Wayne Madsen Wayne Madsen ( born April 25 , 1954 ) is an American online investigative journalist , author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international affairs . He is the author of the blog " Wayne Madsen Report " . He has been described as a conspiracy theorist . Background and early life . Madsen was born in Ridley Park , Pennsylvania on April 28 , 1954 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 . In the 1950s Victoria Madsen was deported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) . Madsen attended the University of Mississippi where he joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps . 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 Coos Head Naval Facility 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 . In 1984 , Madsen reports that he was loaned to the National Security Agency by the Navy . 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 " . 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 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 . In 1990 Madsen joined Computer Sciences Corporation , 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 SIGINT and computer security experts , In late January 2005 Madsen left EPIC . 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 . 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 " . He appeared on WETA - TV s " White House Chronicle " in January 2012 . He is a frequent contributor to the Alex Jones show . " Guardian " newspaper controversy . On June 30 , 2013 , " The Observer " , which is owned by " The Guardian " , in London published a front page story sourced from a 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 . 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 . ” 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 . 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 . Several journalists reporting on the incident described Madsen as a " conspiracy theorist . " 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 . Joshua Gillin of the Poynter Institute noted that the Guardian hadn ' t interviewed Madsen but had pulled 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 , 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 . 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 . " Reporting and opinions . In 2002 he suggested to " The Guardian " newspaper that the United States Navy had aided in an attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president , Hugo Chavez . 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 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 . Later , in an interview for the " Veterans Today " website in 2010 , he claimed that Mossad had been involved . 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 . In 2005 , he wrote that an unidentified former CIA agent claimed that the USS Cole was actually hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin - class submarine . On May 17 , 2005 , Madsen testified regarding American policy 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 . " In 2005 he said that the pro - Israel lobby , the American Israel Public Affairs Committee , had pressured American politicians to stay away from protests against the Iraq War . 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 . Madsen has stated in an interview that " the Israeli lobby owns the Congress , media , Hollywood , Wall Street , both political parties and the White House " . < / sup > In a 2008 " ArabNews " 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 . 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 . " 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 serve . Madsen has also claimed that Obama is gay . On April 25 , 2009 , Madsen reported that 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 . 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 only affected pigs in the United Kingdom . This subtype of the H1N2 was also a reassortment ( mix ) of swine , human and avian strains . In July 2009 , Madsen released a report saying there was a " Q Group " within the National Security Agency tasked with plugging leaks of classified information and the monitoring and suppression of journalists who report on the NSA . He noted that with the approaching 10th anniversary of 9 / 11 , the group have " made plans to stop any new revelations that would point to high - level U . S . and Israeli government involvement in the 9 / 11 attacks " that included the use of Wikileaks to identify potential " leakers " . 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 . In June 2012 Madsen self - published his sixth book . The book states it is an expose of Barack Obama ' s rise in American politics and the CIA ' s role in his attaining the Presidency .