Seymour Hersh Quotes

This goes back to the Bush-Cheney years... they began to talk about the threat... of cheap energy for Europe, was always seen as a threat to make Europe... more willing to trade with Russia. We always wanted to isolate Russia. This has been a theme of the last decades.

Here’s what Biden did... the ultimate point of the story, why so many people, even the intelligence community, are very troubled by it... he said, “I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support. And I know winter is coming, and if it’s going to be bad, I don’t want the Germans to say, ’We’ve got to check out, because we’re getting massacred. We’ll be massacred with no cheap fuel, and our economy will go bonkers. We’re going to check out, and we’re going to open up the gas line,’” which they could do. So he took away that option.

I don’t think there’s any chance that Putin wants to take over Europe. I don’t think he wants to take — he wants to have Ukraine tamed, but he’s not interested in doing anything more.

There’s also an enormous continuing of hatred of all things Putin in this country, which is — foreign policy disagreements are one thing, but it’s very personal here.

I think the end is just a question of time. Right now it’s a question of how many more people Zelensky wants to kill of his own people. It’s going to be over.

I’ve been... writing about covert activities for — am I that old?...the stories I’ve been getting about the war... have been pretty dire.

We’ve got a president, a Democratic president, that has done some good stuff domestically, but I can tell you I’m not understanding the total commitment to Ukraine. And I’m not understanding what I read, because, obviously, I have access to a lot of people who see things.

There’s no question there’s been a polarization of the press since Trump got in. We’re now on two sides — you know, right, left, Democrat, Republican, however you describe it.

The world has taken a very bizarre turn. I also — you know, it doesn’t matter what I think.

And so, the German economy is huge. It’s booming. You know, the cars, we know about. Germany has the largest chemical company in the world, BASF. And everybody is — right now it’s hell to pay. It’s gotten very cold there. There’s a lot of anger

Nord Stream 1 was a godsend for the German economy and Western Europe. They produce so much gas at such low prices that the German government was actually able to resell some of the gas the Russians were providing at a profit, without Russia objecting.

It’s a tiresome game to me... I’m embarrassed to say it after all those wonderful years I had at The New York Times. I wasn’t even thinking of taking a story like this to The New York Times. They’ve decided that the Ukraine war is going to be won by Ukraine, and that’s what its readers get, and so be it. That’s their call. So, I just did my reporting.

Victoria Nuland’s statement, that you mentioned, came actually before the president’s... at that time, I think, the committee involved — a lot of sophisticated people in the intelligence and operation community concluded you could do it... that led to the comments, which really, of course, made the people on the inside go half-crazy, because it was supposed to be completely covert... it was simply described as a classified operation. None of the rules of reporting to Congress involved are involved — were involved.

The threat the president had yet to make had not been made, and this is December, before New Year’s Day, of the year before, 2021. And the question inside the committee, and it included the usual — CIA, NSA, Treasury Department, State Department, you name it ... The option was: Do you want us to do something kinetic or something not kinetic? In other words, not kinetic would be more sanctions, and something kinetic would be, you know, taking out the pipeline

What I did was really deconstruct the obvious. I mean, you have to hear what the president said. But, of course, there were secret plans, that I’m writing about, and they include — there was a committee set up. Jake Sullivan was directly involved. He was the national security adviser, still is. They set up a team to look at options about how to put pressure on the Russian government to back off.