As originally put forth on March 7 by the New York Times (quoting unnamed US officials with access to intelligence) and by a consortium of German media (quoting unnamed police sources), the theory held that the otherwise unidentified culprits had carried out the Baltic Sea operation from a rented 50-foot charter sailing yacht named Andromeda.

Some analysts (including me) found the tale highly improbable from the start and suggested – or, in the case of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, flat-out asserted – that it was a cover story concocted by spooks to counter Hersh’s February 8 report, based on the Pulitzer Prize winner’s own anonymous sourcing, that US divers working for the CIA did the deed.

This week, Washington Post reporters revisited the yacht tale, apparently trying to keep it afloat even as they acknowledged the story’s holes. One big hole: The reporters learned that the perps would have needed more of a base than a single sailing yacht for their operations at sea:

Stark told him that officials in Germany, Sweden and Denmark had decided shortly after the September 26, 2o22, pipeline bombings “to send teams to the site to recover the one mine that has not gone off. He said they were too late; an American ship had sped to the site within a day or two and recovered the mine and other materials. I asked him why he thought the Americans had been so quick to get to the site and he answered, with a wave of his hand, ‘You know what Americans are like. Always wanting to be first.’”

The Nord Stream blasts cover story is crumbling – Asia Times