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For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com.
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How did a group of civilian divers carry out what's been described as one of the greatest acts of sabotage of the 21st century? And how did they finally get exposed? Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
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And I'm David McClarskey.
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And David, last time we told the story of how Germany came to depend on Russia for its energy security during the first two decades of the 21st century with the building of Nord Stream 1 and then Nord Stream 2, these huge pipelines which come from Putin's Russia and built with the help of a Stasi spy. But then how, as Putin invades Ukraine for the full scale invasion in 2022, a group of Ukrainian spies under a kind of startup culture decide they're going to do something about it. So we left, I guess, didn't we? With the planning underway and the plot being developed within Ukraine, but perhaps with others soon to find out about it.
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A
Well, that's right. And we are once again joined by Bojan Panchevsky, who is the chief European political correspondent of the Wall Street Journal and author of the absolutely wonderful newly released book the Nord Stream Conspiracy. So welcome Bojan. Thanks for being back with us.
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C
Hey, great to be back.
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D
Foreign.
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This episode is brought to you by HP.
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With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that that fits their needs and budget.
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To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com classified the rest is classified. Listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code TRIC10
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A
so last time we looked at the beginnings of this Ukrainian plot to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline. But I think, I think now it's time to get to a topic that, you know, frankly, warms my heart to see included in this story, which is the role that the Central Intelligence Agency played in this, in this operation, which, you know, as I was reading your book, Boyan, I was, I was disturbed that, spoiler alert, it wasn't actually the CIA who was responsible for this, but they did, the agency did have some involvement in this story. So maybe could you tell us a little bit about, about what role it played?
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B
This is fairly typical for David, which is that he can't make up his mind whether he wants, you know, the CIA to be involved in this act of destructive civilian sabotage or not, you know, whether he wants to have them take credit for it or not. I feel like you're conflicted by the role of the CIA because, you know, they do get accused of it, but they kind of, I mean, they weren't directly involved, were they born, but they were kind of maybe aware of it. It's kind of interesting, isn't it?
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C
It's interesting because I spoke to a bunch of people at the CIA who were in service at the time or even now who were either directly responsible for the region or were responsible for kind of overseeing European operations. Right all the way to the very top. And so I really, really explored the possibility of CIA involvement. And I think I got to the bottom of it. It's been a subject of a lot of theories because they're basically main theories about who blew up Nord Stream, largely due to the fact that there's no official information about this case. Right. The, the only investigation still running is in Germany and the Germans haven't officially yet released anything. So obviously people want to know and they start kind of thinking and believing things. And so one theory was obviously the CIA and another theory was that the Russian did it themselves to themselves, which was also quite unlikely, you know, for many reasons. But anyway, it's this. The people who masterminded the attack on Nord Stream and helped carry it out were in fact closely collaborating with the CIA since 2014, since the year when the fate of Ukraine took a sharp turn westwards. There was this uprising, there was this overthrow of the pro Russian government, and then there was a great effort, societal and political, which obviously extended to the special services to fully emancipate themselves from Russia. And it's kind of dominance, traditional dominance. So these guys were working closely with the CIA. They had been receiving funding from the CIA for operations prior to the full scale invasion. They had been receiving technology from the CIA which was extremely helpful in their battle against Russia. And they've been receiving tactical training. Now the thing is, in American reporting that role is always described as kind of patronage. Like the Americans are patronizing the Ukrainians, teaching them how to do things. And in my experience that's not entirely true because when I asked the Americans, they tell me what happened, how they took them out for a training in the Netherlands, for example, how they trained them in counter intelligence and so on. And then I asked the Ukrainians who took part in the training, what was the best part. And they were like, oh, the best part was the pair Diem's, you know, we got a bunch of money and credit cards and we could get drunk every night. You know, they enjoy this themselves.
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A
We, we would. Just one, just one note on that. So when, when various unspecified Middle Eastern services would come to, to Washington for liaison meetings, the highlight was not the actual meetings, it was that they got taken to the Tyson's Corner Mall or the Galleria Mall in Northern Virginia and on, usually on the agency's dime, were able to shop for things that they could then bring back, bring back home. And then they would get taken out for a meal where they would predictably become severely intoxicated. And that sequence of events was always the highlight of their, of their trip. It was not the actual substance. So this is very much, this is very much in keeping with that tradition of agency liaison activities.
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C
Time on a tradition, right. So in the minds of the Ukrainians, the relationship was one of patronage in the sense that CIA was providing tech and cash and that's what they wanted. You know, they didn't really want tactics. I mean, tactical training is useful obviously for young operatives, but in terms of planning their operations or setting their goals. They were entirely sovereign in that. And I think the CIA even objected to some of the more crazy ideas they had. And as we will see, they obviously objected to Nord Stream as well. So it's not the full story that's being told in the classical media coverage of this relationship because essentially to the Ukrainians or to the masterminds of Ukrainian services, the Americans were a cash cow, really what they were. So I think that is the relationship, it's a very interesting dynamic relationship between the CIA and the Ukrainian services. And it's not what it seems on the surface. Certainly the Ukrainians have profited greatly from the relationship, but I think they've masterminded their own sort of affairs and that's very important to note.
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A
What was your sense, as you were reporting for the book, on the role the CIA actually played, if any, in the operation?
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C
Well, look, I mean, in the actual operation, they, they had zero role. What happened was that, as I said, the masterminds of the operation were senior top ranking officers of the intelligence services in Ukraine and they had long standing contacts with sort of fellow spooks in the CIA, but not only in the CIA, elsewhere as well. And they sought advice from people they knew who worked for the agency at the time about how to operate at the bottom of the ocean, because they had done a lot of crazy stuff, but they never actually worked at the bottom of the ocean. They never blown up a subsea pipeline. So they sought advice from, from a relatively senior CIA officer who privately said, okay, I'll kind of ask around and let you know. And he did exactly that. So this is not with the knowledge of the agency. This is not the agency speaking. It's, it is a, a person who operates on behalf of the agency in the region, has a very close relationship with these people, but is trying to help them, sort of, so to speak, bilaterally without informing his superiors. So he kind of figured out from people at the agency what is the modus operandi potentially for this. And he came back with an idea that involved drones and things, undersea drones and whatever, and it would have cost, you know, around $50 million. And Ukrainians said, oh, thank you, that's very kind of you, but I think we'll, we'll probably do it a different way because we do not have $50 million. And so they figured we'll just use divers, we'll get a small boat, we'll, we'll use a small crew of crack divers and the divers will go down to the bottom of the ocean and plant the mines onto the pipelines, and it will be as simple as that.
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B
That's what I think. So fascinating about this that if, if the CIA had done it, it would have been a $50 million operation with drones. You could imagine satellites overhead, loads of technology, probably loads of support teams. And yet the Ukrainians decide, nah, we're not going to do that. We're going to use civilian divers. I think this is the bit that's fascinating about it because of the depth you require real specialist expertise. So they decide we're going to try and do this by just finding people who are expert divers and who are loyal to Ukraine and up for doing it. It's a really, again, a different model of how you do an intelligence operation compared to using a highly trained Special Forces or, you know, CIA or MI6 or, you know, Special Boat Service or Navy SEAL team or something like that, isn't it?
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C
Well, initially they did try to tap their own special services because remember, this operation was conceived within a elite unit of the Special. But quickly they found out that the combat divers in the Special Forces do not possess the skills to go that deep. What they typically do is for the body of water, they put perhaps mines on ships and things like that. But, you know, diving below a depth of 40 meters requires breeding a special mix of gases because oxygen becomes toxic for the human body at that depth. So you have to breed in a mixture of nitrogen and helium, et cetera. And it's a very different skill set. It requires a lot of training and typically in the naval or the armed forces is the engineering units who have these skills. And so they couldn't find anyone immediately in their unit or in the broader kind of community of special forces operators that they were familiar with who had the skill set. There were plenty of combat divers, but they couldn't go that deep. And so they decided to use what is known in the intelligence world as proxies. One of the members of this Special Forces unit was a hobby diver or is a hobby diver himself, and he has gone down to 110 meters. He showed me photographs to prove this. He was very proud. And he was acquainted with a community of deep sea divers in Ukraine. They call themselves tech divers. That's the technical term, technical divers. And these are the people who can use these special devices, mixture of gases. They can use so called rebreathers, which are a kind of scuba diving equipment that recycles your breath instead of kind of pumping it out. And so you, you don't need that many breeding tanks with you. So he said, why don't we just use the civilians? You know, they're as good as anyone. And the commanders of the unit were immediately comfortable with that proposal because they had indeed used proxies in their war against Russia. So that's how the idea was born. And then they started recruiting these divers. And for the recruitment, they used the SPU playbook, the playbook of the Central Intelligence Service of Ukraine, which was basically a kind of a bunch of psychometric tests and surveillance. They tapped their phones, they put cameras in their apartments. They were observing them, surveilling them, how they react to the revelations that they are being tapped by secret services, that they are required to do something extremely dangerous in a foreign country. And they also kind of tried to estimate their levels of patriotism because it was one the deciding criterion for the operation was that they are going to be extreme patriots because they didn't think people would risk their lives for something like this otherwise.
- [15:23]
A
Can you paint a portrait of some of these divers in particular? I'm thinking of the woman you, you call Freya, who seems like a very, in some respects, an unusual candidate for this kind of work.
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C
Well, all of them were unusual candidates. She was the sole woman in the whole team. So the total team was around 20 people with the logistical support and the crews on the boats. And she was the only woman on the team which actually was initially seen as a weakness because the colonel, the guy and the general, the people who masterminded the operation, were worried that the presence of a single woman in the entire kind of operation will change the dynamic of how people kind of work with each other. And they were not sure that's a good thing originally. And so the general wanted to basically get rid of her initially. And the colonel put his foot down because he was the mastermind, he was the operational mastermind, because he told me he saw in her something that the others, the male colleagues, didn't have, which was kind of leadership capacity. He felt that if push comes to shove, she would take a leadership role and persevere in the face of mortal danger. So she was in her mid-30s when the operation was planned. She was at the time and now experienced deep sea diver. She had over 15 years of diving experience. She had, she had done diving across the world. She, shortly before the war, the full scale invasion started. She was diving in a kind of cave system in Central America. She rescued a fellow diver who had an accident. So she kind of proved that she was able to operate under immense stress in A life threatening environment. She's, you know, she was seen as extremely brave and even reckless even. And, and she was a sort of a force of nature, you know, that's how she was described. She was crucial to the operation in the sense that as things go in operations like that, everything went wrong. At one point they lost an explosive charge and then they ran into a kind of gale force storm during the sailing. And the operation was dangerous as it was, and then the storm made it that much more difficult and complicated. So the crew was sort of reluctant to go down, you know, in that severe weather. To go down to the bottom of the ocean and then come up again. It's very dangerous. Going in and out in that weather is extremely dangerous. And so they kind of voted to abandon the mission. And she was the one who sort of. This was recounted by other crew members and her superior officers. She kind of shamed them into continuing with the mission because she said, essentially, I understand you're worried, just let me go, I'll do it quickly and then you'll pick me up and off we go. You know, it's not a problem at all, I don't mind. And then the men were kind of sort of, you know, they couldn't let her do it herself, so they sort of kicked into action and that's how in fact, they completed the mission.
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B
It's an interesting dynamic, isn't it?
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C
Yeah, well, of course, and it kind of makes sense because, you know, these people on the boat, we didn't discuss the crew set up on the boat. On the Nord Stream boat, there were originally three soldiers and three divers, including the woman. And then a fourth diver came in later in the final phase. And the three officers, one of them was a skipper, the other one was the commander of the unit, and the third one was kind of an explosives expert. And the three other divers, including the woman, their job was to kind of go down and put the mines onto the pipelines. So she did assume a leadership role in the end, just like the colonel had predicted in the recruitment analysis.
- [19:19]
B
It's interesting because she obviously gets in the write ups, you know, including when people are kind of reviewing and talking about your book. She's often kind of seen as a glamour model, you know, is how she's described, because she did have that in her early past. It slightly underplays how experienced the diver she is.
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C
I don't want to reduce her to that. I mean, she. In her early 20s, very early, I think she was 20 years old. She, she did work briefly as a model, but, you know, it's absolutely, you know, I wouldn't reduce her to that.
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B
No, that was something plays a really interesting role in the mission and quite a critical, pivotal one. So, you know, you were taking us there to that actual dive in September. Things go wrong, don't they? I mean, but. But ultimately they managed to place enough charges for it to be successful.
- [20:03]
C
Exactly. So the original plan was to place eight charges. They lost a couple of charges, then they got their stockpile replenished, and then in the end, they managed to fulfill their mission even ahead of schedule and sort of get away and come back to Ukraine after having triggered the timers that eventually detonated the pipelines. So from their perspective, the mission was near total success. It wasn't a total success because one line, one string of Nord Stream 2, the newer pipeline was not, in fact, destroyed, but as a consequence, one line remains intact. It's slightly damaged, but it's functional. The Russians claim it's functional. So out of four lines, they've destroyed three, utterly destroyed them, and in some cases, over a length of hundreds of meters. The explosion was so potent, so violent, that it kind of destroyed the environment entirely, but one line remained intact. But overall, they estimated their mission to have been an almost complete success.
- [21:12]
A
Can we just back up a second? Because I think our listeners would be interested in this, the tradecraft of the team actually getting in place. Like, how did they. How did they manage cover and the actual kind of travel and transport logistics? Because I think that is, you know, it's. It's a bit in the weeds, but it's actually a fundamental piece of how these operations are either kept clandestine or, you know, as you talk about in the book, eventually uncovered, at least by. By an investigative team. How did they manage the COVID and the travel in this. In this case?
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C
Yeah, there's plenty of detail in my book, and some of the detail is rather extraordinary of how they went about their business. It's important to note that the entire operation cost $250,000, which, which is penis compared to what, what the CIA guy proposed with his 50 million bucks project.
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A
That seems like an outrageous number, by the way. That is, is that, is that number designed to. To discourage them from doing it? Is it, like, is there a political motivation? Because that budget seems really high.
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C
Well, I mean, when you say discouraged, we should kind of, kind of rewind a little bit. When the operation was leaked, the CIA did everything to discourage them. Absolutely. I mean, William Burns himself was immediately notified, so he went all the way to the top.
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B
We should Explain. There was a leak, wasn't there? There was a leak about the plan, which is important.
- [22:40]
C
That's right. So the. Originally the operation was meant to be executed on 19 June 2022. So it was conceived sometime in end of March, beginning of April. By May, they had recruited the proxies, the civilians, and in June they were meant to blow up the pipeline. But towards the end of the final phase, just before they kind of were meant to set off. And originally they wanted to set sail from South Sweden, not from Germany, as they did eventually, because it's actually geographically closer to the sites of the explosions, it's easier to reach the pipelines. But the operation was leaked by the very capable military intelligence agency of the Netherlands. Of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Now, the more savvy members of your audience will know that although this sounds like contradiction in terms of Dutch intelligence service, they are actually very, very, very good, very well regarded.
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B
They're very good. On the Russian.
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A
What a. What a slam there.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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A
On the Dutch Boyad, who's just out
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B
the World cup and now they're.
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C
Yeah, by Morocco.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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C
They got. They got booted out very early, but they have a extremely valuable and capable service which is essentially the associate member of the Five Eyes, which is incredible. You know, a lot of countries have, have sort of tried to enter the realm of the Five Eyes. Germany, France, Japan, they're all denied access.
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B
I think that's because the Dutch have something to bring to the table because they've done stuff like hacking Russian hacking into Russian CCD cameras, which are watching Russian hackers and stuff like that to feed back. So they've got some really capable stuff. So they picked up, say somehow picked up the, the details of this operation and then they pass it to the Americans.
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C
They picked up the full details of the operation, pretty much. They immediately passed it on to the Americans in an encrypted memo. The memo exploded like a bombshell within the American system. It went all the way up to William Burns and went all the way up to the National Security Council. So a lot of people were informed. And what the American system did is to scramble and try to prevent this from happening, because they thought it was foolish, stupid and useless to attack people pipeline which may damage Germany's energy supply at the time where the American strategic goal of the Biden administration was to get Germany to bear the brunt of the support for Ukraine, which eventually did happen. In fact, now Germany today is the biggest backer of Ukraine in the whole world. So I think from what I gather, William Burns was thinking, if this scandal kind of blows up, it will make it politically difficult for the Chancellor to. To unleash this huge support in a country which had been pacifist for decades, in a country which has been slightly pro Russian, in a country where people are worried about war, they're wary of supporting Ukraine because they're wary of escalation, et cetera. So they thought, on balance, this was a very bad thing for Ukraine. And essentially they warned the Germans and they told them, someone's plotting to blow up your pipeline. They passed on the Dutch note, however, they didn't pass on verbatim. They intervened a little bit and I describe in the book how that happened. And then they went to the Ukrainians and told them to cease and desist. And they went to one of the masterminds of the plot directly and they forced him to put it in writing that he will not participate in a plot to blow up the pipeline, which he happily did. He wrote a message to someone senior at the CIA saying, well, we will not do this, and I will certainly play no role in anything like that. And he did it anyway. Which is the kind of what they tend to do to Ukrainians when you try to. They've done that a number of times. When you try to limit the operation of their weapons systems, they get weapon systems from the west and then the west tells them, oh, but don't do this and don't do that. So they are their own people. So they did it anyway. But there are real profound and documented in writing, some of which I've seen myself, efforts by the CIA, and not just by the CIA, but also by the National Security Council to prevent this from happening, right, by warning the Germans and by telling the Ukrainians to stop. So when that happened, the Ukrainians simply postponed the operation. They put it on ice for a few. For a couple of months, and they just kind of went ahead with it in late August. So that's important to know that you know that that part of the CIA involvement is crucial because it really shows that from, from the top onwards, people did try to stop this.
- [27:29]
A
So back to the. The tradecraft then of how they got in position and the. And the COVID they used.
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C
So what they, what they did is first they got issued a real Ukrainian passports by the intelligence service under fake names, or rather the first name was the right name and the surname was, was. Was a pseudonym. The passports were real. And then they used civilian cars to travel to Poland, which is Ukraine's border with the European Union. Poland shares a border with Ukraine, and then westwards, it shares a border with Germany, from where the operation was eventually launched. They traveled to a safe house in Poland where the teams gathered and stayed for a while until they obtained fake European Union identifications. And they were told never to use any Ukrainian IDs while on European soil in order not to establish any kind of connection between Ukraine and the attacks. So at all times they were using these fake documents, which were Bulgarian and in one case, Romanian.
- [28:43]
A
Do we know how they got those fake documents?
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C
At least one of the documents was obtained through their secret service connections in a friendly country in Eastern Europe, and the other ones were obtained through a criminal clan in another Eastern European country. Because, as you know, intelligence services do nurture relationships with each other, but also with the criminal underworld quite often. And they tapped these connections. So they, they got their IDs, and then from then on they were driven to a small port where they picked up the yacht and the rest of the civilian crew went to another port, a smaller port, much smaller port, where there was no CCTV in operation, or so they believed. And they. They were. Then they spent the night there, and then they set sail the following morning on a small yacht called Andromeda, which then took them to the sites of where they laid the mines. And during the entire voyage, they used the fake IDs. And their legend was that they are scuba diver enthusiasts on a holiday in the Baltic, which is a fairly plausible legend because the Baltic is full of these small yachts. It's a favorite sailing spot in, you know, Northern Europeans, the Swedes, the Dutch, the Germans, the Bolts. They're keen sailors. So there are thousands and thousands of these small sailing boats at any given time.
- [30:11]
A
Wasn't one of the potential cover story ideas thrown around that they were all shooting a diving or scuba themed porno film? They. They decided to abandon that as the COVID story. Huh.
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C
I never found out whether they actually were going to deploy that cover story, but that was the COVID story that was given to them by the colonel who thought, how useful that we actually do have a woman on board. So we can always argue we're making a porn movie.
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B
That's a very specific genre.
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C
Well, he's over 50 years old now, and when he was growing up in the Soviet Union, there was this notorious sort of notion that Germany and Sweden are the Mecca for porn movie. And they had this huge porn industry, which was in fact true, but before the Internet. Right. So that, you know that now it's a historic fact. Maybe a Pub quiz kind of thing. But in the mind of the Colonel, who wasn't up to date with the latest sort of developments in digital porn, you know, these. It would have been perfectly normal to kind of stop a boat full of people and then, yeah, yeah, we're making a porn movie, you know, on the high seas. So they never. To my knowledge, they never deployed that. And they were quite uncomfortable, actually. They laughed at first. First. And then they were sort of having second thoughts about how competent their commanders are, because they thought, is this really like. Is this. Is this a feasible cover story?
- [31:34]
B
So the COVID story does hold, though. The Andromeda sets sail, the explosives are laid, and then in September, we get this explosion. So let's maybe take a break there and afterwards we'll come back and look at the rather messy and complicated aftermath of the Nord Stream 2 explosion.
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A
Hello, everybody. We've got some very exciting news to share with you.
- [32:00]
B
That's right, if you're thinking about joining the declassified club, becoming what we call a Secret Squirrel, then you're in luck, as we're currently holding a summer sale.
- [32:10]
A
That's right, from now until the end of August, you can get an extra 20% off an annual subscription. All you need to do is head to the restisclassified.com and use the code summer26 when you purchase an annual plan.
- [32:24]
B
It is perfect, isn't it, David? For those warmer months, nothing says relaxing on holiday like geopolitical intrigue and unexplained diplomatic incidents. And we've got brilliant content lined up for the next few months, including a series on the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network and an exclusive insight into into the sabotage operation behind the destruction of the Nordstream Pipeline in 2022.
- [32:49]
A
Plus, your summer travels are the perfect time to catch up on exclusive bonus content from our archive. Listen to our interview with former Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans. Join us for a KGB hotel tour in Tallinn or dive into one of our Iraq WMD series bonus episodes.
- [33:06]
B
But the discount won't last forever though, will it? So make the most of it before the end of August. Sign up now and join the club.
- [33:14]
D
Priceline Negotiator it's me, the Priceline negotiator.
- [33:20]
A
We don't need the jingle twice.
- [33:21]
D
What about a third time?
- [33:23]
A
Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars.
- [33:30]
D
Seems like you decided.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.
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D
Time to read the tagline Fine.
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A
No one deals more deals than Priceline. Please stop Priceline.
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D
Priceline.
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B
Touche.
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C
Priceline.
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B
Priceline.
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D
Howdy, shoppers. Fire up that propane grill and settle in for a new season of Hulu's hit animated series, King of the Hill. Pink and Peggy are staying active in retirement.
- [33:53]
B
That's a dog.
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C
You will not have to lift a finger.
- [33:56]
D
Bobby and Connie hard launch their relationship.
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C
Now that we're dating, it's important your parents know I'm a man.
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D
And the alley guys are. Well, they're still the alley guys.
- [34:05]
F
Yep.
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D
Watch the new season of the Hulu original original series, King of the Hill, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. This has been a paid advertisement, so welcome back.
- [34:17]
B
The Nordstream pipeline has exploded in the Baltic Sea. And I can remember this very well because there was this question about who did it. And actually, at first, a lot of people did think it was the Russians. I mean, it sounds implausible now why they blow up their own pipeline.
- [34:34]
F
It does.
- [34:35]
A
It does sound implausible.
- [34:37]
B
But there were theories, because there were theories like that, you know, they were doing it to make a point that they could deny the supply of energy to Europe, but there was some kind of legal reason that they couldn't not supply the gas unless the pipelines have been disabled in that form. But I remember. So, you know, my memory of this is then a few. I guess maybe a few weeks or months after the explosion, when it was still quite mysterious. And it was pretty mysterious until Boyan's book really kind of came out and answered it. I remember talking to a. I'll discreetly call them a Western intelligence official. And this Western intelligence official was. Was telling me lots of bad things the Russians were doing and what they got up to. And then I said, well, so what about Nord Stream? And they just went very quiet. And I remember thinking to myself, the fact that you're not pinning this on the Russians, when you'd be telling me all the other terrible things the Russians were doing, I remember thinking to myself, hmm, that maybe suggests it wasn't the Russians. But it's interesting, isn't it, Bojan? Because a lot of people did think it was the Russians. And then the theory comes up that it was those dastardly people at the CIA.
- [35:40]
A
I was just going to say, I mean, hindsight 20 20, obviously, but the most plausible it feels to me, and it's always felt to be like the country that had the greatest interest in blowing the pipeline up was Ukraine. So, yeah, the, the, the fact that the conversation wound up being either it's a Russian sort of false flag or maybe the more seaboard Hirsch, Tucker Carlson end of the spectrum where it's the CIA. I don't know, it just felt, yeah, it felt crazy.
- [36:15]
B
I'm going to defend my, my, my own journalism and that my colleagues who didn't immediately, you know, pin it on the Ukrainians and say, I, I think part of the problem was that the view at the time was that this required a really kind of high level intelligence operation, that you needed kind of underwater specialist subs to deliver drones which could plant the explosives, or you'd need kind of military level divers deployed by subs. And this was only the stuff that frankly the Russians or the CIA could do. And is that, come on, that's fair, isn't it? That was the assumption. I mean, I agree that assumption proved to be wrong, which is an interesting lesson, but I think that's what guided us, wasn't it?
- [36:55]
C
That was the assumption that was also fed by experts who were making mistakes in estimation. So, for example, a lot of experts, explosives experts, but also seismologists, tried to estimate the power of the explosion and by that proxy estimate how much explosive was required for it. And they initially arrived at the conclusion that you would have needed 500kg, half a ton of TNT or equivalent. And obviously you can't put that on a small boat, right? I mean, so essentially they were like, oh, this was a massive operation. It required huge submarines, ships, underwater drones, etc. But actually they were wrong because what happened was the Ukrainians utilized the skills of a retired professor, an engineering professor, explosives experts from one of the high institutes of learning in Kiev. So this guy devised a very, very simple contraption. And the actual weight of, of the explosive device was not much more than 30 kilograms, all things included. They put it into a diver's tank, so in a bottle, you know, one of these kind of steel bottles. So it was very simple. The idea was that the pipelines are so highly pressurized that the interaction between the pressure at the bottom of the ocean and the pressure inside the pipeline just requires a tiny little trigger, you know, like a sting from, from a needle. And then that tiny hole will just kind of rip out everything and rip open the pipeline and, and trigger this chain reaction that would lead to this enormous explosion, which is exactly what happened. And that I think the experts were fooled by that. They didn't realize the mechanics of the explosive device and the chain reaction it was designed to trigger. And then I think I do genuinely believe that anyone in a position of sort of in high office who had any actual knowledge about the operation never for a moment believed it was the Russians. But what they did try to do is to lead journalists and others believe that it was the Russians in order to kind of divert attention because it was politically not entirely opportune for the Western alliance at the time for such a story to come out. I think I was at the receiving end of many briefings from U.S. officials, from other Western officials, from German officials who were saying. I mean, they never actually said it was the Russia and we know it, but they would say things like, we have no evidence, but, you know, why don't you look at Russia? They do this all the time. And here's the motive and the motives was something very complicated about. They had a contract to deliver the gas, and they would be penalized if they don't deliver the gas. So in order to declare force majeure, in a legal sense, they had to blow up the pipeline. And then people who didn't really know much about the pipelines and what they meant to Vladimir Putin and his personal investment over 20 years into that project, they would think, well, that kind of makes sense. So I would say it was a part of, you know, it was an amalgamation of some experts getting it a little bit wrong about how the explosives were devised. And then also kind of, Russia is a rogue nation. It has become a rogue nation. Russians are invading other countries. They've invaded Georgia, they invaded Ukraine. Now they're committing atrocities. They are waging hybrid war on NATO in Europe, they're attacking targets. In Great Britain, they're attacking targets, factories, railway tracks, et cetera. In Germany, in Poland, shopping centers setting on fire. I broke the story about the DHL incendiary packages. You know, they were. They devised a very clever sort of, you know, clockwork device that. That was meant to bring down an airliner. They stuffed it into kind of sex toys and massage. Yes, again, toys and stuff like that. So it's pretty innovative again, but. But really kind of frightening. So, you know, the Russians are doing these things, so why wouldn't they blow up a pipeline? It was kind of in keeping with what they actually are doing and have been doing. So it wasn't a difficult story to believe in. And equally so the CIA story you mentioned, Cy Hirsch and Tucker, I think Tucker based his conviction on that Hirsch story. And Hirsch published a blog post in which he described how the Americans did it with the help of the Norwegians, which I found particularly funny because I know Norway really well and actually knew the Biden administration people who were in that sort of area. You know, the guy at the CIA who would have been overseeing an operation like that, I actually went to him at one point and I asked him, did you have anything to do with this? And he was sort of kind of bewildered at the idea. He told me, you know, he's now not in office anymore, but he told me, you know, I was busy during the Biden administration. I was busy doing diversity tradings every week. You know, like the idea that we will blow up European, European infrastructure. You know, it's, it's not, it's not Nixon anymore.
- [41:54]
A
You know, that's the part of it that never made sense to me is. I mean, the agency does have a history of using covert action programs to destroy critical infrastructure, right? We did it in Cuba in the 60s, we did it in Nicaragua in the 80s. We mined harbors, we blew up fuel depots or used proxies to do it. The thing that all of those have in common is that the infrastructure that is being destroyed is owned and operated by a hostile country. And that's the piece of this that I had a hard time with, is just thinking about the way a covert action program ends up being authorized and the immense amount of paperwork and bureaucracy and lawyers that get involved in these things. The idea that the US Would be involved in an operation that is destroying a piece of infrastructure that's part owned by a conglomerate of Western European countries feels like a stretch to me. If it were solely owned by the Russians and if it was an intra Russian pipeline that had some kind of strategic importance, I could definitely see that being something that the agency could be involved in. But that's the ownership piece of this is the part that never, never squared with me.
- [43:16]
C
And also it was never necessary, you know, exhibit A for the proponents of the theory did the CIA did it was that statement by President Biden when he said we'll put an end to the pipeline or something to that extent, if Putin marches into Ukraine, we'll end the pipeline. And people said, aha. Well, that's what he meant. In fact, what he meant was sanctions. And his people at the time explained to me in great detail how American extraterritorial sanctions will kill any project in Europe because you're not allowed to buy, to do business with gas from. You can't buy gas. So it doesn't matter if the pipeline operates or doesn't operate when you can't actually make use of the gas. And so. And in Fact, that's what's happening now. The pipeline is under sanctions, so nobody could ever, you know, make use of it until, until the sanctions are lifted. So there's absolutely no need to blow it up. You know, if you're, if you're the United States.
- [44:12]
B
Boy, I mean, your book brilliantly tells the story of the investigation as well by the Germans and, you know, we won't go into that here and how they uncover, particularly through the Andromeda, through the boat that was used, they uncover who was behind it. And it's a fascinating part of the story, but I guess just to bring us towards the end is the question about. Well, the finger points towards Ukraine for having done it. I mean, you've provided lots of evidence, They've got evidence from their investigation and yet everyone is kind of quite quiet about it. The fallout is really interesting, isn't it? I mean, I guess there's been some consequences for some of the individuals who were on the boat and involved in the operation because some of them had to almost be extracted, I think, and taken back to Ukraine before they could be arrested. But there's not been any big diplomatic row, has there? The Germans, despite a key piece of their infrastructure being blown up, haven't really said anything or done anything because I guess it's kind of awkward, isn't it?
- [45:14]
C
Well, there are two things to be said about that. The first thing is that the Germans didn't take it on the chin because Germany has decided it is in its strategic national interest to support Ukraine, Ukraine and to fend off Russian aggression in Ukraine, to fortify Ukraine as a buffer zone between an increasingly hostile neo imperialist Russia and Western and Eastern Europe. So they've decided that for themselves. The second thing though is that there will be actually a massive trial by the end of the summer, perhaps the beginning of autumn. A suspect has been apprehended as a result of the German investigation and the German prosecution, prosecutors. The federal Prosecutor General, which is the highest prosecutor in Germany, accuses this man of having been the commander of the unit of the team that blew up Nord Stream. And he will be put on trial in Hamburg, I think, September, October by the latest. And this man is a officer who is now retired but used to serve in the Special Forces of Ukraine. Prior to that he served, served in the intelligence service. He retired, I believe, with the rank of Captain, captain of the army, that is. So the German prosecutors haven't issued the indictment yet, but from what I hear, the indictment will say this was conceived and executed on behalf of the State of Ukraine. So they will not try to claim that this was somehow a private criminal enterprise, but rather that this was a military. They will admit that. That this was a military operation.
- [46:53]
B
Which is interesting, isn't it? Because there's always the ambiguity about it is so interesting because as you said, you know, it was probably signed off by Zaluzhny, but not Zelensky, the president. And through this kind of startup culture, which has given Ukraine a little bit of deniability, but ultimately maybe not enough to avoid the finger being pointed.
- [47:13]
C
Ultimately, for the prosecutor, it doesn't really matter whether Zelenskyy knew or didn't know. I mean, Zaluzhny's people will say Zaluzhny at one point briefed the President about several operations, including this operation, that he actually told him about it. This doesn't mean that Zelenskyy actively approved or was involved in any way. Zelenskyy, by the way, denies any involvement or knowledge. And his advisors told me that he. They were sitting in the room when the pictures came out on the television, and that's how they found out. This is their version of events. The truth is also that the CIA, obviously, and not just the CIA, the US government warned Ukraine and in doing so, they also reached out, they say, to the presidential administration. The presidential administration has no record of that.
- [47:58]
B
This reminds me of many intelligence operations, David, where we go back to some of the ones we've done in the past where often when things go wrong, rather than in this case, it works, but when they get exposed, people are like, who signed off on that again? It's like Rainbow Warrior or something like that. You know, it's very much like that, isn't it?
- [48:13]
C
For the prosecutors of Germany, it doesn't matter if Zelenskyy knew or didn't know. The fact is it was. It was a military operation because they gathered evidence on the suspects and they say they can prove the suspects were members of the military. The suspects were issued Ukrainian passports from the intelligence service, which are real passports, but you know, obviously on different names, in different names, they. They have various other bits and pieces of evidence that points at a state structure behind this. And finally, the man who they have now in prison in Hamburg awaiting trial was a serving officer of the Ukrainian armed forces. And they will argue he was sent to Germany to do this rather than coming here on holiday to blow up the pipelines, which kind of sounds a little bit implausible. So, you know, it will be very interesting, but I think the Germans just basically decided they're going to wait for the trial and then they will let the judges speak. So I don't think there will be any political signaling. They've decided to keep quiet about this, and this is how it's going to end.
- [49:24]
A
Bojan, I wanted to ask you about what you think this says, if anything, about the future of kind of sabotage and this kind of semi deniable shadow warfare that can happen around critical infrastructure. Because it does seem on the face of it, I mean, $250,000 to run an operation with a pretty small team that has a really massive geopolitical impact. If you look around the globe at other kind of, you know, choke points or pipelines, you could look at, you know, the cables that run under the Bab El Mandeb, the Taiwan Straits. You could look at satellite infrastructure. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's not the super scary, like water transmission and electricity stuff that we normally think of when we, when we talk about sabotage on infrastructure that's sort of maybe a shape shade less provocative than that, but still would be highly disruptive. Does this operation, do you think it says something about what could be coming in greater numbers as we look at some of these kind of like choke points and geopolitical hotspots with critical infrastructure overlaid atop them?
- [50:41]
C
Oh, yes, of course. I mean, look, this was a watershed moment, I think, and the people in the intelligence world and investigators are well acutely aware of this because something like this has never been attempted before. It was kind of a taboo. And now we kind of know how easy it is to do it, you know, because as you said, there are pipelines, there are gas pipelines, oil pipelines, Internet cables. They're absolutely crucial Internet cables, by the way, for everything. Airports, hospitals, the entire infrastructure relies on the cyber networks. Then you've got electricity cables, you've got all sorts of things. And these things are so long, so complicated, so huge, you know, offshore wind farms. I mean, it's doc. It's been documented that the Russians have been mapping out all of this infrastructure, in particular around the British Isles, including the offshore wind pipelines, in order to kind of strike them and shut down the power supply in a case of confrontation, or if they want to start a kind of a confrontation below the threshold of a declared war, which is what they increasingly are becoming experts in. You know, and I think this is a watershed moment because it's become apparent that with a small, determined team, people who are willing to risk their lives, you can do it on the shoestring. I've spoken to many experts who are in charge of defending the waters and the region now, which is becoming increasingly a flashpoint in the shadow war with Russia. And they freely admit, you know, in private conversations that there's nothing you can really do about it. Publicly they talk about drones and sensors and, and increase kind of naval presence and cruisers and destroyers and rocket ships and whatnot. But in fact, there's really nothing you can do. And I think this really hammers home the Nord Stream operation, which was known internally as Operation Diameter. Really shows that anybody can really do it with a bit of, with a skill set and determination and you know, not to mention non state actors. You know, I, you know, writing the book, I was thinking like, God, what if Al Qaeda or Islamic or some next iteration of Islamic State kind of reads the book and thinks this is something that we should be doing?
- [52:56]
A
You know, that's what you made me think when you said it's like a small group of people who might have some particular technical expertise but maybe more importantly are so ideologically devoted to this cause. I mean, we'd call it patriotism, Ukrainian patriotism in this case. But you would apply the same, the same sort of analytical lens to a, to a terrorist group where you'd have the same group of people who might have some set of skills and who are devoted to whatever cause they're devoted to. I mean, it is, the marginal cost of chaos is so low right now. It's, it's really quite frightening.
- [53:30]
C
In the same way Al Qaeda took Mohammed Atta and his is and this Hamburg circle and his friends and you know, retrain them to become pilots, it's even easier to train someone to become deep sea divers. You know, I don't know actually which training takes longer now that I think of it. Actually the diving training takes a little bit longer, I believe. But nonetheless, it's possible.
- [53:55]
B
I mean, it's in a way that, you know, they were worried the FBI weren't there about people going to flight schools after, you know, absolutely, 9, 11, you can imagine now people going around diving schools going, you know, you're trying to carry a very large, you know, weight at the bottom of, of the ocean. That looks a little bit suspicious to me. And you want to know how to attach it to something. Yeah, maybe that's, maybe I need to talk to the FBI about it. But you're right, and it's, it's a fascinating story and as you said, I mean, it's a fascinating story in its own right, but also one which I think could be the you know, the harbinger of something, you know, worrisome to come. And I guess as we end we should just say the, there's, it's an amazing book you've written. I mean, I really was totally gripped by it as a, you know, both the storytelling but also the investigation that's gone into it. And it's called the Nordstream Conspiracy and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who really, you know, we've only really kind of scratched the surface, haven't we, David, you know, in this interview about some of the just amazing tradecraft and intelligent details in there. So, so, so boy. And thank you so much for joining us and for exploring and explaining this, this wild story because it's been a fascinating journey to the bottom of the Baltic.
- [55:05]
C
Thank you so much for inviting me. This was great fun and I enjoyed it immensely.
- [55:09]
B
So we do hope you've all enjoyed that. Do join us next time. Remember to join the Declassified Club if you want to hear more, including ad free listening and be able to binge listen to some of the episodes and the stories were telling like this. But otherwise, thanks for joining and we'll see you next time.
- [55:29]
A
We'll see you next time.
- [55:35]
F
I'm Mary Beard. And I'm Josephine Quinn. At the Rest Is Fest this September, we're putting on a show that can only be described as an iconoclastic romp through the ancient world. We're talking about leaders behaving badly, emperors putting their horses is in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance. There will be some proper myth busting, but we'll also be asking why these myths matter even when we know they're wrong. So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London Southbank Centre. Tickets are on sale now. Just visit southbankcentre.co.uk that's southbankcentre.co.uk.