Facebook joins Norway to censor Nord Stream pipeline story

Facebook teamed up with Norway last week to censor a story from Pulitzer Prize–winning independent journalist Seymour Hersh about the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.

Hersh, who has been an investigative journalist for five decades, is best known for his reporting on the Mỹ Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, illegal CIA surveillance and other major world events.

In February the reporter broke a story detailing a joint effort between the United States and Norway last year to sabotage Russia’s Nord Stream natural gas pipelines to Europe. The two governments flatly denied Hersh’s story which, if true, would constitute casus belli. They were assisted by corporate news outlets who also denied the story and continue to do so.

Despite this, Facebook and Norway deemed it necessary to censor the story on the social media platform. 

When reporter Michael Shellenberger attempted to share the story on Facebook last week, he noticed that the social media company covered the post with a warning: “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.” Once a post is considered “false” by a “fact-checker” Facebook’s algorithm automatically limits its reach.

But as it turned out, the fact-checker in this case is far from independent. Shellenberger notes that Fatkisk, the Norwegian fact-checking site which has denied Hersh’s report, is funded by NRK, a media company funded in turn by the government of Norway.

"We don't think we can make ourselves the arbiter of the truth," said then–Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg in 2020.

In his report Hersh says the plan was conceived in 2021 as the White House grew concerned that the 760-mile pipeline, which funneled cheap Russian natural gas to northern Germany, would cause Europe to become more dependent on Russia and less on the United States. 

The White House also worried that if Germany and other European states became dependent on Russian energy, they would not supply aid and weapons to Ukraine.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was authorized to come up with a solution. Sullivan assembled an interagency team that included officials from the CIA, the State and Treasury Departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The team concluded that sabotaging the pipeline would be the most effective way to isolate Russia and maintain Europe’s allegiance to the United States.

One thing that was obvious to all involved was that the operation, if discovered by Russia, could be seen as an act of war. The plan, therefore, had to be kept secret — so secret that even Congressional leaders would not know about it.

So, instead of using elite covert units from Special Operations Command, which would by law require the administration to brief Senate and House leadership on the details, the federal government decided to use deep divers from the U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City.

The Biden administration also enlisted the help of Norway, where the US has a newly refurbished submarine base. Norway, aside from being anti-Russia, would benefit from an out-of-commission Nord Stream because it would enable Norway to sell its own natural gas to Europe.

The operation was hi-tech and daring. It was decided to have divers place concrete-sleeved bombs at strategic spots on the pipeline 260 feet beneath the Baltic Sea, a few miles from Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The bombs could be detonated on Biden’s command.

But for reasons still unclear, Biden publicly announced in February 2022 that the US government “will bring an end” to Nord Stream 2. 

"If Russia invades . . . then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2," he said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "We will bring an end to it." 

When a reporter asked him how the US would end the pipeline, Biden ominously answered, "I promise you, we will be able to do it."  

Two months before, State Department official Victoria Nuland vowed that “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”  

These statements would later be used to question the Biden administration’s denial that it had anything to do with the Nord Stream’s explosion. The questions grew when a Biden official discarded rumors of a White House–authorized sabotage as “Russian disinformation,” a phrase that has become a go-to red herring for the Biden administration and its Pravda operatives in the mainstream media. The coordinated narrative accused Russia of sabotaging its own pipeline, though no motive was given.