USA: Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with "Going Underground" that US President Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines to ensure that Germany could not change its mind about sanctions against Russia and weapons shipments to Ukraine.

In a piece earlier this month, Hersh accused the US and Norway of being responsible for the explosions that shut down the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which were constructed beneath the Baltic Sea to transport Russian natural gas to Western Europe.

Hersh claimed that the US intelligence community conceived the plan "in late 2021," prior to the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine, in an interview with Afshin Rattansi this week.

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However, Hersh asserted that the spies were upset "because it was supposed to be a covert operation" when Biden and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland both publicly spoke about "stopping" and "ending" Nord Stream 2.

Hersh said to Rattansi, "The people who did this thing in the intelligence community, they initially thought it was a great idea. His account states that the bombs were detonated in June, just before the naval exercise BALTOPS 2022 off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Late in September, as Ukraine was dealing with "a serious issue" on the battlefield, the bombs detonated.

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It won't make the war any better. He was doing it to stop Germany and Western Europe from opening the pipeline in the event that the winter arrived suddenly, Hersh said.

The goal of the mission, he continued, was "to ensure that Europe continues to support NATO and continues funnelling arms into what is clearly a proxy war against Russia that is being fought right now."

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Hersh responded that he had not spoken to anyone in Russia when asked whether Moscow had somehow missed the American involvement and had instead focused on the UK. He could say that Russia blowing up its own pipeline would be "absolutely insane." That assessment is shared by nearly everyone in the pipeline industry

All claims of US involvement in the attack on Nord Stream have been refuted by the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, who all denounced Hersh's article as "fiction." Russia has requested a UN investigation that is conducted independently into what it has referred to as an act of international terrorism.