Nord Stream pipeline sabotage
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John Kiriakou notes that journalist Seymour Hersh first reported that the CIA bombed the Nord Stream pipeline, but that Ukrainian special forces later claimed they carried out the operation themselves, using sailboats and relying on their own underwater-demolition expertise, without Volodymyr Zelensky's knowledge. The day after the pipeline was destroyed, Kiriakou called a friend still serving at the CIA and asked directly whether the U.S. was behind it; the friend's response, "Dude, I can't talk about this", was, in Kiriakou's reading, effectively a confirmation that it was the United States, not Russia as some reporting suggested.

In a separate account, Kiriakou describes discussing Hersh's Nord Stream reporting with a close friend, a senior former State Department official he was on his way to have dinner with. The friend insisted Russia had blown up its own pipeline, which Kiriakou found implausible on its face. Pressing Hersh himself on the same question, Kiriakou concluded that if it wasn't the United States, it was Ukraine, since only the U.S. and NATO are known to possess the mini-submarine technology the operation would have required.

Kiriakou is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of CIA, FBI, NSA and military retirees that gave Hersh its Sam Adams Award for integrity in intelligence in 2017. He notes that Hersh has since been unable to get his Nord Stream reporting published even in the London Review of Books, and has had to resort to Substack.

A third theory: Putin blew up his own pipeline

Kiriakou recounts a dinner conversation, around the time the pipeline was first destroyed, with a retired former CIA boss of his, by then long retired and in poor health. Kiriakou assumed the U.S. was responsible and asked his former boss directly; the man told him, "No, it was Putin." When Kiriakou pushed back, asking why Putin would blow up his own gas pipeline, his former boss suggested it was to blame the Americans, then added: "Truthfully, I don't really know what to believe anymore."

See also

- Central Intelligence Agency
- John Kiriakou
- Bob Woodward CIA access
