the pipelines once they had it they couldn't stop talking about it which was also crazy and dumb and then in the summer when the people in Norway and they were operating whatever the group in Norway whatever they were worked out found a way to actually get there's no oil in the back multi-golf there's no miners you guys in helmets diving down looking for oil there's no oil rigs how are you gonna plant the most explosive bombs known C4 when they're as big a chunk as they had blow up a city certainly a big building how are you gonna plant it without being caught so Norway gave them the Norwegian told them where they could do it in shallow waters between Sweden and Denmark and I'll let those countries start to explain what they knew it didn't know about what was going on we've left them in peril the Norwegians don't care they're gonna hang it tough but and so and then they do this they implant the weapons and then they I don't know and then when the president does it the people involved in planning it of course the White House doesn't know who they are what they are what's going on believe me it's that kind of separation it's very sophisticated but they could not believe what he did I'm talking about the people involved he basically blew off NATO in Europe he told them that trying to win this war with this totally corrupt government Zelensky we know about him from the Panama Papers and this government that's still the matter Banderer statue by the end of the guy that was the great pro-Nazi who killed the Jews like crazy in the Ukraine after in the World War II he still they had a celebration room just about a month ago and when people it's birthday January 1st well you've got the facts you've got the facts you all laid out are perfectly accurate I'm just glad you do it because I well I will say I get red-baited Germany is pretty bad you know I get I got a call from one of the papers today did you know this would be helpful to Russia did you do it knowing that Russia have cooper I've never had a question they're being asked by me by a 24 year old kid from a newspaper and then when I got I said to him who are you why are you being so stupid you know and then he said can I I'm gonna quote you on that and I'm sure they are that was developed they have little love for Russia so you have that problem too that you could be red-baited easily although in my case I don't know I was in the US Army I would have didn't think about the army was it was before Vietnam I was we were put on alert to go to Korea in case north and south wet and believe it or not I was a Chicago kid a ghetto kid and a survivor my father died when I was 15 I always worked I'm sort of the least likely guy to end up at the New York Times Washington girl but anyway so there we are but I would have gone I was a grunt one one one you know infantryman I would have gone because I had friends you know it's so primitive I would have gone because I had six or eight twin friends there I played ball with them and we did we hated the army together and we did stuff on when we were off on a weekend I would have gone and so how many kids went to Vietnam I wonder who only went because of loyalty of the unit and you know how many people did we kill so there's such a rotten history America has about warfare I go back the failure of containment it's all blame I blame it all on containment and we're still playing containment with Russia right now we're still playing a game that we you know we lost everything we lost you know Vietnam fell Saigon fell in the spring of 1975 Laos and Cambodia fell to communist in the next two weeks we lost all of we lost all of Southeast Asia to communism and guess what happened nothing the wolf thought we had we were doing all of this to stop the ren menis all those nobody pays attention all the different countries the capital so vietnam I can't boy they all fell they all left they were done they all run down you know ran over and and so what and meanwhile so we can't you know we walked away from that one we mill murdered one two million people I'm a Vietnam junkie obviously after me lie I mean I can't get that out of my soul and it never will but having said that and so we're still playing the containment game and it's still failed again it still doesn't work but you know that to talk openly and say why don't you show me some evidence yes Russia is always going to keep Ukraine there because we cheated and lied to them about about expanding NATO to the east and we started talking about we're going to put them in you know let alone let them in the EU we certainly did overthrow with a lot more American involvement that the press knows about right now yeah yeah and they refused the US refused to negotiate these treaty proposals that Russia put in December 2021 it's another reason I think they did not want to get it out of the heat threaten Putin military technical measures if you don't you don't talk about these treaties and they didn't and I will agree that this was an opportunity given to Putin who has expressed without question revanchist ideas about reabsorbing those parts of Ukraine that were part of the empire begun by Captain the Great and that's different than imperialism which when you go to a country where the people don't want you there and they're completely different from you in language and ethnicity whatever and it's the other side of the world like the US going into Vietnam or into Iraq but this was on his border so the idea of him reconstituting an empty the Soviet empire would mean he'd have to invade Baltics Kazakhstan was back I mean this is a absurd now it's absurd but anyway who are we let's assume we had those kind of feelings are we the country that decided that the answer to bin Laden al-Qaeda out of Saudi Arabia was to attack Iraq are we the country that decided that and decided we can go into Afghanistan so you know but the America that's how empires behave well you know I still think underneath it there's in America there's an awful lot of very good stuff and I'm not sure that this administration is going to produce it but there's still a how could you not as I said I was a ghetto kid and I was in the editor of Harvard Crimson Yale Daily News and you know but five years after six years that I'm getting out of college I'm sticking two fingers with my melee reporting that I couldn't get into a national magazine or a major newspaper I'm sticking two fingers into the eye of a new president Nixon and what do I get fame fortune and glory out of it I'm not putting the gulag so you know don't ask me about America was then that was then this is now I want to get to that later no the potential is great you should know the response I'm getting and you know in what the the White House called the blog the substack there was a they told me there was more than a million people readers I don't know what the the words are a more than a million people looked at it took the piece it was all off for free it was just up there on substack and I get letters I've gotten every a thousand emails 800 emails I don't know how many and communications of people saying wow thank god we've got a vibrant press there you know because they've missed they've missed this division we that we have there were that you have the the mainstream newspapers in New York and Washington on one side and Fox News and and the New York New York Post on another side and there's no middle ground anymore what when I was a kid after I did me lie I I got hired by I went from never working on a newspaper worked on a wire service been a freelance right I wrote a couple books but nothing spectacular I got I got hired by William Shaw another New Yorker I went to see if nobody I had an agent who said he won't hire you never worked on a newspaper and I called up and I went in there and I was five minutes I got to meet the great man the great editor and I'm going on blah blah blah blah he goes like this to me puts up his hand he said that's fine Mr. Hirsch you know and he said it's 500 enough I said 500 what he said $500 a week draw all right and the last job I make I was making 128 for the AP and I left that I left that I did a bunch of things for him but I left that when the New York Times said to me in 72 Abe Rosenthal said to me in 72 come to Washington the coverage the coverage of the Times they'll forget Neil Sheehan joined the Times later David Halberstam a man named Holber Bigot fantastic the coverage from Vietnam was very good the coverage from Washington was you know we Washington listened to the president it was more state and he said go to Washington and make trouble and you know of all the editors I worked for it so crazy here's a guy that was so conservative he used to walk into the bureau he was from New York and Washington to come up behind me and give me a a Bill Murray Nickelrub you know that what I'm talking about that the rub like this and I jump up who's this that it was Rosenthal and he'd say he'd say literally a conversation would go like this how's my little commie today because I was certainly I was hated the war and and I say then he would say without a break what do you have for me what do you got and he never I had I had the best six years of my life as a journalist there I could do what I wrote story I wrote about the NSA I wrote about the CA Chile domestic spying you're right but a lot of other stories an awful lot about the government and I I did an awful lot about what the CA was doing about a Yende before he was allegedly committed suicide about which anyway so I'm done talking I want to I want to get to Elizabeth but I have a couple of more two separate issues here then we'll go to Elizabeth give it you're in Washington I'm in Alexandria not far from you what is the feeling that you're getting about the fact that it seems like there's been from the beginning of the war the Russian intervention two factions the realists in the Pentagon for the most part and the neocons around the State Department Blinken and Nuland and that it was until now the Pentagon that's been saving us because if you remember March of last year there was talk of Polish F-16s going into Ukraine and Blinken said we're going to do it and then the Pentagon said no way and Biden sided with the Pentagon and that was the end of that now of course this has come back again everybody's talking about the F-16s again about escalation seems like the Pentagon is trying to avoid a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia where these reckless neocons are not considering whether that is as dangerous as it actually is so I want to know what do you know about these two factions that exist right now and who do you think might prevail what do I know I'm not going to tell you all right okay next question I don't think it would be as sanguine as you do in the Pentagon there's yin and yang some people in the Pentagon you know that are thinking about being been you know thinking about well what kind of a treaty are we going to make with Russia if it loses the war in Afghanistan you still and I'm in Ukraine there's still some elements of that who haven't seen the reality so there's a lot of mixture I'm not a fan I'm not a fan of the leadership of the of the Pentagon I'm not you know but right I you know I think you're right that at times they've been cautious about it but by and large um uh don't count on the Pentagon to save us from a war and that's what they do for a living and so I mean that's the job and we had a wonderful chairman the last we we had a great chairman under under obama but the chairman's now I'm not a big fan but yeah that's okay I'm just trying to caution you that don't go overboard on the Pentagon when push comes to show there are two fractures but they're distributed within the state department within the Pentagon it's not that clean of a it's on a break this is a it's astonishingly hockey government on on international relationships it's astonishing hockey and it's over because on domestic policy I think biden's got a lot of you know he's had some you know he's been very successful he's got stuff through that couldn't get through before I just but the foreign policy is really scary that the the stuff that went on with the balloons then that the notion of a secretary of state refusing to go for all high-level meetings with the Chinese because of a balloon that blew over are you kidding me I mean that kind of that's the kind of stuff that's been outfitted for years no threat and I understand that's my understanding is some of the stuff they shot down we have an understanding with the University of Fairbanks with their meteorology department now Fairbanks is so cold up there I once gave a speech so everything's on the ground you live on the ground and if you have to walk from your hotel room to a bar which I like to do you're after when in whatever passes for darkness there was pretty for light it's pretty it's not light very much I was there in winter you're you're your breath freezes you're walking through sort of funny air but they they have a they're financed by the the federal government gives them funds and they fly these little containers they fly them over the polar gap because there's no weather station there and it's the it's the main flight from over the polar gap it's the main flight from most commercial travel and a lot of military travel too to get from east to west it's you to take the polar route much shorter and it's the pilots it's good to have somebody telling them about the possibility of maybe a huge crazy windstorm or something like that even though they're flying at 30 30,000 feet they end up providing pilot part guidance for the pilots of all all airlines about weather conditions whether there's something that's my understanding of what that second weapon and so you know that'll come out or won't come out I just hear that from but not no so what about Congress now you make an important point in your story that Congress was bypassed because they didn't use the seals but you Congress there are certain Republicans that were elected who don't want to fund the war anymore you might think some of them in that they control committees like the House Foreign Affairs Committee for example might want to look into your story and call witnesses and have subpoenas and get people to answer your questions yes or no with you involved I don't see you holding your breath but don't you think that's could happen it's it's this is all it's out of Lewis Carroll up and down and down is up when I was around the Democrats were against the war and the Republicans were for it now the Democrats are they they're competing with each other to see who can say the worst things about you know shift and people like that to me there's some of the stuff they say about Russia you know murderous you know tyrant and well now you look you got to say the guy started a war you know a bad war you got to say that and that's that's a mark against them in history we may have the chip he needed to get the people behind them which was right the ultimately the dumbest thing you could do but just another dumb thing you could do but but the most aggressive country right now and in the world probably is us in terms of what we're doing in China China provoking the Chinese were for most building up assets there even Trump I don't think was nearly you know well I mean given his geography issues but so what but Trump once went the story I get is I couldn't like Trump in a million years but he was taken to South Korea and he was given a tour he was being shown a demonstration of what we do how we how we are how the you know we've got all sorts of what's still a quarter million people sometimes some incredible number of people there and this this anecdotal story I got but you couldn't make up this story the Air Force the American Air Force did a demonstration of how they deal with the 38th parallel dividing North and South we run missions with planes that could be equipped with nuclear weapons there you know we can we have miniature weapons that can go on a lot of our fighters we run planes right to the border he was shown this the planes will come he got a demonstration the planes will come and just as they get to the border waking up all the radar of course which we can do all the time they pull up short so they don't actually cross the 38th parallel and Trump did say that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of cut that out what do you want to do that for you know it seems dumb to me it's you know it's who knows you know I don't know what's the difference between Trump saying I locked I locked up all all my all my papers in a closet with a key in it you know maybe there was housekeeping gear there and you know some of his polar golf clubs or something I think I think the president said at one point well all the papers are locked up in in the in in my in my garage with my favorite Corvette he's got this old Corvette he said they're all in the colloquial key in my garage which the truth is that's the very overblown story because the fact that matters everybody at that level has to they all have to take papers home and they get so much stuff that's marked T T at top secret Umbra all these codes they get loaded with all these classifications and there's no way they can begin you know if you're a vice president you're spending most of your time meeting Boy Scouts you know and and you know having little lunches with people and assuming he wants to do the work this that that story to me has been the most overblown in the longest time in the world but you know what can I tell you you have any hope that Congress might want to look into your story well you don't no yeah but we want to ask you now about to I'm home had to know had to who had to know about this I mean was that then Danish into was that Danish territorial waters where the exposure took place or was it international or they were both they they actually the pipelines at that area both were in territorial waters of Spain and Sweden and there's also something as I learned called the toriel I think waters those countries have control of the under what's under the the it's all merchandising stuff they see the the the the food of the sea underneath they have some rights on so potentially I think what would happen the last thing the White House look I'm telling you they're never going to say they're never going to say I surrender they're just never going to do it because they can't so they're going to keep the story going and they'll put the pressure people not to talk and it won't matter that people talk look there are other people there's a there's a community in the pipeline business they know what happened but they they're not going to talk because they they want to keep on getting contracts but how would they find that out how if it was top secret how would they find that out you know the people the people who do the same thing talk to each other yes I can't tell you more but I can tell you it's real there's a whole community that within right away the word was passed but you know that's the way it is in the world so you know I don't want to give away tips of the trade but I always I always start at the bottom and there's a good I always start at the bottom that's how thanks even even with me live you start at the bottom on all these stories but that's not the way it's done in washington my theory about washington coverage these days is for some of the papers and by the way you know the new york times where I work it's still very smart people they put out a lot of great sections they've managed to make it into a money-making organization with a circulation that's what 10 20 percent at most of what it used to be because who cares about the paid paper it's the online paper that's the business and it's a business it's a growing business they still have a lot of competent reporters but you get down to the point where a confidential source I'm not saying this specifically for the times but for a lot of newspaper people these days is that you know the press secretary who takes you aside after briefing and gives you a fill on something or the assistant secretary comes down and gives a briefing that's their idea of a confidential source the idea of penetrating but harder than that it's just it seems it's an art that's lost and that doesn't and I'm not saying to denigrate the reporters because I think the reporters in the time there's so many bright ones they're just as good as they were in my day my attitude always has been about the major media after being in it for a long time is that we lost 90 percent of the editors we'd be much better shape I wanted to ask you really quickly I just saw who gets promoted the guy the people I get promoted are necessarily like they're the ones guys that would tell them to go stick it where the sun don't shine and nobody wants to promote those people why would you hey take it from me I worked at AP for years did a lot of good stories gotten big trouble over when I began to write about bombing of the north this is before satellites I began to write stories for the AP that would be on page one about bombing of the north and bombs never going where they're aimed and it was they were screaming and the people Mack DeMiro went to the head of the AP and when I left when I was reassigned from a great beat on the cover in the Pentagon going all out on the war I was reassigned to some you know some some other job in the AP which I I took for what it was and I resigned and there was no party for me I go to the New York Times and I do all this stuff and then I the war ends and the the war ended in Asia and and so the the the interest in the kind of stuff I'm doing is diminished so I start doing stuff on corporations and the next thing I know I'm just flooded with second guessing going after private corporations who threaten to sue and so when I resign there's no reluctance the same thing at the New Yorker at some point I wanted out and I I went quietly and I did and so the reality is guys like me walk in the editor's desk with a dead rat full of lice and I drop it on their desk you know if I went into the New Yorker or the New York Times they dropped the dead rat and said I think we did that we did the pipeline and I'm gonna need a lot of money to go run around the world and find out and the odds are two out of five that I'll get it and if I do get it you'll have to do the most extraordinary fact checking not only your best fact checkers but double and triples on it which they did by the way always and and the other thing is you'll get sued or be threatened to be sued by a lot of companies so when I say I'm going I don't care how many stories I brought home and there's a thank god this guy with these crazy stories out of here who wants this particularly in a democratic administration who wants it so that's just the reality about the limits of it you wonder why sometimes when I say to you I don't think anybody is going to get crack this story or there's other things going in the crack because I don't this kind of reporting at a certain level is just too nerve-wracking for editors just too nerve-wracking and the way they do it is unnamed source and you know he's got a record they all talk about some story I did which allegedly I said I defended a data for London review books a story about sarin this is where I'm conspiracy theory because I argue that how do you know that I wrote a story that said this and nobody's read it they keep on repeating it all I wrote was I had learned I had a very sensitive that when when the when the thing broke out about the sarin if you remember it was 2011 and this is for Obama a big reelection thing to get this going and show he's tough you know he's african-american running for the second term I gave him the first term he could have a pass and he wanted that war in afghanistan he didn't want to stop it he was afraid to do it he didn't want to close guantanamo but I give him a pass because you know he's an amazing person he was bright articulate you know the first bright president we've had since Jack Kennedy really in terms of IQ and I'm may Jack Kennedy Lincoln he was very bright and and so he's he's running to the claim victory on it so what I learned when I started doing the story what does that do and I had a document full of intercepts stuff that I never write about I don't like that because I I don't mind the NSA I mean don't spy on me and you know and I you know you know Stodin was one of about 50,000 people that knew they were spying on everybody and he's the only one to talk so talk about conspiracies you know geek would show up in red stop you're breaking the law because they were they cared about that people did the ones I know the old time risk I don't know many of the new people anyway the bottom line is what I'm saying is it doesn't matter what I'm saying I you know I was going to say something I don't want to say but it's just it's so different now it's just so different now we just you know it's just there's no incentive and I think for some of the papers that are quote unquote liberal I think it's a fear of electing the Santas or something I don't know what it is but side that you said that not much has changed but if you look at journalism in the 1970s and compare it to today I mean I started at the New York Times as a stringer in 1975 as the campus correspondent at City College of New York and that's a job Abe Rosenthal had by the way when he was at CCNY and then they were yeah yeah other people did the whole area of of Watergate it seemed like the ethos there was you had to challenge government that you were supposed to have an adversary relationship that's the culture I grew up in in journalism almost 50 years ago using manual typewriters I think it's changed enormously I think I blame Murdoch and Fox News for turning Fox into a propaganda really arm a partisan arm of the Republican Party he destroyed CNN and MSNBC and the ratings so they became propaganda arm of the Democratic Party the newspapers have now followed suit and we've got a partisan a gender driven press that no longer even understands that you have to stand apart from both of these parties not any and that anything you publish doesn't mean you endorse that either so I think maybe the foreign policy coverage was always driven by American interests not trying to understand what's really going on in highly complex situations abroad but to push the American line in the reporting maybe that existed in your day too my question isn't it wasn't there something better about the press and where am I just romanticizing it in the 7th in those days that is taking oh when I was at the New York Times I used to have terrible arguments with Rosenthal and others that you're you're not an American newspaper you're an international newspaper stop this you know stop this view from the American view but what you get now particularly on the cable shows is you I mean thank God that they can still find every time somebody who's indicted for January 6th that's the first 10 minutes and this guide from New Jersey or New York rather the queen's guide this what's the Santos he's got some of them because they can write they can do 10 minutes a night on him you know and so you don't get news anymore right you know you know you can watch the first 10 minutes of democracy now and sometimes get you know a very good description of what's going on in the world 15 minutes but you don't get news anymore you can't get news on on television anymore so you know that's just it's just amazing to me you don't get news you know you know where's the Walter Conker I might do something they're talk show hosts they're not news presenters anymore when they see it again they did real news TV used to do investigative reporting on TV it's hard to believe you know don't you remember that the guy and it's the Canadian guy that was on ABC who died had died of genics Peter Jennings Peter Jennings I've never gone to college he was without question he did four or five or six documentaries a year took time off to do serious ones go to the Middle East and I worked with him on something he was marvelous he really was exactly what you said you should have been and he was an anchor and he held that job he died lung cancer took him out so fast it wasn't funny within six months or a year but I did some project with him it was just great and but there's nothing like that at all the American news coverage why am I doing this why am I making myself you know sorry I want to can I please I'm going to hang up and find a cat some neighbor's cat to kick or a dog and leave this but I'm leaving you now this is enough we never you never got a question in yeah there's a couple of questions I had people have one question I'll just go out quickly 15 hours now right so basically one question was about the reports we had from I believe the Russian Defense Ministry who stated that the UK had been involved in blowing up the pipelines do you have any comment on that I don't know everything I know says no okay not true okay sorry but I'm this was this basically was if you had a problem there's there's always who's been in the water longer in a way the Brits have been in a longer more than anybody else you know so but there there may have been some advice given or contact on technical stuff but it was an American operation all the way and by the way go ahead what's your next question last question was basically that you know in continuing this discussion about the media did you expect this non-response from the major news corporate news are you kidding totally expected are you kidding and it's you know you talk about sources about not naming sources when you don't when they don't like a story they're not going to run it anyway in in 2000 I spent about six months working for the New Yorker and with the support total support of David Reynolds to his everlasting credit doing a story about a general name McChrystal Stanley McChrystal who had been a four star general who's then had the drugs are for the for the Clinton administration and what what he had done is as I learned I learned this from fellow officers what he had done is when the war ended against the dawn that remember the the highway of death we were just killing people and and to his credit the White House back stopped the killing it was just too much it was just too slaughtered was just devastating what we were doing so the war ended in six or seven days the crazy war that Saddam started and we had a peace treaty in Kuwait and the treaty said that one of the major tank units for for Saddam's army the Hanabar Hanarabi very high level unit that didn't get much in the combat was allowed to retreat through a desert area into Baghdad and they were treated on they had a railroad railroad railway and they treated on they had to put the tanks on on on top of rail cars tie up the turrets and it's a standard thing you do how do you move a tank in whenever and move and McChrystal was a two star general then and his area of operations was in that desert where they passed why he had no action and so the story I wrote about for the New Yorker 24,000 words I mean months and months and a great deal of money and time and super checking and we got I got transitions I got tape recordings of conversations about what I'm talking about McChrystal wanted to attack him he wanted to have a victory the war was over his three of his colonels who all he wrote bad reports on all had to retire because he called he called them this the unloyal criticized them for it you can't do it he attacked this group his son that the soldiers a lot of them were sunning themselves on top of the tank I think killed 800 destroyed destroyed a lot claimed the victory the army completely collapsed under it because they didn't want to it was the big first big victory since world since since world war two and so they didn't want to talk towards it this is all in the story I wrote and so they did there was no investigation so and so I do an investigation and his his fellow generals were enraged and I talked to 10 or 12 or 15 of them saying saying on background they said all right we can't talk but on on background they said that's he's the spoiled us horrible things they wrote him off was just outrageous you know and and and Remnick said why don't you see how many will go on the record because that's a hard hard stuff so about 10 of them instead of saying he's a no good rotten SOB said his judgment was awful I really can't believe that it should have been investigated it's a sore spot it left me very troubled when you get 10 guys saying that you get enough so the story that ran had one anonymous quote about something not related to this some intelligent stuff I quote I quoted somebody about something to do the story ran and about a week before the story ran with everybody named McChrystal had a news conference in which he accused me of all sorts of things you know not quite sleeping with his wife but we're in that league you know sort of crazy stuff with a good lawyer and the the wire service wrote a story about it and the Washington Post press critic wrote a big story about it and I kept on saying everybody I'm not talking read the story read the story it's not coming for another week it was coming in the next week's edition it's not like going on nine and so when my story came they everybody that story got a lot about how I you know I buffaloed him and I lot you know whatever he said I did and rage was pretty acute and the White House of course supported him totally and said also the press secretary that said you know this horrible things about me I'm trying to revive my career I don't know what he was talking about and and when I story ran they basically ignored it because it was uncomfortable he was then this this our Clinton was then and you know I I guess it was it was even after his personal troubles but he was a Democratic I don't know why the papers just ignored it yeah the Times wrote a little story about it but nobody the whole import of it was just ignored and so when they say when people say to me well you didn't name your sources and that's why the story is invalid that's just not true because if this if they don't like the story even if the sources are named all they had to do is call up a couple of those the the the the gentle is named and about two years after it the gentle who didn't do the investigation he was the man above he was in the core he was you know they have the vision then we have a corally or a division support to a southern general very army was a late late preacher too he called me up about two years later he said okay he said I really owe you one he said I'm a man of God and I didn't investigate him because I knew I wouldn't get my fourth star if I did and I also knew that the White House would insist to be washed out and so you know there's the real world and it does exist and the press there simply didn't want to do the story among other things it was long but you know what I was saying about Syria I never all I said about Syria was in that London time story was that six months three months before the gas was used and Syria does the Syrian army has a chemical warfare component they certainly have the gas that there was a major flap inside the Norman Dempsey was the chairman of the joint chiefs of really Norman Dempsey is the first chairman of the joint chiefs the day after we retired in 2015 went as a teaching fellow Duke University as a professor then go to corporations the most amazing guy when he graduated from from West Point he was one of the few to get a two-year two-year study a commitment to get a master's degree in poetry he was interested in Irish poetry and he did a master's degree some eminent school and then he became a soldier and a great soldier then chairman of the joint chiefs really interesting difficult I don't know I mean I know of him but an amazing person and nobody nobody even caught on to him what he'd done gone teaching who did that as a chairman four boards a million dollars each you got your house in the water and there it goes but anyway all I wrote about was in June Dempsey and the joint chiefs got concerned because we had evidence Israeli it was a joint Israeli U.S. and Israeli U.S. NSA CIA Assad their 8200 unit report about the enormous amount of chemicals the precursor chemicals for sarin that were being poured in to El Nusra and the other more or less follow on to Al Qaeda Muslim crazies that were fighting Bashar Assad Bashar Assad was against the crazies as crazies and so was Assad as much as we were and we attack both of them don't ask me and anyway and there was a big study that it would have taken 60,000 troops all of this was in the paperwork but it wasn't public but I had a document so the story I wrote I mentioned the document I didn't write all about it I wrote quite a bit of it but I didn't mention the the second part of it in the London review and I got a three star general to say yeah it's real on the record so I got through all that stuff all I wrote was I wrote a story in the London review saying hey the White House only named one source the Syrian army for this possibility when there were two that's what I wrote but you wouldn't know it from what you read because nobody bothers to read the story it's much more convenient to say well he was a conspirator and you know supported Assad I mean yeah that's what you get and that's so you know that's the press of today you know it's pretty bad and way too long and I'm starving I had only coffee today say sorry I just I want to leave you with one thing about Julian Assange you're going to cut this in half Archie nobody's going to watch this yeah well they probably have already you know when you compare collateral murder revelation by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks of the massacre in Baghdad to the Milai Milai massacre that you revealed look at the whistleblower in Milai he was listened to by Congress the journalist was you and you got a poetic and there were consequences at least one soldier went to jail where if you look at collateral murder the whistleblower Chelsea Manning went to jail for six years the journalist said are getting a pulse is in prison in London right now and the consequences are no one from the U.S. military involved in that massacre in Baghdad has been even investigated let alone put into jail what does that tell you about how far the U.S. has come in 50 years I'm just shocked by what you said it's just shocking to me I just can't believe it that they did prosecute the journals I did a story once it's not the general I did a story once for the New York one of the first stories after I joined the New York Times there was an allegation that a four-star general named Lavel general John D. Lavel a nice general he rose up through the ranks it was a fighter pilot did all the things pretty bright guy from Ohio that he had bombed North Vietnam without orders and that was the story and he was court-martialed for he wasn't court-martialed but he was demoted a grade and nobody could find him and it was a great story and so you know I hate to say it it's not hard to find a forced out general I don't know what's with the press score but when you're forced out general you always have a young bright first in your class out of the Air Force Academy as your captain as your personal aid and by this time two or three years later the odds would be he'd be in a staff job involved in intelligence a forward planning in Washington in suburban Maryland or Virginia I found the guy within 10 minutes called him up I said I want to talk to the general and he got me in touch and I went and met the general somewhere and we had a conversation he was playing golf I found one at some country club and we had a and I said let's talk about this and we walked into we went into the bar the clubhouse it was just middle of the day it was empty just a few people there we sat in the corner I remember Miller Highlights this was 1973 in the yellow bottle I love that beer I had a couple balls I like golf I played golf but there's he and I it comes sense for a while then we did some business and he said I said don't tell me you were doing this on your own you just know where you're gonna bomb oil depot radar sites on your own he said I can't talk about it so he's already given me a clue and then I finally said well I said then let's assume if you did do it on your own which is what the public says and that was the charge why weren't you court-martialed and I'll never forget what he said he said sigh can I call you sigh I said yeah he said when was the last time a forced star general was court-martialed in the U.S. Army and at that moment I liked the guy and it turned out of course he was doing it for Kissinger and Nixon behind it and turns out when he was cashiered Nixon and Kissinger had a number of consultations that came out later in the tapes about it and Nixon to his credit kept on saying to Kissinger see that guy really got screwed but he only did what we told him to do can't we fix it and Kissinger said don't worry about it it's okay it'll be okay and Nixon brought it up two or three times I'm not kidding Nixon saying I really feel so bad about this guy you know he spent his career in the Army he got to be forced on her and we just trashed him and Kissinger just wrote it over I always say about Kissinger this day I'll just tell you this when people ask me about it I got in trouble but I always say I don't know about Kissinger but all I know is when I count when I can't sleep I count cheap and when he can't sleep he's got to count burned Vietnamese and Cambodian babies good night goodbye to you all this is too long okay thank you very much sorry for the time hey listen keep on doing it you're doing good stuff I like it goodbye thank you very much by the way we have a mutual person that we know who told me that when you got we talked to that guy in Texas and he revealed the tape recording that you burnt your source on that story you know what I'm talking about right is that true what's the what do you talk about Seth Rich Seth Rich story that when that guy published your tape recording of your conversation and without your knowledge did that burnt your source is that true no serious no that was all it was all second hand I was just repeating gossip I see okay thank you very much again sorry for your time appreciate it bye bye bye bye well Elizabeth that was an interesting show and I figured I'm gonna say a good night for Elizabeth Voss in Arkansas Kathy Vogan in Sydney, Australia Cy Hirsch in Washington and here's Joe Laurier in Alexandria, Virginia for CN Live we're saying goodbye thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time bye bye if you are a consumer of independent news in the first place you should be going to is consortium news and please do try to support them when you can it doesn't have its articles behind a paywall it's free for everyone it's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades I hope that with the public's continuing support of consortium news it will continue for a very long time to come thank you so much