(Adds CIA, Russia comments)
WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The White House on
Wednesday dismissed a blog post by a U.S. investigative
journalist alleging the United States was behind explosions of
the Nord Stream gas pipelines as "utterly false and complete
fiction."
Reuters has not corroborated the report, published by U.S.
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, which said an attack was
carried out last September at the direction of President Joe
Biden.
"This is utterly false and complete fiction," said Adrienne
Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security
Council. Spokespeople for the CIA and State Department said the
same.
The pipelines are multibillion-dollar infrastructure
projects designed to carry Russian gas to Germany under the
Baltic Sea.
Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the
blasts occurred, have both concluded the pipelines were blown up
deliberately, but have not said who might be responsible.
The United States and NATO have called the incident "an act
of sabotage." Moscow has blamed the West for the unexplained
explosions that caused the ruptures. Neither side has provided
evidence.
On Wednesday, Russia's foreign ministry said the United
States had questions to answer over its role in explosions on
the pipelines.
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to double the volume
of gas that Russia could send directly to Germany under the sea,
was completed in September 2021, but was never put into
operation after Berlin shelved certification just days before
Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine last February.
Hersh is a former New York Times and New Yorker reporter who
won numerous awards for his investigative journalism, including
about the Vietnam War and the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal following
the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
More recently, he ignited controversy with a report
disputing the Obama administration's version of the 2011 killing
of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a U.S. special forces
operation, and another accusing Syrian rebels of staging an
August 2013 sarin nerve agent attack on a Damascus suburb that
killed hundreds of civilians.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Daphne
Psaledakis, Jonathan Landay and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Tim
Ahmann and Daniel Wallis)
twitter.com/TrevorNews; Reuters Messaging:
trevor.hunnicutt.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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