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→Nordstream pipeline terrorist attack mastermind
<!--From its earliest days, [[Nord Stream 1]] was seen by [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] and its [[anti-Russian]] [[NATO]] partners as a threat to [[Western alliance|western dominance]]. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with [[Gazprom]], a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.
<!--From its earliest days, [[Nord Stream 1]] was seen by [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] and its [[anti-Russian]] [[NATO]] partners as a threat to [[Western alliance|western dominance]]. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with [[Gazprom]], a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.
America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened.-->Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]]’s famed Ostpolitik, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in [[World War II]] by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.-->
America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened.-->Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]]’s famed ''Ostpolitik'', which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in [[World War II]] by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.
<!--Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.
<!--Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.
In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.
In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.
It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the [[White House]], that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to Biden be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and [[currency]] restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?
It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the [[White House]], that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to Biden be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and [[]currency]] restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?
What became clear is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two [[Nord Stream]] pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of Biden.
What became clear to participants is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two [[Nord Stream]] pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of Biden.
Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The [[U.S. Navy|Navy]] proposed using a newly commissioned [[submarine]] to assault the pipeline directly. The [[Air Force]] discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The [[CIA]] argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” according to a source directly familiar with the matter said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”
<!--At the time, the CIA was directed by [[William Burns]], a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the [[Obama Administration]]. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.
Something like this had been done before. In 1971, the American intelligence community learned from still undisclosed sources that two important units of the Russian Navy were communicating via an undersea cable buried in the Sea of Okhotsk, on Russia’s Far East Coast. The cable linked a regional Navy command to the mainland headquarters at [[Vladivostok]].
A hand-picked team of Central Intelligence Agency and [[National Security Agency]] operatives was assembled somewhere in the Washington area, under deep cover, and worked out a plan, using Navy divers, modified submarines and a deep-submarine rescue vehicle, that succeeded, after much trial and error, in locating the Russian cable. The divers planted a sophisticated listening device on the cable that successfully intercepted the Russian traffic and recorded it on a taping system.
The NSA learned that senior Russian navy officers, convinced of the security of their communication link, chatted away with their peers without encryption. The recording device and its tape had to be replaced monthly and the project rolled on merrily for a decade until it was compromised by a forty-four-year-old civilian NSA technician named Ronald Pelton who was fluent in Russian. Pelton was betrayed by a Russian defector in 1985 and sentenced to prison. He was paid just $5,000 by the Russians for his revelations about the operation, along with $35,000 for other Russian operational data he provided that was never made public.
That underwater success, codenamed Ivy Bells, was innovative and risky, and produced invaluable intelligence about the Russian Navy’s intentions and planning.
Still, the interagency group was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation. Would the divers have to go to Estonia, right across the border from Russia’s natural gas loading docks, to train for the mission? “It would be a goat fuck,” the Agency was told.-->
Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the [[State Department]] were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”
Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”
What came next was stunning. On February 7, 2022 less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable [[Special military operation|Russian invasion of Ukraine]], Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor [[Olaf Scholz]], who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a [[Nord Stream 2]]. We will bring an end to it.”
Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Several of those involved in planning the pipeline mission were dismayed by what they viewed as indirect references to the attack.
“It was like putting an [[atomic bomb]] on the ground in [[Tokyo]] and telling the [[Japan]]ese that we are going to detonate it. The plan was for the options to be executed post invasion and not advertised publicly. Biden simply didn’t get it or ignored it.”
Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative [[surveillance]] of the Baltic Sea.”
The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the White House, and were eager to find out if Biden meant what he’d said—that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “[[Bill Burns]] comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”
==Rape of Afghanistan==
==Rape of Afghanistan==