Hersh is simply rehashing public statements and fictionalizes about what or was not said in secret meetings.
The fact is that this admin dropped Trump's sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as soon as they came into office, which allowed it to be completed.
The charges were placed by the Russians at or just after the outbreak of the war and the pipeline was blown up -after- it became clear that Germany would not be purchasing more gas through them to keep Germany from removing the not inconsiderable amount of gas remaining and after the US conducted naval maneuvers in the Baltic so the usual morons like Hersh would blame the US. If the US intended to blow them up, it would never have sent warships to the Baltic, just subs.
Indeed.
And while most of us on FR might not agree with the messenger himself (to put it mildly), Hersh makes some valid points to connect the dots, starting with just the first several paragraphs...
- Last June, the Navy divers [of The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center in rural Panama City], operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22
- There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight.
- President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines
- From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance.