Compare Seymour Hersh's codswallop on the Skripal affair with the excellent work done by Bellingcat. It's clear that in this case the mainstream media got it mostly right and Hersh made a dog's breakfast of it.
This colours my attitude to his Nordstream "revelations".
> Compare Seymour Hersh's codswallop on the Skripal affair with the excellent work done by Bellingcat.
Done. Bellingcat exists as a parallel construction for US and British intelligence agencies and its only other purpose is to smear non-state controlled journalistic outlets. There was a leaked email from another source that indicates that even internally, US intelligence agencies don't think that Bellingcat is still a good way to spread information because normal people don't believe it any more.
On the other side, Hersh is a journalist with a long track record who wrote a story that is likely true, although we won't know until if and until comes out. Won't stop nationalists from pretending that they know something that they don't. They love a traitor.
You didn't engage with the truth of their respective Skripal affair output at all.
I could have mentioned Hersh's account of the killing of Bin Laden too. At this point his track record is a lot longer than it is good. I can't keep giving him free passes based on good work done almost 50 years ago
It's not unthinkable that they'd move the transponders for a secret mission, no?
Also Hersh's point about the NATO head being an asset in his late teens is definitely feasible, as that was exactly what the Norwegian government did at the time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund_Report
According to Hersh the bombs were planted during joint naval exercises. That's a time when lots of people would be surprised to see a ship sailing around with its transponders off.
Your link is about illegal electronic surveillance and contains nothing related to recruiting random Norwegian teenagers as agents in the hope that they would become General Secretaries of NATO 40 years later, and thus somehow (?) able to direct clandestine missions of the Norwegian Navy.
Let's turn it around: Is there something Hersh's source told him that was surprising and could be verified independently?
This colours my attitude to his Nordstream "revelations".