No mention of Hersh, obviously.

We're back to the Six Dudes in a Yacht story basically.

I really hate it when an unknown entity, in a sea which is surrounded by NATO countries and monitored constantly, drives over my major gas pipeline and dives down and blows it up, and then gets away without being apprehended. Happens to me literally all the time.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency warned the Ukrainian government not to attack the Nord Stream gas pipelines last summer after it obtained detailed information about a Ukrainian plot to destroy a main energy connection between Russia and Europe, officials familiar with the exchange said.

The message, delivered by CIA officials in June, followed a tip the CIA received from the military intelligence service of the Netherlands, these officials said.

While the CIA took the warning seriously, these officials said, it had questions over whether Ukraine had the capacity to carry out such an attack, which would require placing explosive charges deep beneath the Baltic Sea.

Weeks later, on Sept. 26, the pipelines were hit. Ukraine has vehemently denied that it had anything to do with the attack on the pipelines.

Dutch military intelligence officials told the CIA that a Ukrainian sabotage team was looking to rent a yacht on the Baltic coastline and use a team of divers to plant explosives along the four pipes of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

The plan was to stage the attack after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s exercise called Baltic Ops that took place in the area above the pipelines and ended on June 17, European intelligence officials said.

The CIA quickly notified a group of allied countries, including Germany, the landing site of the pipelines, via a secure cable sometime in June. Other countries along the Baltic coastline were also warned, though not necessarily in the same detail.

CIA officials asked their counterparts in Kyiv if they were mounting an attack. It couldn’t be determined how the Ukrainians responded.

The CIA then received information that Ukraine had called off the original plan, according to a U.S. official.

In late summer, the CIA told Germany and other allied nations that the threat level from such an operation had diminished because the U.S. no longer believed Kyiv would undertake such an attack, said European officials who received or were briefed on that assessment.

The following month, a series of powerful underwater explosions tore apart three of the four main Nord Stream pipes.

Andriy Chernyak, spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, denied that Ukraine was involved in the blasts when asked Tuesday about the CIA’s inquiry.

In a recent interview with the German newspaper Bild, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “I believe that our military and our intelligence did not do it, and when anyone claims the opposite, I would like them to show us the evidence.”

At a meeting with a European counterpart in October, CIA Director William Burns told his counterpart that available evidence didn’t point to Russia. When asked if it was Ukraine, he said, “I hope not,” according to an official present at the meeting.

Western officials, including in the U.S. and Germany, have said they suspect a “pro-Ukrainian group” orchestrated and executed the sabotage. Some details of the CIA’s warning, including disclosing the role of the Dutch military intelligence in tipping off the CIA, were published earlier on Tuesday by a media consortium led by Germany’s Zeit newspaper.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that German investigators were examining evidence that suggested a Ukrainian sabotage team had used Poland, a European Union neighbor and NATO ally, as a hub for the logistics and financing of last year’s attack. Investigators haven’t accused Poland’s government or any Polish individuals of involvement.

Previously, the Journal reported that German investigators believe those responsible rented the Andromeda, a 50-foot-long sailing yacht, using a Warsaw-based travel agency, to plant bombs along the pipelines.

Its passengers returned the boat unwashed, allowing investigators to recover fingerprints, and traces of explosives—as well as DNA that they have tried to match to at least one Ukrainian soldier, through his son, who lives in Germany.