US, Norway worked on clandestine operations since Vietnam war: Hersh

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Two weeks after his explosive account that the United States' military and their Norwegian accomplices committed a criminal attack on three branches of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, renowned US investigative journalist and Pulitzer award winner Seymour Hersh wrote Wednesday that Norway’s navy has a "murky history" of cooperation with US intelligence since the Vietnam War.  

"The Norwegian Navy has a long and murky history of cooperation with American intelligence," Hersh wrote in a follow-up post on Substack.  

Norway worked on developing large armed boats, Hersh said, to defend its 1,400-mile Atlantic coastline after the second world war, which were more powerful than US boats.

Norway subsequently used these boats to support the CIA to pressure North Vietnam's leadership during the Vietnam War, which eventually resulted in a confrontation on August 2, 1964 between three North Vietnamese gunships and two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

One of the US destroyers' leaders first cabled a message carrying a false alarm that he was under attack before he later reversed his report. However, President Lyndon Johnson claimed that North Vietnam had attacked a US destroyer, which created a pretext for the US to bomb the North.

Congress also passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to let Johnson deploy US military force as he thought best in South Vietnam.

Norway remained quiet all along about its support to the US, according to Hersh, and even sold the US Navy 18 more of their boats. Hersh said, citing a US intelligence source, that the first batch of such boats used against North Vietnam in the CIA’s "secret war within a secret war" were six and landed at a naval base in Danang, in early 1964.

These boats, Hersh added, had Norwegian crews who trained US and Vietnamese sailors to use them in a long-running series of CIA-directed secret coastal attacks, which were also controlled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

It is worth noting that Russia's State Duma announced on February 16 that the federal assembly will submit an appeal to the United Nations requesting an investigation into the bombings that targeted the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022.

"The members of the State Duma of Russia's Federal Assembly appeal to the United Nations Security Council with a proposal to initiate an investigation of this act of international terrorism, to give a legal assessment of this sabotage and to bring to justice the contractors and perpetrators of this crime that jeopardized the security of Eurasia," the draft appeal read.

The proposed document holds the administration of US President Joe Biden fully responsible for the sabotage of the pipelines, which resulted in billions of dollars worth of losses.

This came after Hersh said that US Navy divers planted explosives to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines in late 2022.

The White House responded and dismissed the claims as "false and complete fiction."

The prominent journalist said on February 18 that it was Norway that pointed out to the United States the location of where the underwater pipeline was closest to the surface to facilitate the US' operation.

He stressed that Washington's act led to more support for Russian President Vladimir Putin by his citizens.