John Mark Dougan: "I Received a Whistleblower Letter about Military Exercises near Nordstream" [on October 2nd 2022]
Appears to support bombshell Seymour Hersh reporting released on February 8th 2023
"Dr. Mr. Dougan, I write this letter in hopes you might share it.
I cannot share the information myself because it will be detrimental to my career and my life.
I'm sending you this photo as proof that I was there as well as a copy of my identification, which you may share this with one other journalist that you trust, but not to leave your possession. It is vital you do not share this with anyone else and that you never use this email account again. You may read this letter verbatim as it was written.
I had a leading administration role in the June BALTOPS 22 military exercises near Bornholm Island, Denmark. I can't give you my exact title because it will allow my identity to be revealed.
[NOTE: Mr. Dougan does know his identity and has a picture confirming his attendance at BALTOPS 22]
There are some unusual details involving a group of U.S. Navy sailors, from naval strike and support forces, NATO, or "STRIKEFORNATO" who had arrived from Stockholm. While it seems strange at the time, in retrospect, right now things look outright nefarious.
Let me explain. Forgive me in advance if I get any of the terminology wrong. The military of my country may use different words. I can't be specific in my job, but I work coordination for dive teams for underwater missions with their various militaries in the NATO alliance. On June 15th the day of one particular exercise, I was working coordinating certain aspects of the exercise. I must be vague in this.
A US military helicopter arrived carrying a group of men who were supposed to be US Navy anti-mine personnel. They exited, unloaded their gear and met with both the U.S. Navy vice admiral and a group of American men in plain clothes that had arrived a few hours earlier. We all suspected them to be some sort of intelligence officers. After a short conversation that I could not hear because of the sound of the helicopters, they approached their briefing. I found it rather strange that they were from the U.S. Navy. My first thought was that they looked like a group of terrorists, not anyone from the U.S. Navy. The other groups we had from many of the military branches had some sort of standards. Haircuts, for example. Not only did these men have wild hair that would have breached any civilized nations code of military standards, but they all had facial hair as well. As I said, they looked more like Middle Eastern terrorists. None of these men wore identification tags around their necks. The other thing I found odd was that they claimed to be there to search for underwater mines, however, they lacked the equipment for such exercise. The equipment consisted of the latest Navy issue deep diving, underwater rebreathers and some small, hard case boxes. We call them pelicans.
Their job was to take a rubber boat to a predetermined location, search for anti-ship mines and return to shore with their findings. Usually in such an endeavor they have long metal detection equipment. But that was absent from their collection of gear. A detail I thought to be very strange here was that while the other mine EOD teams wore traditional scuba gear with tanks and such, this group was wearing state of the art, helium rebreather, helmets and dive suits. Though I have never seen one up close, I'm quite certain these were the MK 29 systems made for deep dives and to this day remain classified. My country's military wouldn't even be able to afford the helium for these, let alone the suits themselves. The suits certainly would not be required for locating mines that sit just a few meters below the surface.
They took their boats offshore, not to the area where the simulated mines were placed, but to an entirely different location. My colleague, who was monitoring different team locations, made an offhand joke about how the U.S. Navy had gotten lost and was 2000 meters from their target location. They exited their boat wearing their rebreathers and they disappeared under the water for over 6 hours. There is no self-contained underwater gear that I know of that can keep a diver under for 6 hours. With the newest military systems, three or four max is possible if the diver isn't exerting themselves. After a few hours, we began to get concerned and we contacted the coordinator for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which assured us that everything was fine, they were in contact, to ignore it, and not to make any reports about it.
After the exercise was over and they returned, almost all of their pelicans were missing. They did not stay for any pleasantries. They had a short conversation with the civilian people from the U.S., got on a waiting helicopter and left. The civilians they were talking to also left, but on a different helicopter. Their mission was later marked as completed successfully even though they were never near the intended target location.
In retrospect, here are my suspicions. The diver met with the small waiting submersible that shuttled them to the area of the pipeline. The explosives required for such an act would not fit in their gear. So I suspect they were carrying survey and locating equipment that would be used to mark where the explosives needed to be placed. Once they examined the pipeline, marked the proper coordinates, they would have time to examine the data with explosive engineers, return to the site at a later time and place required charges to be detonated on a timer or remotely.
Thank you."
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