In February 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that the United States, with help from Norway, was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Weeks later he sat down with Brian Rose on London Real. In this clip, Brian asks the obvious next question: what does Vladimir Putin do now?
Hersh’s answer ranges from Cold War history and a CIA personality profile to his reading of the war in Ukraine.
A warning from Vietnam
Brian asks whether the pipeline attack, if it goes unpunished, could be the start of something bigger. Hersh points back to 1964 and President Lyndon Johnson, before American troops arrived in Vietnam. That history, he says, is behind his fear about where things could lead now.
On Putin himself, Hersh is careful. “I have no idea what Putin thinks,” he says. He reads Putin’s speeches, and recalls one in Sochi in which the Russian president said Russia was not afraid of nuclear threats. In Hersh’s view, Putin is not a communist but someone who believes in the great Soviet mythology.
The judo story
Hersh says he once saw two CIA personality profiles of Putin, written by psychoanalysts who work with the agency. One was standard. The other, he says, argued that Putin was more rational than many assume.
It included a story from a trip to Japan, where Putin, who sees himself as a judo expert, was challenged by a woman who had been throwing everyone at a contest. He expected to win easily. She threw him within three minutes, and, as Hersh tells it, Putin took it well. Hersh says that profile was not widely circulated because it cut against the usual view.
“I wouldn’t mess with the guy”
Hersh then gives his own assessment: he believes Russia will win the war, but that Putin does not want to conquer Western Europe. In his view, Putin wants a buffer zone in Ukraine. He also argues that the West has provoked Russia for decades, pointing to the 2014 change of government in Kyiv and to American missile systems in Poland. His summary: “I know I wouldn’t mess with the guy.”
Brian notes that other London Real guests with intelligence backgrounds have made similar predictions, while much of the Western media tells a very different story. These remain Hersh’s views: his Nord Stream reporting relies on a single unnamed source, and the US and Norwegian governments have denied it.
History and humility
Hersh closes with the Battle of Stalingrad as a reminder of how much Russia has endured in war, and with warm words about Germany, where he has lectured for years. He calls himself “just one yokel”, and says many of his biggest stories were disbelieved at first.
What to take from it
Whether or not you share his conclusions, the clip shows how one of America’s best-known reporters approaches a story: through history, sources and documents, and a willingness to be in the minority.
Who is Seymour Hersh?
Seymour Hersh is an American investigative journalist and author. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and in 2004 reported on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq for The New Yorker.
This clip comes from his first London Real interview, recorded in 2023. He returned soon after for CIA Covers Up Nord Stream Bombing.
See everything Seymour Hersh has done with London Real on his guest page: Seymour Hersh on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Seymour Hersh – “I Wouldn’t Mess With Putin”: What Russia Does After Nord Stream
0:00 Brian Rose: Seymour, what does Putin do from here? Technically, Gazprom owns part of this pipeline. Is he offended by this explosion? What’s his next move? And does this act, especially if it goes uninvestigated or unpunished, empower Biden to do more of this? Are we going to look back 20 years from now and say it all started with Nord Stream?
0:20 Seymour Hersh: Well, obviously, the reason I ran the video of Johnson telling that lie in early 1964, before the American troops were there: that’s a fear of mine. Not that I’m all-powerful, but that’s what happened in Vietnam. I have no idea what Putin thinks. I read his speeches. If you remember, two or three years ago, particularly in Britain, there were all the stories that he’s dying, he’s got some kind of cancer, just floating all over. The gossip in Britain was even stronger than it was in America on that. There was such certitude that he had some kind of cancer, he was taking this drug.
1:03 Seymour Hersh: But he’s clearly articulate, and he said it in Sochi three or four years ago. He talked about America brandishing the nuclear bomb, and he said: we’re not afraid. We’ll go to God, even if we do it first. God will accept us if we have to do it to protect ourselves. He said that. That was the language. He’s not a communist. He is somebody who believes in the great Soviet mythology.
1:31 Seymour Hersh: I’ve read two differing CIA profiles. I wasn’t supposed to see them. The CIA uses a lot of psychoanalysts in the business: guys who have private patients, but also take the intercepts, look at them and write an analysis. Bright guys. One was sort of the standard. The other was much different. The other was saying he’s more rational. I’ll just tell you what it said, because I was given it.
2:05 Seymour Hersh: He thinks of himself as a judo expert, and he was in Japan doing a tour, and he was taken to a judo contest. There was one very aggressive woman who was throwing everybody, and [unclear]. He said: no, you’re a woman, I’ll win so easily. And she said: well, try me. So he put on the clothes. Maybe he was already dressed; maybe he was going to do an exercise there. He does fancy himself to be a good judoka. And she threw him in three minutes, right? And he took the heat. And what the analyst wrote was: this is a guy who knows when he’s not… he’s not irrational. It was a very interesting one. They didn’t promulgate it, because it went against the [unclear]. That’s how I happened to see it. I don’t think they briefed the White House on it, but they’d done many for the White House.
3:03 Seymour Hersh: So I don’t know if we have a good fix on Putin. I know he believes in the Soviet world. I’m not smart enough; I don’t read Russian. I read his speeches. I haven’t read the last one. I certainly read the one 10 years ago at one of the international meetings, when he said: why don’t you bring me into NATO? I want to be part of Europe. And we pooh-poohed that.
3:34 Seymour Hersh: But he’s going to win this war. There are other people who’ve said the same thing I’m saying. I do believe he does not want to conquer Western Europe. I don’t believe he wants to retake Germany. I don’t believe he wants anything more. He wants this buffer, this Ukrainian buffer. And he sees the Ukrainians as low life. It’s a racist view. But he’ll win. He’ll win.
4:02 Seymour Hersh: He just has a necessity. You have a Ukraine where we overthrew the government, a pro-Russian government, in 2014. By now, it’s pretty much acknowledged. The Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, was overheard on an intercept that was made public at the time, probably by the Russians, talking to the ambassador about who should be picked to run the next government. You can’t get away from that one. The press doesn’t want to worry about that too much either. I don’t know, but I know I wouldn’t mess with the guy. And he has the resources.
4:36 Seymour Hersh: I wouldn’t move missiles, defensive missiles, we say, that everybody in the community knows could be turned around within half a day into offensive ones. You’d have to do some mechanical work: take off some metal, put on some different metal. It could be done within a day. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t have done that.
4:56 Brian Rose: We did that in Poland, right? Those are our missiles in Poland, right?
5:00 Seymour Hersh: In Poland, you’ve got them exactly 80 kilometres from the border of Russia, or maybe 80 miles, I never remember which. So we’ve been provoking them for the past 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and we continue to. It’s been the game all along.
5:14 Brian Rose: It’s fascinating, because when I’ve had Jim Rickards in as well, a former CIA adviser, and a guy named Andrew Bustamante, former CIA, they all categorically said Russia’s going to win this war. There’s just no other way. And yet when you look at mainstream media, especially in Britain and in the US, it’s the complete opposite narrative. It’s: Ukraine’s winning every day, Russia’s on the ropes, it’s just a matter of time, they’re fighting the freedom fight.
5:42 Seymour Hersh: Well, there was a story in the paper today. I just looked at the headlines, where the Washington Post accuses Russia of more gross tortures and assassinations and war crimes galore. It’s so frustrating, because I’m talking to sophisticated people who know stuff, and know stuff they’re not telling you about. I have people who see stuff.
6:06 Seymour Hersh: And listen, just Russian history. In the final days in Stalingrad, the great victory, the Russians were losing, get this, 2,400 killed and wounded every four hours, and they muddled through and took the Germans down. I’ve read some wonderful novels written by some of the German soldiers who were in that war, describing it when they came home five years later.
6:35 Seymour Hersh: They’re human beings. Germans are really interesting. They’re well read. The Max Planck Institute in Berlin is one of the all-time great academic places in the world. I’ve been giving speeches there in English for 10, 12 years at the university, with no translator; they all master languages. And they know how to party. You can find Brooklyn Lager in a lot of places in Berlin, which you wouldn’t think. They know the tastes of Westerners. And so I don’t know why we have to go this way.
7:23 Seymour Hersh: So look, I’m just one yokel [unclear]. And I’ve had this before: when I did [unclear], the first poll I saw showed that 53 or 54 percent of people thought I was just nuts, I’m a liar, this didn’t happen. I’ve gone through that on a lot of the stories.
