"The central American premise is that you deal with Iraq and everything else will fall in place," said Geoffrey Kemp, the N.S.C.'s ranking expert - Seymour Hersh

I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There’s not enough of it. It’s very expensive.

America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America.

Well, all I can say is that Sy Hersh has proven for about 40 years now that he is a trusted journalist. And when someone – and I suspect it aptly pertained to this particular source – when someone sees that an act of war has been has been committed by our government against all the… well, against the Constitution, maybe not against the U.S. designed “rules based order,” but, you know, we all swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now this guy took that seriously. I suspect he went to that little corner in that bar where Sy...meets his sources and told him this whole story. Sy said it only took him three months. I believe that. And American people… it’s eminently believable. The question is the fallout and whether the mass media can prevent this story from sneaking into the consciousness of Americans who have been taught...over the last seven years...to hate Russia.