Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power,

politics and society. On each episode, I will talk to an American expert or an expert on America

about something that's going on in America in

2023. I am delighted today to be joined by Seymour Hirsch, who is a multi-award winning

journalist and reporter. He's won Pulitzer Prizes, All-World Prizes, Polk Prizes, The Lot.

And we're going to be talking about a piece, Seymour, that you wrote on your substack called How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline.

I think we should start, for some of our listeners who aren't up to speed on this story, by going back a bit.

When the Nord Stream pipelines were attacked,

there were these explosions in the sea and the story made quite a lot of news, but not actually

that much news. And there wasn't that much curiosity as to what had actually happened. Some people

said that the Russians probably did it. Others asked why would the Russians do it.

That would make no sense.

And then the stories of disappeared.

And it's come back partly thanks to your piece,

which has attracted a lot of controversy,

because even though you're a journalist,

if I can say this without sounding like a flatter,

even though you're a journalist of great distinction,

it's thought to be conspiracy theorizing to suggest that America did it. So I'd start by asking you

about that. Why did you use Substack, your own platform, to publish this piece? And give us a little

bit of background about the story.

Well, thank you for not calling me legendary because that would put me in my grave.

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