WASHINGTON, September 26. /TASS/. The Americans that carried out the operation to destroy the Nord Stream underwater pipelines have left no traces, said US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh.

"The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months it took to plan and carry out the destruction of three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea a year ago left no traces—not a hint of the team’s existence - other than the success of their mission," he said in an article published on the Substack website.

"No significant information about the mission was put on a computer, but instead typed on a Royal or perhaps a Smith Corona typewriter with a carbon copy or two, as if the Internet and the rest of the online world had yet to be invented," Hersh wrote. "The White House was isolated from the goings-on near Oslo; various reports and updates from the field were directly provided to CIA Director Bill Burns, who was the only link between the planners and the president who authorized the mission to take place on September 26, 2022. Once the mission was completed, the typed papers and carbons were destroyed, thus leaving no physical trace - no evidence to be dug up later by a special prosecutor or a presidential historian. You could call it the perfect crime."

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 2022. The story stated US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation after nine months of deliberations with the administration’s national security staff. The White House strongly denied that was the case.

German and US media later reported, citing sources, that a certain "pro-Ukrainian group" was allegedly involved in the sabotage. Ukraine strongly denied any involvement.

The Dutch broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, or NOS, reported in mid-June, that a tip-off about the plot to attack the gas pipelines had been received from an informant in June 2022. The agency immediately passed the information to its counterparts at the CIA and to some other European countries, including Germany. The Die Zeit newspaper reported that the CIA then warned Ukraine against carrying out the attack.