The Biggest Whodunnit of the Century

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On September 26, 2022, at approximately 2:03 a.m. local time in the Baltic Sea off the southeast coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline was rocked by a blast. That explosion, followed by a series of other targeted detonations on the older Nord Stream 1 pipelines some 17 hours later, were swiftly assessed to be the result of deliberate sabotage. The explosions off the Swedish and Danish coasts set off an international mystery with unimaginably high stakes. There are a variety of international players, including powerful nation states, who would have had the motive, capability, and opportunity to conduct such an operation.

This week on Intercepted, investigative journalist and author James Bamford takes us on a tour of what he calls “the biggest Whodunnit of the century.” Bamford is one of the most respected experts on U.S. intelligence operations and covert action. He is the author of several best-selling books, including “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency” and “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” His most recent book is “Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence.”

Last week, The Nation published a story by Bamford in which he argues that Ukraine and Poland should be viewed as the top suspects in the sabotage and that the U.S. government almost certainly knows exactly who bombed the pipelines and how. That story is titled “The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity.”

Correction: May 17, 2023

A previous version of this episode incorrectly numbered the initial blasts on the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline at 2:03 a.m. The show description and audio have been updated.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	Welcome to intercepted. I'm Jeremy Skahill.
0:44.0	On September 26, 2022, at approximately 203 AM local time in the Baltic Sea,
0:50.0	off the southeast coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline experienced blasts on its line A.
0:59.0	Danish warplanes circled above assessing the situation and monitoring a bubbling pool emerging from the sea.
1:06.0	Approximately 17 hours later, at 7.04 PM, just as the twilight was extinguishing over the sea and roughly 70 kilometers northeast of the early morning blasts,
1:17.0	two explosions ripped through line B of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, creating craters approximately 250 meters apart.
1:25.0	Seven seconds later, line A of the Nord Stream 1 is rocked by two detonations, also roughly 250 meters apart.
1:33.0	The only so-called string of the Nord Stream pipelines left intact was the easternmost one, line B of the Nord Stream 2.
1:42.0	It didn't take long for Swedish seismologists to calculate that the massive blasts were not caused by an earthquake or some other act of nature.
1:51.0	Whatever happened deep beneath the sea was the work of human beings and powerful explosives, and so a mystery began.
1:59.0	Who were these people?
2:01.0	Why did they conduct what appeared to be surgical and sophisticated strikes against a massive and profitable piece of Russian infrastructure, whose primary function was to provide gas to Germany and other European markets?
2:15.0	For what state or cause were these people working?
2:19.0	Within hours, political leaders from both Sweden and Denmark, the two nations closest to the blast sites, told the public that this was no accident.
2:27.0	It was a deliberate act of sabotage.
2:30.0	Eventually, a consensus formed among all affected countries, that whoever did this was likely sponsored by a nation state.
2:38.0	Russia began accusing western nations, initially suggesting it was the work of the British.
2:43.0	The U.S. and its allies sought to cast the spotlight of blame on Russia, in any case no one offered any concrete evidence to support their theories and accusations.
2:54.0	From the beginning, the Nord Stream pipelines, which are majority owned by the Russian consortium Gazprom, was a contentious project to say the least.
3:03.0	It was subject to sanctions under President Donald Trump, and then as Russia began its preparations for an invasion of Ukraine, it rose to a high priority level in the Biden White House.
3:14.0	Ukraine viewed the pipeline as an economic engine to fuel Russia's war machine, and senior U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden himself, began to make ominous threats about the future of the pipeline, should Vladimir Putin move forward with his invasion.
	...

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