Playing Poker with Seymour Hersh

What does he hold and how good's a poker face?

The Biden administration is now in a poker game against Seymour Hersh but Joe and Sy are not the only players at the table.

At the pre-flop, Hersh launched his substack with his Nord Stream article and picked up 100k subscribers, now 116,000+. VST estimates Hersh is pulling in circa $5000+ in subscription income a month, and that’s the low end estimate. If reasonable, that’s a good resource base to provide him with financial resilience irrespective of his pre-existing wealth, given the stakes of the game he’s now playing.

In the opening hand, the US was forced to react to the story. At first, there was silence, which had a time limit. At that time limit, it played its propaganda via the NYT and German outlets. The US had already been painting itself into a corner via its multiple, pre-declared statements of intent to shut NS any which way etc combined with the eradication of Russia as a suspect by the Swedish “investigation”, but this hand painted shut any escape path from its corner. Olaf Scholz made an unprecedentedly low key visit to Biden. Possibly to be directly instructed on his role in the poker game.

What the US has now tried to pass off as truth is that the Ukrainians blew the pipeline using means that don’t stand up to technical scrutiny. To blame the Ukrainians is to take responsibility, given they are mere US proxies. That’s the corner painted shut. This also sets up a direct conflict with Ukraine and the EU, delegitimising the EU member state application and process and thereby the EU itself. The same applies to NATO. Under no circumstances should the EU or NATO allow a terrorist nation to bomb its way into the club, yet it appears no one has challenged the EU or NATO on this yet, despite how obvious it is. In fact, the continued sponsorship by them of what the Americans are claiming is a terrorist state makes no sense whatsoever, given that the Ukraine supposedly bombed its allies’ energy infrastructure. There is no logical, justifiable way to marry up these two directly opposing ideas: that the Ukraine blew up EU infrastructure using terrorist methods while still being an ally who deserves endless sponsorship and access to two fundamental blocs, both of which it deliberately damaged with the express purpose of directly hurting them in pursuit of a warped political outcome that further provokes nuclear war.

Hersh has published 5 holding articles in the flop, all of which are subscriber only. These articles set tone and lay out a challenge. In these articles, Hersh:

• Starts to call bullshit on the US line;

• Gives a reminder of Norway’s secret involvement in Vietnam;

• Recounts a view of Kennedy as a President whose self-perception included a notion of greatness born out of overseeing the Vietnam war, drawing a parallel with Biden and Ukraine;

• Pays homage to Daniel Ellsberg as American hero, friend and tutor to Hersh in how to navigate the world of state secrets and lies;

• Poses the open question of whether Biden has anyone performing the role of Red Team and sanity checker.

In effect, Hersh is marking out the battlefield and underpinning his original article by serving up his nuggets of history, context and his own pedigree in this field of political reportage. He has also explicitly stated in interviews that he has more on NS than was in the original article, and that might be his bluff.

By March 22nd, the US hand had been played via the NYT and Zeit’s supposedly separate investigations, both of which arrived at the same conclusion of a small Ukranian team using a small, hired yacht to blow Nord Stream. These stories also committed to releasing pictures of the boat and claiming that such a crack team left behind two Ukrainian passports that should be taken at face value. Within days, other elements of the German press were effectively calling bullshit on this story. That day, Hersh responded with “The Cover Up”, in which Hersh saw and raised the US.

Hersh’s next interim move was to publish “The Kennedy’s Secret Sicilian Operation”, that, put very simply, serves to remind us of Hersh’s view of the dark and complex relationships between the Kennedy brothers, the CIA, the Mafia in general and specific leadership players. The Kennedys, according to Hersh, after using the CIA as a weapon against Cuba, turned it on the Mafia right in its Italian heartland and fomented an internal civil war that spilled across the Italian nation. All of this drove towards the brothers’ eventual assassinations at the combined hands of the Mafia and US deep state. Their use of the CIA and targeting of the Mafia in this way painted them into a corner of sorts. Neither were clean players and they had pissed off the CIA by making it do things its leadership didn’t necessarily agree with. A key point Hersh makes here is that secrets are kept until a secret keeper decides that a revelation has specific utility. It is this notion that underpins VST’s already stated belief that the NS poker game has more players at the table than just Hersh and the Biden administration.

Hersh’s pieces on NS are being currently validated and informed by intel contacts who are telling him that this is a straightforward propaganda narrative wherein the CIA spins a story with enough truth points in it to satisfy a journalist, while telling that partisan reporter what they want to hear (a limited hangout). In this way, combined with editorial force, the stories go out without sufficient questions being asked and published.

Those questions are now Hersh’s current bread and butter.

His latest article released today, “The Nord Stream Ghost Ship”, bites down and chomps on key details of the US narrative. The boat, the team size and capability, locating the pipelines, US recovery of the remaining bomb, forensic trace of explosives etc. All of these things, when listed, are clearly flecks of bullshit. But now, the US is allied to the smell and any reverse ferret away from its own turd is an admission of lies. To try to dig a deeper hole will only make the smell worse. The NYT reporters claimed that “they know very little” but they knew enough to print a story blaming the Ukranians, else why print at all? It was printed because the US had to put out something. It could not stay silent for more than two weeks after Hersh’s original article. To do so would be an admission in itself.

What Hersh is doing is two-fold. He’s actively picking at the scab and, bit-by-bit, deconstructing key claims in the US story to demonstrate why they are most likely false, thereby drawing out, as a good writer should, the story while at the same time goading the administration to react by spinning more lies. He’s potentially holding back a bombshell, or he’s bluffing about that. The time to play that bombshell is when the US has overcommitted on its story and cannot reverse or credibly deny whatever it is that Hersh’s holding back. If Hersh is bluffing, that threat could be enough to force the US into further wrong steps, although it’s already made one - the attack - and is up to its waist in the current hole.

But, let’s remind ourselves of what Hersh is telling us himself: there’s someone else at the table.

VST said:

Clearly some people in the state organs don’t agree with the status quo and operational decision making. They must have assessed that the stakes are high enough and the crimes egregious enough to have them exposed and contribute to calling halt, perhaps via mass revolt. If war wasn’t waging with nukes on the table, towing the line would result in nothing. But if the war keeps going to a terminal point, the sources who leaked the story may actually have decided that they couldn’t risk staying quiet past a point of no return.

The other player at the table is the secret keeper who has decided that revealing the secrets now has utility. Hersh has himself hinted that VST’s suspicion might be right. We would quote Hersh here, but out of respect for him we direct you to to his latest article. The last paragraph is where the hint lies. If you don’t want to pay Hersh, you can use the 7-day trial feature.

If VST is right, the Biden administration is thinking it’s going to punch down Hersh for mouthing off, when in actual fact it’s being led into an alleyway by its own security services, who may go as far as knifing Biden in the back behind a dumpster. From what VST can determine from the poker game, we’re watching the turn and Biden is only holding a pair of sixes. If Hersh isn’t bluffing, three-of-a-kind won’t stop senile Joe from smelling like he shat his own pants.

Time for another drink. Maybe a Vesper?

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