Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen (born April 28, 1954) is an American journalist, author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international affairs.^[1][2] He is the author of the blog Wayne Madsen Report.^[3] He has been described as a conspiracy theorist.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Background and early life

Madsen was born on April 28, 1954 in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, to an American mother and a Danish mariner. His grandmother, who emigrated to the U.S. with his father after World War II, was Victoria Madsen, a Danish communist party official.^[11][12] In the 1950s, Victoria was deported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Madsen attended the University of Mississippi, where he joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.^[13]

Career

U.S. Navy

Upon graduation from University of Mississippi, he joined the U.S. Navy. He was commissioned an ensign.

In early 1982 he was stationed at the classified Naval Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) station at Coos Head, which had an allowance of twelve officers, ninety-five enlisted and 15 civilians. He was later given a bad fitness report by his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Marney Finch who transferred him to Washington D.C. later that year.^[14]

In 1984, Madsen reports that he was loaned to the National Security Agency by the Navy.^[15] He resigned from the Navy in 1985 as a lieutenant, having been passed over for promotion. Madsen described himself as the "most senior lieutenant in the Navy".^[16]

Post-Navy career

Between 1985 and 1989 Madsen held a series of jobs, first working for RCA as a government consultant on contracts for the National Security Agency (NSA). Later he worked for the Navy's Naval Data Automation Command as a civilian employee. After this Madsen briefly established his own consulting firm, then worked for the National Bureau of Standards, and later for the State Department.^[15] In 1990 Madsen joined Computer Sciences Corporation, working there from 1990 until 1997,^[15] 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 SIGINT and computer security experts.^[17] In late January 2005 Madsen left EPIC.^[15] While at EPIC he appeared as a guest on 60 Minutes,^[18] ABC Nightline,^[19] Voice of America,^[20] National Public Radio,^[21] and Marketplace,^[22]

Blogging and journalism career

He has been described as an "odd individual" devoted to writing in an area that "teeters on a slippery slope, at the foot of which is the whole repository of Internet-perpetuated conspiracy theories" which leads to much of his writing being treated with skepticism.^[23] In 2005 Madsen began working as a free-lance journalist. He produces a blog called the Wayne Madsen Report. His articles have appeared in publications such as CorpWatch, CounterPunch, CovertAction Quarterly, In These Times, Multinational Monitor, The American Conservative, The Progressive and The Village Voice. His columns have appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and the Sacramento Bee.^[13][24] He appeared on WETA-TVs "White House Chronicle" in January 2012.^[25] He is a frequent contributor to The Alex Jones Show.^[9] He has appeared as a guest on Al Jazeera,^[26] Russia Today,^[27] Press TV,^[28] and CNBC.^[29]

Controversies

Observer controversy

On June 30, 2013, the London Observer published a front page story sourced to Madsen. According to Michael Moynihan of the Daily Beast, shortly after going to press, The Observer "realized that the story's author, Jamie Doward, failed to conduct even the most perfunctory Google search on Madsen. That would have revealed him to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist in the tradition of Alex Jones, on whose radio show he often appears".^[9] The article was quickly removed from the parent (Guardian) newspaper's website pending an investigation, but not before the print edition had gone to press.^{[6][30][31][31]} According to Forbes magazine, The Observer likely took the story down as it was concerned with the reliability of the source rather than the content as no matter how "left field" the source was, the story seems to be largely true and has been a matter of public record for some years.^[32]

The story was allegedly sourced from a blog in which Madsen had been interviewed regarding his views on claims by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, alleging connections between the National Security Agency and several European governments known as ECHELON.^[30][33] 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.”^[31]

Joshua Gillin of the Poynter Institute claimed that The Observer had not interviewed Madsen but had taken the quotes from an online interview with Madsen and that Madsen's "declassified documents", upon which the story was based, were publicly available on the NSA website. However, Gillin later spoke to Madsen who stated that he was interviewed for The Observer article.^[4] According to Forbes, on June 30, 2013, the same day that The Observer both published and retracted the article, Reuters reported the same claims, but sourced from NSA documentation supplied by Edward Snowden to support his claims regarding the cyber-espionage programs Tempora and Prism.^[32][34]

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 the story. For this reason, the original story was removed from the website, and the Observer splash was replaced."^[35]

Reporting and opinions

September 11 attacks

In 2003 he claimed that he had uncovered information in a classified congressional report that he said contained information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia and the 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.^[36]

In a 2010 interview for Veterans Today, when asked what he thought about claims by former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Intelligence Service and several investigative journalists that Israel was behind 9/11, Madsen stated that he believed the 9/11 attacks were "an operation carried out by Mossad, Saudi intelligence,...and elements of the CIA."^[37] In 2014, Madsen self-published a book that said that both Israel and Saudi Arabia were intimately involved in planning and carrying out the 9/11 attack on the United States as a "false-flag" attack.

Claims about Barack Obama

Madsen has claimed that Obama is gay. The Nation writing on that conspiracy theory reported that Wayne Madsen "is the source on Obama’s visits to the bath house and who revealed how Obama used basketball pickup games to pick up men. Obama, Madsen says, had homosexual trysts with Representative Artur Davis, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Senate majority leader Bill Frist!"^[38][39]

On June 9, 2008 he reported that unnamed "GOP dirty tricks operatives" had found a Kenyan birth certificate registering the birth of Barack Obama, Jr. on August 4, 1961. "However, the registration is a common practice in African countries whose citizens abroad have families with foreign nationals."^[40] This birth certificate was a cornerstone of the "Kenyan Born" subset of the birther conspiracy theories, and Madsen's article was cited in a Washington state petition challenging Obama's eligibility to be president.^[41]

In 2012, Madsen self-published a book Manufacturing a President that said that Barack Obama was a creation of the CIA.

Other claims involving Israel and Mossad

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.^[42]

In September 2005 he said that the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had pressured American politicians to avoid protests against the Iraq War.^[43]In October 2005, he wrote that "an unidentified former CIA agent" claimed that the USS Cole was hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine.^[44]

In a 2008 ArabNews article suggesting that the criminal prosecution of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer was partly due to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Wayne Madsen says that the prostitution firm that entangled Spitzer in a call girl ring, is seen as a front for Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. Further Madsen suggested that Spitzer was outed by Russian-Israeli gangsters angry at Spitzer's crack down on Wall Street malfeasance.^[45]

He has asserted that members of AIPAC and Israel's Mossad dominate CNN's management and urges his readers to boycott CNN and its advertisers until they are fired. He has begun a project to oppose Israel as a threat to world peace.^[46] Madsen has stated in an interview that "the Israeli lobby owns the Congress, media, Hollywood, Wall Street, both political parties and the White House".^[37][47]

In 2010, Madsen reported in the Pakistan Daily that unnamed sources suggested that the company formerly known as Blackwater, had been conducting false-flag operations in Pakistan that were blamed on the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.^[48]

Other claims

In 2002 he suggested to The Guardian newspaper that the United States Navy had aided in an attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. Madsen stated that US military attaches had been in contact with members of the Venezuelan military to discuss the possibility of a coup. Further, Madsen said that while the [U.S.] navy was in the area for training operations unconnected to the coup, they had aided with signals intelligence as the coup progressed and engaged in communications jamming support for the Venezuelan military. Madsen asserted that the US Navy jammed communications to and from the diplomatic missions of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Iraq. According to the Guardian, "The US embassy dismissed the allegations as 'ridiculous'."^[49] An OIG report requested by Sen. Christopher Dodd, found no wrongdoing by any U.S. officials either in the State Department or at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.^[50]

On May 17, 2005, Madsen announced that America was secretly running the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) before a Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights hearing on the situation in the DRC. According to the news magazine New African, Madsens testimony "was so revealing that the mainstream Western media...have refused to print it."^[51]

On April 25, 2009, Madsen said that unidentified journalists from Mexico and Indonesia had spoken to some unidentified UN World Health Organization officials and scientists believed the 2009 new H1N1 strain of swine flu virus appeared to be the product of U.S. military sponsored gene splicing, as opposed to natural processes.^[52][53] While it can not be ruled out that the virus was created in a research laboratory or vaccine factory, the most plausible explanation is that the virus is the result of modern farming techniques. New Scientist magazine cited the example of a H1N2 influenza pandemic in the 1990s that was a reassortment (mix) of swine, human and avian strains.^[54]

Bibliography

• The Manufacturing of a President (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
• Madsen; John Stanton (2003). America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Enterprises. p. 173. ISBN 978-1-893302-29-7. OCLC 55941597. 
• Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden co-authored with Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie (Nation Books, 2002) ISBN 1-56025-414-9
• 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 Ltd, 1992) (reference book on international data protection law) ISBN 1-56159-046-0

References

External links

• Wayne Madsen Report
• Appearances on C-SPAN