Seymour Hersh – The Burning Platform

US Was Behind Both Crimean Bridge Attacks: Seymour Hersh

Legendary national security journalist Seymour Hersh has published a report this week alleging US intelligence helped the Ukrainians blow up the Kerch Bridge (or also, Crimean Bridge), which happened earlier this month and corresponded to President Putin refusing to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative deal.

What’s more is that Hersh’s sources described that the US assisted in the initial, larger Kerch Bridge explosion which had initially temporarily disabled it in October 2022. “The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was vital,” he wrote in a Thursday Substack investigative article.

“Of course it was our technology,” an unnamed US official told Hersh, referring to the sea drone which detonated under the vital bridge on July 17. “The drone was remotely guided and half submerged–like a torpedo.”

The source cited is said to be a US intelligence official who is speaking out anonymously “from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don’t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should.”

“Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision,” the US official complained.

A section proving to be among the more blunt and controversial assessments from Hersh’s report is as follows:

At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, “Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It’s as if he’s an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden’s support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky’s knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden’s son.”

There are some in the American intelligence community, the official said, who worry about Putin’s response to the recent Ukrainian drone attacks in central Moscow. “Will Kiev be next?”

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Over the course of the two attacks, there were multiple casualties and fatalities, including the parents of a 14-year old girl, the latter who was badly injured. The family was traveling on vacation when their car was blown apart during the July 17 bridge attack.

A partial excerpt of Hersh’s new report can be viewed below…

* * *

Let’s take a look at recent events in the Ukraine war from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don’t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should.

On July 17 Ukraine attacked for a second time one of Russian President Vladimir’s proudest achievements: the 11.25-mile Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia. The 3.7 billion dollar bridge, with separate spans for auto and train traffic, was opened for auto traffic in May of 2018 and for trucks five months later, with Putin himself driving the first one to make the crossing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear before the Russian invasion early last year that he considered the bridge a legitimate military target. Ukraine initially attacked the bridge last October, using a truck bomb, but it was fully repaired within seven months. The most recent attack, by a pair of submersible drones, killed a couple who were driving across when the explosion occurred and injured their child. Damage to one of the auto spans was severe.

The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was vital. “Of course it was our technology,” one American official told me. “The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo.” I asked if there was any thought before the bridge attack about the possibility of retaliation. “What will Putin do? We don’t think that far,” the official said. “Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.”

Putin responded to the second attack on the bridge by ending an agreement that enabled Ukrainian wheat and other vital food crops, stymied by the ongoing war, to be shipped from blocked ports on the Black Sea. (Before the war Ukraine exported more grain than the entire European Union and nearly half of the world’s sunflower seeds.) And Russia began steadily intensifying missile and rocket attacks in Odessa, whose initial target list has expanded from port areas to inner city sites.

The official said there was a lot more than grain and sunflower seeds flowing into Europe from Odessa and other Black Sea ports: “Odessa’s exports included illegal stuff like drugs and the oil that Ukraine was getting from Russia.”

At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, “Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It’s as if he’s an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden’s support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky’s knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden’s son.”

There are some in the American intelligence community, the official said, who worry about Putin’s response to the recent Ukrainian drone attacks in central Moscow. “Will Kiev be next?”

Read Hersh’s full report at Substack…

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BURNING BOOKS IN A BRAVE NEW 1984 WORLD – THE AGE OF CENSORSHIP

In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship.

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Censorship

“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” – Ray Bradbury

The primary theme of Fahrenheit 451 is censorship. In Bradbury’s dystopia, burning books was the principal method of censorship, directed by the government, but generally supported by the masses. A form of self-censorship developed, as the dullards, intellectually lazy, and willfully ignorant, preferred books to be burned so they felt that would put them on a level playing field with the critical thinkers and intellectually curious minded.

It always comes back to the government doing everything in their power to keep the masses apathetic, ill-informed, entertained, and distracted, to ensure their continued control over society. Bradbury believed the masses would go along with censorship because they already had television, radio, and fast cars, with vacuous programming, loud music, and unceasing advertising creating over-stimulation and distraction for the populace. They were too distracted to read a book, learn, think critically, or question the authorities.

Continue reading “BURNING BOOKS IN A BRAVE NEW 1984 WORLD – THE AGE OF CENSORSHIP”

Don’t F*ck With Putin

Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya’s Sarin To Syrian Rebels

Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books (“Whose Sarin?” and “The Red Line and the Rat Line”) has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles. Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the US could invade and overthrow Assad.

“By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”

Hersh didn’t say whether these ‘arms’ included the precursor chemicals for making sarin which were stockpiled in Libya, but there have been multiple independent reports that Libya’s Gaddafi possessed such stockpiles, and also that the US Consulate in Benghazi Libya was operating a “rat line” for Gaddafi’s captured weapons into Syria through Turkey. So, Hersh isn’t the only reporter who has been covering this. Indeed, the investigative journalist Christoph Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013, “Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria” and reported, on the basis of very different sources than Hersh used, that:

“Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry.”

And, as if that weren’t enough, even the definitive analysis of the evidence that was performed by two leading US analysts, the Lloyd-Postal report, concluded that:

“The US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.”

Obama has clearly been lying.

Continue reading “Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya’s Sarin To Syrian Rebels”

Washington Protects Its Lies With More Lies

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

My distrust has deepened of Seymour Hersh’s retelling of the Obama regime’s extra-judicial murder of Osama bin Laden by operating illegally inside a sovereign country. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/05/11/seymour-hersh-succumbs-disinformation-paul-craig-roberts/ That Hersh’s story, which is of very little inherent interest, received such a large amount of attention, is almost proof of orchestration in order to substantiate the Obama regime’s claim to have killed a person who had been dead for a decade.

Americans are gullible, and thought does not come easily to them, but if they try hard enough they must wonder why it would be necessary for the government to concoct a totally false account of the deed if Washington kills an alleged terrorist. Why not just give the true story? Why does the true story have to come out years later from anonymous sources leaked to Hersh?

I can tell you for a fact that if SEALs had encountered bin Laden in Abbottabad, they would have used stun grenades and tear gas to take him alive. Bin Laden would have been paraded before the media, and a jubilant White House would have had a much photographed celebration pinning medals on the SEALs who captured him.

Instead, we have a murder without a body, which under law classifies as no murder, and a story that was changed several times by the White House itself within 48 hours of the alleged raid and has now been rewritten again by disinformation planted on Hersh.

Perhaps the release of book titles allegedly found in bin Laden’s alleged residence in Abbottabad is part of the explanation. Who can imagine the “terror mastermind” sitting around reading what the presstitute London Telegraph calls bin Laden’s library of conspiracy theories about 9/11 and Washington’s foreign and economic policies? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/11619270/Osama-bin-Ladens-bookshelf-featured-conspiracy-theories-about-his-terror-plots.html

Keep in mind that the government’s claim that these books were in bin Laden’s Abbottabad library comes from the same government that told you Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Assad used chemical weapons, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and that Russia invaded Ukraine. There is no evidence whatsoever that bin Laden had these books, just as there is no evidence for any claim made by Washington. In the absence of evidence, Washington’s position amounts to this: “It is true if we say so.”

Continue reading “Washington Protects Its Lies With More Lies”

U.S. Officials Panic About Seymour Hersh Story; Then Deny His Claims Using Jedi Mind Tricks

Guest post by Michael Krieger

What really struck me last evening as I was reading Seymour Hersh’s article exposing the bin Laden raid story as a farce, was the fact that it answered in detail so many of the questions I’ve had about the raid over the years. For example:

In 2012, I wrote the post: New Emails Say No Sailors Watched Bin Laden’s Burial at Sea

This was followed up in 2013 with: U.S. Government’s Secret Move to Hide Files on the Osama Bin Laden Raid

Then, finally in 2014: The U.S. Military Ordered Bin Laden Photos Destroyed 10 Days After Freedom of Information Act Request

Commenting on the burial aspect of this White House fairytale, I noted:

The Osama Bin Laden raid was suspect from the very beginning. Not only were key initial descriptions of the assault completely incorrect (such as him being armed and his wife being killed), but the manner in which his body was rapidly tossed into the ocean was beyond bizarre. I mean, Tony Soprano keeps a body longer than that.

What’s even more incredible than the latest Hersh article, is the U.S. government’s pathetic attempt to deny it. Officials are basically responding by saying things like “you’d have to believe the government would lie to you,” and “there are too many inaccuracies to respond to all of them.

Continue reading “U.S. Officials Panic About Seymour Hersh Story; Then Deny His Claims Using Jedi Mind Tricks”

Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/10/2015 21:43 -0400

The last time famed US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made news in the global media was with his massive, 5000-word expose from April of 2014 “The Red Line and the Rat Line” revealing the true motives behind the Syrian near-war of 2013 including what we had said from the very beginning: the very professionally created YouTube clips showing the consequences of what was said to have been an Assad poison gas attack, were nothing but a fake (subsequent reports identified the propaganda source as Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose entire operation has been funded by an unidentified European country.)

Fast forward to today when in a report whose word count doubles his previous record for the London Review of Books, Hersh targets a topic near and dear to the hearts of many Americans: the story of the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. Or rather the completely false and, according to Hersh, fabricated story, one made up entirely by the US president and spoon fed for popular consumption with the aid of a Hollywood blockbuster whose entire plot line is, if Hersh is correct, one big lie as well.

In a nutshell, and one really needs to read Hersh’s magnum opus as no amount of abbreviation will do it justice, Hersh accuses Obama of not only taking credit for the al Qaeda leader’s death, but fabricating the story that resulted from what has been widely reported to have been a Navy seal incursion into bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. As a result the military and intelligence communities were forced to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

Hersh uses several sources for his refutation of the official narrative, including Asad Durrani, who was head of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency in the early 1990s, as well as various American sources, of which the major source “is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. He also was privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid, and to the various after-action reports.”

Hersh also uses two other US sources, who had access to corroborating information, have been longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command, and also had information “from inside Pakistan about widespread dismay among the senior ISI and military leadership – echoed later by Durrani – over Obama’s decision to go public immediately with news of bin Laden’s death.”

Needless to say, the White House did not respond to Hersh’s requests for comment.

Among the many allegations of Hersh’s report are that:

bin Laden had been a prisoner of the Pakistan intelligence at the Abbottabad compound since 2006 (something revealed previously in “Osama bin Laden ‘protected by Pakistan in return for Saudi cash“)
that the two most senior Pakistani military leaders knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms;
that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US,
and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

Hersh notes that the Obama administration originally agreed to announce bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike rather than shot during an active Special Forces mission:

Continue reading “Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened”