Storied whistleblower Edward Snowden questioned the US denial of its alleged role in the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline last year.
Snowden, whose spectacular leaks of classified US National Security Agency documents a decade ago shocked US security establishment, compared the US denial to the official line the US took in 1961 following the Bay of Pigs incident.
"Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied? ... Besides, you know, that little 'mass surveillance' kerfuffle," Snowden tweeted.
The portion of news article he shared along with the tweet shows US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denying the US role in the Bay of Pigs invasion. In the news article published in April 1961, Rusk says the invasion was not 'staged from American soil'. He also says "the Cuban affair was one for the Cubans themselves to settle",insisting that the invasion was carried out by Cubans without any support from the US.
What Was Bay of Pigs Invasion?
The Bay of Pigs invasion was an abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southwestern coast by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro. The invasion was financed and directed by the U.S. government.
"An invasion of Cuba had been planned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since May 1960. The wisdom of proceeding with the invasion had been debated within the newly inaugurated administration of President John F. Kennedy before it was finally approved and carried out," the Encyclopedia Britannica says.
In an explosive revelation on Wednesday, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that the United States was behind the bombing of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline in September last year.
Writing in his blog on Substack, Hersh said US Navy divers planted explosives at the pipelines in June last year, under the guise of BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. The article says that the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline was the culmination of months-long planning and preparations by the US. President Joe Biden and all his top leadership team participated in a series of top secret discussions in the lead-up to the act.
The White House rejected Hersh's detailed investigative report, saying it was cooked up. "This is utterly false and complete fiction," White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. Meanwhile, the CIA and the State Department also denied the US role in the bombing of the key Russian gas pipeline to Europe.
