Editor’s note: Wikipedia recently got caught altering investigative journalist Wayne Madsen’s bio. Wikipedia, the encyclopedic on-line source for many researchers, writers and the curious, is not living up to the editorial standards they themselves established. I’ve read more than one account over the years where their editors have been caught altering factual content and/or removing said relevant information altogether. A case in point is what recently happened to the biography of investigative journalist Wayne Madsen of Wayne Madsen Report.
Recently, a team of researchers and writers was assembled and led by Madsen to clean up the falsehoods of his bio over at Wikipedia. Within hours of making the corrections and adding hyperlinks to key articles and books he’s authored, Wikipedia editors reverted all edits back to the falsehoods. Here is Madsen’s report on exactly what happened to his edits – Add Wikipedia to NSA’s cyber-warfare weapons inventory
The T-Room has followed Madsen’s work for nearly five years now and has posted a number of his sound investigative reports. To assist him, his team of writers and his readers The T-Room gladly posts the below factually correct biography of Wayne Madsen with the intent to support Madsen, but more importantly, embarrass Wikipedia into following their own editorial standards by accepting, immediately, Madsen’s factually based corrections.
A collaborative effort by WMR members:
Below is the true, accurate and verifiable biography of Wayne Madsen. It has been submitted and rejected by Wikipedia in favor of a false biography (everything including Wayne’s date of birth is wrong).
Several bright WMR subscribers helped with assembling biographical data with Wayne’s help and transcribing it into proper html format and we submitted it to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has received verifiable evidence of the correct version below from WMR and Wikipedia continues to stone-wall and willingly publish the false biography instead.
This is the correct “forbidden” biography. The link is not behind the WMR firewall so that you may post it anywhere freely. Please help us expose this created problem.
Wayne Madsen (born April 28, 1954) is an American journalist, television news commentator, online editor of Wayne Madsen Report.com, investigative journalist and author specializing intelligence and international affairs.
Starting in 1997, after his military service as a U.S. Navy lieutenant assigned to Anti-Submarine Warfare duties and to the National Security Agency as a COMSEC analyst, he applied his military intelligence training to investigative journalism.
He has since written for many daily, weekly, and monthly publications including The Progressive, the Village Voice, ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Philadelphia Inquirer, Houston Chronicle, Allentown Morning Call, Juneau Empire, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Real Clear Politics, Danbury Newstimes, Newsday and many others.
Throughout his journalistic career, he has been a television commentator on many programs, including 60 Minutes, Russia Today, Press TV, and many others.
Family background
Wayne Madsen was born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania on April 28, 1954 to an American mother and a WW II Danish merchant mariner father.
His grandmother was Victoria Madsen, a newspaper reporter and editor for Land og Folk as well as a novelist.
Education and military intelligence career
Wayne Madsen attended the University of Mississippi where he was a member of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps and was later commissioned as an Ensign in the US Navy. He subsequently attended Fleet Sonar School in Key West, FL and was assigned to a series of Sound Surveillance System stations (SOSUS). He was one of the pioneers in the military computer security program for the US Navy and his expertise resulted in the request by NSA to the US Navy for his transfer to NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade.
After leaving the US Navy in 1985 as a lieutenant, he joined RCA Corporation as a senior engineer where he worked on national intelligence systems for the NSA. He then returned to government service where he taught computer security classes for the US Navy world-wide based out of Jacksonville, FL from 1986-1988. He then joined US State Department where he was a computer security specialist within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. He also served as a consultant for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on computer security programs. He was a Lead Scientist for Computer Sciences Corporation (CC) from 1990-1997. He served on study committees and conference panels sponsored by NIST and NSA. He was one of the first board members for the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium which sought to professionally certify computer security specialists around the world until 1997 when he became a senior fellow for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC and worked with bipartisan members of US Congress on privacy legislation.
In the mid-1990s, Wayne Madsen became increasingly skeptical about the motives behind the long-term surveillance goals of the NSA, particularly in view of government ‘backdoor’ encryption and export controls of encryption technology. This conflict with NSA and the then-governing Clinton Administration led him to investigate privacy, civil liberties and human rights infringements in the US and abroad by NSA and other intelligence agencies. He focused his attention on US intelligence involvement in the genocide in Rwanda and Zaire/Congo, was invited in 2002 to testify before a French counter-terrorism judicial inquiry on the terrorist attack on the aircraft carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994.
Post-Navy career
Between 1985 and 1989 Madsen held a series of jobs, first working for RCA as a senior engineer on national intelligence systems operated by NSA. Later, he worked for the Navy’s List of Acronyms and Initialisms: Naval Data Automation Command as a civilian employee, teaching computer security courses. After this Madsen established his own consulting firm, then worked for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and later for the State Department. In 1990, Madsen joined Computer Sciences Corporation as a lead scientist, responsible for corporate and client computer security issues, working there from 1990 until 1997 when he joined the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) as a senior fellow. In 1998, while at EPIC, Madsen was described by journalist Jason Vest in the ”Village Voice” as one of the world’s leading Signals intelligence (SIGINT) and computer security experts.
Career in Journalism
He wrote for Corp Watch, CounterPunch, Covert Action Quarterly, In These Times, Multinational Monitor, The American Conservative, The Progressive and others mentioned above.
His columns have appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, Miami Herald and the Sacramento Bee. He appeared on WETA-TV’s White House Chronicle in January 2012. He is an occasional contributor to the Alex Jones show.
Madsen began writing articles on computer security and data privacy in 1988 for Datamation, Government Computer News, Federal Computer Week, Computers and Security and Computer Fraud and Security Bulletin. In 1997, Madsen as a freelance journalist investigated the encryption firm Crypto AG, the genocidal wars in Rwanda and Zaire/Congo and Sierra Leone (book: Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1999), the NSA’s global signals intelligence (SIGINT) network, Vice President Cheney’s close ties to Halliburton and mercenaries in the Balkans.
In his long and prolific career, Madsen has interviewed former UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali in Paris in 1998, former Rwandan Prime Ministers Faustin Twagiramungu and Pierre-Celestin Rwigema. In 2004, Madsen interviewed Italian novelist Umberto Eco at the 22nd Data Protection Commissioners’ Conference, Venice, Italy, 2000.
In 2005, Madsen began working as a free-lance journalist. He maintains an online news and views web site called the Wayne Madsen Report among whose diverse subscribers quoting his work is Fidel Castro. Madsen also received warm personal greetings from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2010 at the UN. He was invited by Muammar Ghadafi in 2009 and attended the 40th anniversary of the Libyan Revolution.
In 1995, Madsen reported from Israel and Cyprus on the terrorist plot on Pan AM flight 103. He worked on the story with ABC news correspondents John Cooley and former White House press secretary and ABC news reporter Pierre Salinger. He reported in 1996 from Zurich and Liechtenstein on the NSA encryption firm Crypto AG. In 1997, he reported from London and Paris on the death of Princess Diana. In 1998, he reported from Uganda and Rwanda on the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing civil war in the DRC. From the last week of December 1999 until January 3, 2000, he reported on Y2K preparations in San Jose, Costa Rica.
In 2002, he spent several weeks in New York and New Jersey investigating Arab and Israeli cells suspected of having involvement in the 9/11 attack. In 2002, Madsen was in Israel and interviewed former head of Mossad Shabtai Shavit.
In 2007, he reported from Thailand and Cambodia on a diplomat pedophile ring which involved the US Embassy in Bangkok. In 2008, he interviewed Prachanda, leader of the Nepali Maoist Party and subsequently reported from Nepal. Madsen was one of the first western reporters to report from Sikkim since the 1975 Indian invasion and occupation. Madsen was the first American journalist to interview the former royal family of Sikkim from within that occupied country.
In 2011, he reported from Tripoli, Libya and from the Tunisian-Libyan border during the NATO bombing campaign and the NATO-supported military revolt against Col. Ghadafi. Also in 2011, he conducted extensive background research work for his book “Manufacturing of a President” in Jakarta, also reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia on the links between Barack Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham-Soetoro and his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro and the 1965 CIA coup against president Sukarno and its aftermath.
In 2012, he reported from Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau on the laundering of Sheldon Adelson’s casino money from Macau to the Mitt Romney presidential election campaign.
Awards and Recognition
US Navy Achievement Medal, 1982.
Articles recognized by Project Censored in 2010.
Controversy
Due to the outspoken nonpartisan nature of his reporting, he has been stereotyped as a conspiracy theorist by certain members of the corporate media.
In 1982, while assigned as the operations officer at US Naval Facility Coos Bay, Oregon, he was recruited as a temporary special agent by the Naval Investigative Service (now Naval Criminal Investigative Service NCIS) and the FBI to investigate his commanding officer for involvement in a major child pornography ring. Madsen was the sole government witness at his commanding officer’s court martial in Seattle and his testimony led to a conviction for his commanding officer of “16 counts of sodomy and lewd and indecent conduct with minors.
After instituting the Naval Telecommunications Command first computer security program, Madsen’s service was requested by the NSA upon which he was transferred NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, MD . He was assigned to the National Communications Security Assessment Center (NCSAC) where he helped institute President Reagan’s directive on telecommunications security for unclassified networks and databases.
On June 30, 2013, The Observer, which is owned by The Guardian, in London published a front page story sourced from Simon Davies’ Privacy Surgeon blog in which Madsen had been interviewed regarding his views on claims by whistleblower Edward Snowden, alleging connections between the National Security Agency and several European governments known as ECHELON. Madsen was quoted on prior occasion by The Guardian on the CIA’s involvement in the 2002 coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In the story, entitled, “Revealed: Secret European Deal to Hand Over Private Data to Americans,” Madsen claimed that several European governments were “colluding with the U.S. over the mass harvesting of personal communications data” which was confirmed 13 years later by documents provided by Ed Snowden.
Both former NSA employees Madsen and Snowden continue to be slandered by the same supporters of NSA surveillance such as The Daily Caller, Business Insider, National Security Studies staff of the US Naval War College, Daily Telegraph, Daily Beast and Salon, as evidenced by comparison articles on Snowden and Madsen below.
On June 29, 2013, Madsen’s quote on European countries assisting NSA with its surveillance.
On July 5, 2013, the Guardian responded to the controversy saying that “The documentary evidence for the story, which was based on a number of sources, was sound, but it was wrong to connect Wayne Madsen with this story in any way. For this reason, the original story was removed from the website, and the Observer splash was replaced . The Guardian made this decision despite the fact that they had quoted Madsen in the past without retraction and their editorial board may have acted based on political pressure.
Reporting and opinions
In 2003, he said that he had uncovered information in a classified congressional report that he claimed contained information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia and the Presidency of George W. Bush|Bush administration through financial transactions with the hijackers. The Saudi Foreign Minister demanded the report be declassified so it could respond; however, the Bush administration refused, claiming that to do so would compromise intelligence sources and methods. Madsen has consistently reported that both Mossad and the Saudi government as well as others were jointly responsible for 9/11.
Madsen has asserted in’ The Palestine Telegraph’that hundreds of Iraqi scientists who had been assassinated or died in accidents after the invasion in 2003 were actually murdered by Mossad hit teams operating in Iraq.
On May 17, 2005, Madsen testified under oath that America was secretly running the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) before a United States Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women’s Issues|Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights hearing on the situation in the DRC. According to the news magazine ‘New African’, Madsen’s testimony “was so revealing that the mainstream Western media…have refused to print it.” Madsen also testified under oath on Rwanda and the DRC before French anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Brugiere in Paris and a formal Spanish government judicial inquiry in Barcelona in 2003.
In 2005, he said that the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had pressured American politicians to stay away from protests against the Iraq War.
He has asserted that members of American Israel Public Affairs Committee|AIPAC and Israel’s Mossad dominate CNN’s management and urges his readers to boycott CNN and its advertisers until they are fired. Madsen has stated in an interview that “the Israeli lobby owns the Congress, media, Hollywood, Wall Street, both political parties and the White House.”
In a 2008 ‘Arab News’ article, Madsen is quoted as suggesting that the criminal prosecution of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer was partly due to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
In 2010, Madsen reported in the Pakistan Daily that unnamed sources suggested that the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide|Blackwater, had been conducting false-flag operations in Pakistan that were blamed on the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Books authored by Wayne Madsen
“The Manufacturing of a President” ( Lulu (company)|Lulu 2012) ISBN 9781300011385
* ‘Jaded Tasks—Brass Plates, Black Ops & Big Oil: The Blood Politics of Bush & Co.’ (TrineDay, 2006) ISBN 0-9752906-9-X
* ‘America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II’
* ‘Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993–1999 (African Studies)’ ( Edwin Mellen Press, 1999) ISBN 0-7734-8002-1
* ‘Handbook of Personal Data Protection’ (New York: Macmillan Publishers (Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1992) (reference book on international data protection law) ISBN 1-56159-046-0
* ’L’Affaire Petraeus’ (Lulu Press, 2013) (The Benghazi Stand Down and the Plot to “Carterize” Obama ISBN 978-1300-483838
* ’National Security Agency Surveillance, Reflections and Revelations, 2001-2013 ISBN 149-1211-016, Amazon Create Space
*”Moralischer Bankrott: Der Amerikanische Offenbarungseid, 2006, HWK Verlag ISBN 3937245200
*Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a day, 2008, Trine Day ISBN 0977795365