NEW YORK, February 22. /TASS/. US journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on Wednesday saying that the US and Norway jointly conduct covert maritime operations at least since the war in Vietnam.

The journalist asked "why did much of the secret planning and training" for the sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, for which he blamed the US, "take place in Norway."

"The simple answer is that the Norwegian Navy has a long and murky history of cooperation with American intelligence," Hersh said in the article he posted to the Substack platform.

"Five months ago that teamwork - about which we still know very little - resulted in the destruction of two pipelines, on orders of [US] President [Joe] Biden, with international implications yet to be determined. And six decades ago, so the histories of those years have it, a small group of Norwegian seamen were entangled in a presidential deceit that led to an early—and bloody—turning point in the Vietnam war," he said.

The journalist cited evidence that by 1964 at least two Norwegian seamen had confessed to complicity in covert operations organized by the CIA. He said that Norway in the same year sold the United States six combat boats that were delivered to the base used by the US Navy in Da Nang, where Norwegian seamen also arrived, allegedly to train the US and Vietnamese military in the management of these boats. Later, according to Hersh, they were involved in the fighting, and Norway sold the United States another 18 such boats, six of which were destroyed in the fighting.

The Nord Stream AG company reported on September 27 that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage the day before. Swedish seismologists later reported that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26. The Swedish Prosecutor’s Office said on November 18 that the explosions were an act of sabotage. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started an investigation into the case as an attack of international terrorists.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on February 8 published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were planted by US Navy divers, helped by Norwegian specialists, under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that the CIA and Burns took part in the preparation of the operation, and US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation after nine months of deliberations with the administration’s national security staff. Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council at the White House, responded to a request for comment from TASS that the story laid out by Hersh was totally false and complete fiction.