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    A confirmation from Anti-Spiegel, with whistle-blower's letter text Archived Message

    Posted by Tomski on February 9, 2023, 9:06 pm, in reply to "A whistle-blower claimed this last October .."

    Interesting report at Anti-Spiegel on Nordstram
    .
    In my article translating Seymour Hersh's report detailing how the Biden administration planned and carried out the blasting of the Nord Stream pipelines as early as 2021, I mentioned that a few months ago, someone contacted me, who claimed to have been a soldier in the maneuver BALTOPS 22 and who claims to have seen how extremely arrogantly behaved special divers from the USA on the warship on which he had served, exactly at the site of the later detonation the attachment of "practiced" mines.

    Unfortunately, he couldn't provide any evidence for his story and wanted to remain anonymous, which is why I didn't report on it, because he couldn't provide anything reliable to confirm his story. Of course, I don't write an article based on a story from someone who doesn't reveal their identity and can't provide supporting evidence for their story. However, after Hersh was published on February 8th, I am certain that the whistleblower who contacted me at the time was telling the truth because his story fits exactly with what Hersh published.

    Therefore I will tell here what I found out in October 2022 and I will also completely translate and publish the email from the whistleblower, the text of which I received on October 4, 2022. The email was originally in English and came from an anonymous Proton address.

    As I found out from the whistleblower
    In early October 2022, I was contacted by my colleague and friend John Marc Dugan, an American living in Moscow. He had received an email from an anonymous whistleblower.

    At the time we discussed for a long time what we could do with it, but since the whistleblower couldn't provide any evidence for his story and we couldn't verify the pictures he sent, after all everything is possible with Photoshop, I wasn't prepared to publish anything about it. As far as I know, John didn't report about it in his videos either.

    Which parts of the Hersh story the whistleblower's email confirms

    With what I know today from Seymour Hersh's article, I believe the whistleblower's story is authentic because it fits exactly what Hersh writes. At the time, the whistleblower reported on non-military-looking US special divers who were helicoptered onto the warship on which the whistleblower was serving during maneuver BALTOPS 22.

    This confirms Hersh's story that the specialty divers are from the Panama City Navy diving school in Florida and were not soldiers but are believed to be US intelligence. Even more: Hersh does not go into the details of the operation in the Baltic Sea itself, but the whistleblower does. And he mentioned that the US special divers had MK29 diving systems, which he says are classified.

    According to what can be found on the net, the MK29 are actually secret, in any case you cannot order them, there are only reports about them. Most importantly, according to a 2018 U.S. Department of Defense report, they were developed by the very U.S. Navy diving school in Panama City, Florida that Hersh mentions. The fact that the whistleblower mentioned the MK29 system, which has a direct connection to the Navy diving school whose specialist divers Hersh says planted the bombs on the pipelines, back in early October 2022 is further confirmation of Hersh's story for me.

    In this video, the US Navy proudly displays the MK29 and explains its benefits on long deep dives.

    MK29 Mixed Gas Rebreather System

    According to the whistleblower, the special divers were supposed to do exercises with sea mines, but according to the whistleblower they did not have the necessary equipment with them. Instead, they carried state-of-the-art deep-diving gear (including the MK29) that they don't even need for a sea mine exercise, which floats at such shallow depths that conventional scuba gear is sufficient. According to the whistleblower, the special divers were also active in the wrong place during the exercise and were under water much longer than is possible with the equipment he is familiar with.

    Hersh writes in his article that the special divers attached the explosive devices to the pipelines under the guise of an exercise with sea mines. The exercise with sea mines was therefore included in the BALTOPS 22 maneuver as a camouflage for laying the bombs on the pipelines. Here, too, the email written by the whistleblower corresponds to the article now published by Hersh.

    The whistleblower's email

    I am now showing the text of the email that the whistleblower sent to John and which John forwarded to me immediately afterwards on October 4th. I translated them from English.

    in the translation:

    Dear Mr. Dugan!

    I am writing this letter in the hope that you will pass it on. I cannot share the information myself as it would harm my career and life. I am sending you this photo as proof that I was there and a copy of my ID. You may give this to another journalist you trust, but do not give it away from your possession. It is important that you do not share it with anyone and that you never use this email account again. You can quote the letter verbatim as it is written:

    I had a leading administrative role in the BALTOPS 22 military exercise in June near the island of Bornholm, Denmark. I can't give you my exact title as it could reveal my identity. There were some unusual details surrounding a group of US Marines from Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO) who had traveled from Stockholm. What seemed odd at the time looks downright nefarious in hindsight.

    Let me explain. Forgive me in advance if I have misunderstood the terminology, as my country's military may use different terms. I can't give specifics about my job, but I do work coordinating dive teams and underwater operations with various NATO-allied forces.

    On June 15, the day of the exercise, I was involved in coordinating certain aspects of the exercise. I have to be vague here. A US military helicopter arrived with a group of men believed to be US Navy mine hunters. They disembarked, unloaded their gear, and met both the US Navy Vice Admiral and a group of plainclothes American men, who arrived a few hours later. We all assumed they were some sort of intelligence operative.

    After a short conversation, which I couldn't hear because of the helicopter noise, they went to their briefing.

    I found it quite odd that they were from the US Navy. My first thought was that they looked like a group of terrorists and not someone from the US Navy. The other groups that we had from many branches of the military had some kind of standards. Haircuts, for example. Not only did these men have wild hair that would have gone against military norms in any civilized nation, but they also had facial hair. Like I said, they looked more like Middle Eastern terrorists. Neither of these men wore an identification tag around their neck.

    Another thing I found strange was that they claimed to be looking for underwater mines, but they didn't have the equipment for such exercises. Their gear consisted of the Navy's latest underwater diving gear and some small hard cases we call pelicans.

    Their task was to take an inflatable boat to a certain location, look for anti-ship mines there and return with their findings. They usually carry a long metal detection kit with them on such ventures, but that was absent from their kit.

    One detail that struck me as very odd here was that other minesweeper teams wore conventional SCUBA gear with tanks and the like, while this group wore state-of-the-art helium respirators and wetsuits. While I've never seen one up close, I'm pretty sure they were the MK29 systems, designed for deep diving and classified to this day. My country's military wouldn't even be able to afford the helium for it, let alone the suits themselves. Detecting mines just a few meters below the surface would certainly not require these suits.

    They went out to sea in their boat. Not to the area where the simulated mines were placed, but to a completely different location. My colleague, who was monitoring the teams' various locations, made a casual joke about how the US Navy was lost and two thousand meters from where it was intended.

    They got out of their boat, wearing their breathing apparatus, and disappeared underwater for over six hours. As far as I know, there is no self-contained underwater gear that can keep a diver under water for six hours. With the latest military systems, a maximum of three or four hours is possible if the diver is not overexerting himself. After a few hours we became concerned and contacted the US 6th Fleet coordinator who assured us that everything was fine, that they were in contact, that we were ignoring the matter and not making any reports should.

    and when they returned, almost all the pelicans were missing. They didn't stay for any pleasantries. They chatted briefly with the US civilians, boarded a waiting helicopter, and took off. The civilians they spoke to also left, albeit in a different helicopter. Their mission was later described as "successfully completed", although they were nowhere near the goal.

    In retrospect, I have the following suspicions. The divers met with a small, waiting submersible that took them to the pipeline area. The explosives required for such an operation would not have fit in their kit, so I suspect they carried surveying and tracking equipment with which they could mark where the explosives needed to be placed. After examining the pipeline and marking the correct coordinates, they had time to check this data with demolitions technicians, return to the site at a later date, and place the required explosive charges, which were then detonated with a timer or remotely.

    end of translation

    It should be noted that the whistleblower was probably wrong on one point in his conclusion, since the divers may have planted the explosives immediately, according to the Hersh report. Perhaps the submersible suspected by the whistleblower carried him, which is entirely possible.

    The USA has the necessary, so-called "unmanned maritime systems" and they are regularly tested during maneuvers, such as this maneuver from September 2022 off the coast of Portugal shows.

    Posted by: mo3.1 | Feb 9 2023 18:43 utc | 2

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