The Nordstream patsy
====================

Asked what he made of the man arrested in Italy in connection with the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, John Kiriakou gave an unhedged answer and then explained the reasoning that forced it.

The capability argument

Kiriakou's starting point is that the attack was beyond private means. "It seemed kind of obvious to me that this was an operation that required not just real expertise and capability but state expertise and capability," he said. Ted Rall, a diver, had argued the same conclusion from the physics of working at the pipeline's depth, and dismissed the account involving a small yacht outright as impossible. Kiriakou agreed with that too: "exactly right. Oh my god. I totally agree."

He was careful, though, about which claim he was endorsing. Rall pointed out that both the official story and Seymour Hersh's competing account could be wrong at once, and Kiriakou accepted that: "They could both be wrong. Yeah." On Hersh's earlier bin Laden reporting Kiriakou had already said he did not believe a word of it; on Nordstream he said the story "rung more true than not."

The man in custody

Against that background the arrest did not fit. "I can't imagine, Ted," Kiriakou said. "I think he's a patsy. I really do." He added: "And I feel for the poor guy, whoever he is."

Asked whether investigators might be genuinely mistaken rather than cynical, whether they really believe they have their man, Kiriakou prefaced his answer with a disclaimer he uses often: "I hate to be cynical, and there's nothing I hate more than sounding like a conspiracy theorist." Then he gave it: "I think that they found somebody that they could just take a dump on, somebody who could take the fall, and they chose him."

He declined to speculate on which it was. "Now, whether he agreed to do it for money, or he really is just a patsy destroyed, I have no idea," he said, "but this just seems too convenient for me. Too convenient."

The lone-actor problem

Kiriakou's final objection was to the internal coherence of the case rather than its politics. Even on the prosecution's own narrative, Rall observed, the man cannot have acted alone. Kiriakou's answer went further: "Well, he didn't do it." Asked whether the accused was simply a random Ukrainian, he agreed.

He placed the whole episode in a familiar frame, endorsing Rall's line that it is the cover-up rather than the act that creates the exposure: "Yep. I agree."

See also

- Nord Stream pipeline sabotage
- The Hersh publishing collapse
- Learning to dive in the embassy pool
- Ted Rall
