Interview: Jeffrey Brodsky, journalist investigating the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage: ‘Governments have refused to tell the public the truth’
I have been asked by readers and people on X for an English version of the interview I did for Carlos Magariño Rojas of Spain’s El Común. It was originally published in Spanish here. Carlos can be found on X @carlosmagaro. I thank Carlos and El Común. Below is the interview.
We are pleased to be able to interview Jeffrey Brodsky, the only journalist to have visited all four blast sites of the Nord Stream sabotage in the Baltic Sea. He has written for magazines and newspapers in the United States and Europe and writes the recommended column “An American in Spain” for Diario 16. He also spoke about the sabotage at the United Nations Security Council on July 11, 2023. He lives in Chicago and Barcelona.
Thank you for your time, Jeffrey. There are many questions we would like to ask you and we will start by asking you about your research work around the September 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that transported Russian natural gas to Europe.
According to your own words, in the interesting series of articles published in Diario 16, this infrastructure was valued at approximately 20 billion dollars, so the attack constitutes the greatest act of industrial sabotage in history and the most urgent geopolitical mystery of the century. This is what you pointed out in your remarks at the United Nations. As a direct observer of the outcome of the events, what impression did you get of the political response to your work? Have you felt any pressure as a result of your research?
Thank you for your interest in my work.
Despite the enormous geopolitical and economic fallout from the attack and the consequential data obtained during our expedition to all four blast sites, as well the findings in my own reporting, governments and investigators have thus far refused to tell the public the truth. My view is that not only does the public have a right to know who is responsible for this brazen act of sabotage but also revealing the truth might be an excellent way to hit the pause button on the dangerously escalating war in Ukraine, and maybe even possibly save humanity from a potential World War III.
Let’s remember that these pipelines are extremely significant. They are capable of fulfilling around 30% of total gas demand in the European Union. But politicians, of both left and right traditional parties, or what we might call “establishment parties,” demonstrate basically zero interest in unmasking the perpetrator of this gargantuan global crime. In fact, the Nord Stream sabotage doesn’t seem to be a left versus right debate. Instead, on one side you have establishment politicians, government officials and global elites, who seem invariably supported by the naked propaganda promulgated by their assets in mainstream media, while on the other side is everybody else.
I have personally contacted what seems like countless government officials and European MPs, but have gotten almost nothing but desultory shoulder shrugs at best, with most of them refusing to discuss the sabotage at all. Some German MPs, I should say, however, have spoken to me openly about the urgency to unravel the mystery. Here in Spain, not even a single parliamentarian or government official has been willing to talk to me about the sabotage.
During our Baltic expedition, we collected sediments from the seafloor. A colleague and I then took the samples to a laboratory in Germany to have them analyzed for explosive traces. Before we located the only lab that agreed to do the analysis for us, I had contacted around a dozen of them. There were some suspicious circumstances. All the labs were for-profit companies, so it’s bizarre they wouldn't want to earn money from my request for service. Perhaps they googled my name and saw I’d written about Nord Stream – I don’t know. One of the labs I contacted was in Madrid. I know the Madrid lab offered the type of test I was seeking. But I also know I was lied to because one of my sources – the managing director of an explosives engineering company – told me he’d had the kind of test I needed done by them before. But this lab told me they didn’t offer the type of analysis I’d requested. However, the fact is, the type of test I required was even advertised on their website! And, on June 16, at the German lab that had finally agreed to do the analysis for us, we were informed that it would take five to 15 business days to receive the results. To follow up, I emailed the company at the end of June. They told me they had no idea who I was and couldn’t find my samples! After exchanging at least six frustrating emails with the customer service department, I was then informed that my samples were still in their office’s refrigerator and had not even been sent to the lab!
The enormous research done, which included underwater images of the damaged pipelines, did not provide conclusive evidence that attributed the authorship to a specific nation. However, the data were analyzed by experts. And, still, several countries – Germany, Denmark and Sweden, the first country to go to the area – expanded their investigations they were carrying out, but they have not revealed the results of their investigations. How is it possible to explain this?
The data obtained through our expedition have indicated the amount of explosives used in the attack, the type of charges used and where the bombs were placed, as well as given us a very likely explanation for why one of the lines wasn’t damaged in the attack, and, in fact, it is still intact to this very day.
Telling the truth would be humiliating for the West. What if the EU were to attribute the sabotage to Ukraine? That would essentially amount to an admission that the country it supports committed an act of war against it. And what if the US were exposed as the perpetrator? That would mean that the supposed guarantor of European security had executed an attack on its protectorates.
Swedish investigators, we know, have removed material from the crime scene on at least two occasions, perhaps doing away with any inculpatory evidence. And following decades of heated domestic debate, Sweden, of course, last month became a full member of NATO. Denmark, for its part, is of course a founding NATO member and has a pathetic history of doing the US’s imperial bidding. Denmark has, for example, been complicit in the alliance’s war crimes and has assisted in covering them up. It also should be remembered that Denmark was an unfortunate abettor of the infamous “coalition of the willing” that catalyzed the 2003 Iraq war based on illusory WMDs.
And even from the very beginning the Swedish and Danish investigations had incredibly limited investigative scopes. Sweden, for instance, said the objective of their probe was to find out whether Sweden was targeted in sabotage and whether Swedish citizens were involved and whether Swedish infrastructure was used. In a similarly meager and insubstantial fashion, Danish investigators concluded that there wasn’t sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark.
So there you have it: Sweden and Denmark have told the public basically nothing about the greatest geopolitical mystery of the century and the most severe act of industrial sabotage in history. Only that Sweden wasn’t involved – something which everybody already knew – and that Swedish jurisdiction doesn’t apply, and that Denmark doesn’t see grounds for a criminal case!
Germany is now the only country with an open investigation. There may be economic, domestic and geopolitical reasons Germany may decide to crack the case – it is a much larger and more powerful country than Sweden and Denmark, for example, and it stood up to the US by refusing to support the 2003 war in Iraq. People might also remember Angela Merkel publicly rebuking the Obama administration for tapping her phone. Many German MPs – and I have spoken to a lot of them – unlike their Swedish and Danish counterparts, have consistently pressured their government to provide answers.
But the most compelling reasons Germany might defend its own interests are economic, because it is the country that, by far and away, has – perhaps after Russia – experienced the most economic hardship resulting from the sabotage. So maybe, despite geopolitical pressure and the certain embarrassment of acknowledging that its economy has been pulverized by an act of terrorism perpetrated by an ally, Germany may decide to tell the truth.
Whether or not we should be holding our breath is another question entirely!
Since the sabotage, the European economy – which was already in decline within the West – fell considerably. Mainstream media look for a great variety of excuses to explain it to their audience, but none of them seems to see the elephant in the room, which is none other than the most obvious reason for the cost overruns in production, due to the increase in fuel prices as a result of the sabotage. From the analysis we do on the Spanish Left, we understand that the hidden motive of both the attack and the conflict in general are based on economic interests. What is your opinion on this matter?
The Nord Stream pipelines’ potential energy supply was equivalent to that of over a whopping 73 nuclear reactors, according to calculations done by the person who organized our expedition to the blast sites. Nord Stream 1 alone delivered to Germany up to 59 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. That volume is as much as a staggering 66% of the country’s gas consumption, and 42% of its supply. So disruption of supply of inexpensive Russian gas as a result of the sabotage certainly plays a crucial role in the widespread deindustrialization in Germany. And both the IMF and OECD anticipate the German economy will be the worst-performing among advanced economies for a second consecutive year. So if I were a German, I would hope my country would defend its sovereignty and economy by revealing who is behind the attack.
And, of course, the US has benefited both geopolitically and economically from the sabotage. It became the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas for the first time, when American shipments surpassed those of its competitors in 2023. The pipelines also provided Russian geopolitical leverage and they probably constituted its largest bargaining chip amid the war in Ukraine.
Spain, too, has in some ways benefited from the sabotage. Germany’s BASF, the world’s largest chemicals group, announced plans to cut jobs and shift some production away from the country due to loss of cheap Russian gas. That announcement came as BASF outlined plans to establish international engineering hubs here in Spain. And Volkswagen began constructing plants here as it cut jobs in Germany.
The attitude of the countries involved is striking: silence or excuses. Twice, in February and then in March 2023, the United States blocked a Russian request at the United Nations Security Council to set up an international investigation into the explosions. These are countries also directly linked to the Ukrainian conflict, which even allow themselves to predict possible Russian attacks. Could we say that this attitude responds more to a situation of war propaganda than to the will to inform the public?
Western governments initially engaged in saber-rattling and made baseless claims about possible Russian culpability, and their slavish scribes in mainstream media attempted to create a narrative that Russia was to blame for the sabotage. All of this lacked evidence, of course. But as it became clear that a Western nation – either the US, Ukraine or possibly a combination of the two – is the perpetrator, the propaganda suddenly fell silent.
War is profitable for too many corporations. The military-industrial complex donates to most members of the US Congress and it lines the pockets of European MPs. Mainstream media ratings soar in wartime. And I am no military expert, but my sources – and even some reporting in mainstream media – have been beginning to paint a dire picture for the Ukrainian side in the war. Sadly, and immorally, it seems no matter how many Ukrainians die on the battlefield, peace negotiations appear to be roundly rejected in favor of more weapons and escalation. I find it harrowing.
As someone who also follows Spanish current affairs, we would like to know your opinion on the attitude of the Spanish government in this whole affair. You asked Teresa Ribera, the Minister of Ecological Transition, about her statements in which she said, three days after the attack, that the attack was a “clear sign of how Putin plays at permanent provocation.”
The Spanish government’s position has been in lockstep with the US’s. Minister Ribera made widely unsubstantiated statements about the sabotage. She pretended to read Putin’s mind on at least two occasions, as if she possessed extrasensory perception. Her baseless remarks traveled around the world, appearing as they did in articles in mainstream print and TV outlets throughout the West.
As far as I was able to research, not a single reporter in the sycophantic mainstream press has asked Minister Ribera to qualify her statements or provide evidence for them. This has of course deprived the public of the truth, as well removed any opportunity she might take to retract her evidence-free claims. Her unsupported assertions have regrettably served to perpetuate the myth that Russian blew up its own critical infrastructure. If the minister has telepathic powers, she should provide evidence for them.
From your professional position between both continents, the United States and Europe, how do you see the situation of journalism in countries like Spain and the tension, close to censorship, which tends more toward disinformation than to the search for truth?
Nowadays, or maybe it’s always been this way – I am not sure – it seems that we have governments’ positions and interpretations of current events and history, which are inevitably parroted in mainstream media. And if your journalistic findings, or even your personal opinion as a private citizen, don’t align with the married points of view of the government and mainstream media, you are labeled a “conspiracy theorist” or “Putin asset.” Then, afterwards, you are censored and deplatformed from social media or shadowbanned. I know less about the Spanish media ecosystem, but in the American media environment, the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as newspapers and CNN, MSNBC and Fox News as TV outlets basically behave as the in-house newsletters or public relations firms for the US national security and intelligence services. In brave opposition to that corporate-government incestuous ecosystem, we have independent media outlets and readers of independent media. Unfortunately, these two informational ecosystems rarely intersect and therefore the viewpoints of the people who gather information from them often appear to be living on different planets. But the truth almost never lies with those who trust the inbred corporate-government family.
Finally – and we greatly appreciate your time – what opinion do you think American citizens who, like yourself, are informed of the reality of the pre-world war situation have, if not as leftist minded people, then as simple citizens with pacifist or social concerns?
Of course, I can’t pretend to speak for or represent Americans as a whole, but I can say that many Americans are very aware of and terrified by the aggressive, war-mongering policies of their current government. Unfortunately, many Americans – and Europeans, too – remain completely in the dark about just how dangerous their leaders’ policy positions are.
On the other hand, I do understand why so many people don’t have time to inform themselves about geopolitics. I empathize with the fact that so many people are overburdened by the cost of housing and food, are overworked and underpaid, and are seeing their schools and transportation systems underfunded – so I understand why there isn’t more attention paid to global affairs.
Jeffrey Brodsky can be found on X @JeffreyBrodsky5 and at Diario16.