Revealed: What Google could have told Observer editors about their NSA ‘source’

As Harry’s Place, Guido Fawkes and others noted earlier, The Observer today published, and then pulled, a ‘bombshell’ report by Jamie Doward alleging that the UK and other EU countries conspired with the United States over the “harvesting of personal communications data.”

(Here’s how the story, which is no longer available on their main website, looks on their digital paper edition.)

revealled!

Editors at The Observer (sister publication of the Guardian) evidently began questioning the report when it was “revealed” that the sole source which the lead was based on, Wayne Madsen, a former Navy intelligence officer, is a ‘Birther’ and all around crazy conspiracy theorist – who (not surprisingly) is also obsessed with the Zionist, Israeli, and Neocon influence on the world.

Here are excerpts from The Observer’s faux scoop:

At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s [NSA], who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”.

Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog, Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues, said he had decided to speak out after becoming concerned about the “half story” told by EU politicians regarding the extent of the NSA’s activities in Europe.

Madsen said he was alarmed at the “sanctimonious outcry” of political leaders who were “feigning shock” about the spying operations while staying silent about their own arrangements with the US, and was particularly concerned that senior German politicians had accused the UK of spying when their country had a similar third-party deal with the NSA.

Although the level of co- operation provided by other European countries to the NSA is not on the same scale as that provided by the UK, the allegations are potentially embarrassing.

“I can’t understand how Angela Merkel can keep a straight face, demanding assurances from Obama and the UK while Germany has entered into those exact relationships,” Madsen said.

Madsen said all seven European countries and the US have access to the Tat 14 fibre-optic cable network between Denmark and Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK and the US, allowing them to intercept vast amounts of data, including phone calls, emails and records of access to websites. He said the public needed to be made aware of the scale of the communication-sharing arrangements between European countries and the US, which became of strategic importance during the cold war.

“A lot of this information isn’t secret, nor is it new,” Madsen said. “It’s just that governments have chosen to keep the public in the dark about it. The days when they could get away with a conspiracy of silence are over.

Speaking of “conspiracies”, here are a few classic Madsen “revelations”:

Here’s Madsen at the antisemitic site Veteran’s Today, on the global Zionist conspiracy:

The Israeli Lobby owns the Congress, media, Hollywood, Wall Street, both political parties, and the White House. This kind of talk will get people fired by this lobby, as we have seen recently with White House correspondent Helen Thomas and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez. However, many Americans are growing tired of the arrogance of the Israel Lobby and their bigoted attitudes toward anyone who challenges their influence-peddling and their ridiculous insistence that Israel must be supported because of some ancient fairy tales involving some tribes who wandered the deserts of the Middle East and saw and heard non-existent things because of sun stroke, drinking bad water, and smoking local hallucinogenic plants.

Here’s Madsen at Iranian PressTV (where he’s been published numerous times), in a piece titled ‘Zionist regime practising Nazi-style occupation policies“.

Adolf Hitler and other top Nazis were fond of saying, “Heute Deutschland, morgen die Welt!” (“Today Germany, tomorrow the world!”), when describing the Nazi Party’s goals for global domination.

Many of Israel’s dominant political parties espouse the same goals for Zionism, which many observers believe take a page from the Nazi playbook when it comes to expansion not only in the occupied territories of Palestine but beyond to the Golan Heights of Syria, southern Lebanon, Sinai, eastern Libya, northern Iraq, and even further afield.

And any country where Jews once lived or played a role is seen as a potential area of expansion for some Zionists who dream of a one-world Zionist state. Although Israel is bent on expelling as many non-Jewish black Africans and brown-skinned Asians from the Jewish state as possible, it has given citizenship to Falasha Jews from Ethiopia and Bnei Menashe from India. The latter, originating in Mizoram and Manipur on the Indian-Myanmar border, claimed they were banished to India in the 8th century B.C. and, therefore, are a “lost tribe” of Israel. As Israeli passport holders, these “new Jews” will be permitted to return to India, a nation already overrun with Chabad House-cover Mossad operatives and Israel Defense Force regulars involved in cross-border operations in Pakistan, protective services for the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, and drug and gem smuggling.

It is only a matter of time before Israel stakes a claim to Afghanistan as more oil and rare earth mineral reserves are discovered and as Western military forces retreat from the country. After all, some Jewish scholars claim the Pathans of Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan represent another “lost tribe of Israel.” Conveniently for Israel, many Pathans are also members of the Taliban.

His Twitter feed also has a treasure trove of ‘revelations’.

Birtherism:

FDR “assassination” conspiracy?:

Simply bizarre:

Remarkably, Madsen has been quoted multiple times by Guardian and Observer reporters going back to at least 2000 on matters relating to U.S. national security, and was characterized obliquely by the paper in one story as merely “a commentator on intelligence-gathering”.  

Finally, in addition to the well-deserved mockery now coming the Guardian’s way, the episode does also raises serious questions about the media group’s fact-checking and their commitment to checking sources before publishing sensational charges which just so happen to have the added benefit of affirming their desired narrative.  

The term ‘confirmation bias‘ doesn’t begin to adequately describe the Guardian’s style of investigative reporting.

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