“This story is demented and broken on so many levels (…) An excellent Wikipedia administrator [Linda Mack] has been victimized by lunatic conspiracy theorists.”
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia co-founder
(July 26 2007)
July 26, 2025 — On July 26, 2007, I published an article highlighting suspicious edits made to certain Wikipedia entries. The date was not chosen at random. Exactly sixty years earlier, on July 26, 1947, President Harry S. Truman had signed the National Security Act, which established the Central Intelligence Agency. Two decades later, the questions raised by that story remain just as urgent. In an era globally defined by disinformation, this moment marked an early warning. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
RELATED POST : 75 Years Ago — President Truman Creates the Central Intelligence Agency (July 26 1947)
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“People that I would say are trolls sort of took over Wikipedia. The inmates started running the asylum.”
Larry Sanger
Wikipedia co-founder
It all began as I was researching the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a Palestinian nationalist militant organization founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril.
At first, I noticed that information about the group had been removed. But as I dug deeper, it became clear that the CIA — along with other Western intelligence agencies — was actively editing sensitive content on Wikipedia.
The piece quickly gained traction. Overnight, it was accessed by more than 100,000 readers and was reposted and translated into several languages.
The story sparked debate across many websites. One of the most memorable responses came from a Russian journalist, writing for Computerra Magazine. Their article — Spies in Wikipedia — was later made available in English.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, along with several administrators, reacted angrily to the report.
“This article is just wild speculative nonsense,” Wales wrote.
But for all his choreographed outrage, Jimbo was proven wrong. Less than a month later, major outlets including Reuters and the BBC confirmed the core of the story.
“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
1984 — George Orwell
The CIA, for its part, neither confirmed nor denied the report. A spokesperson stated:
“I cannot confirm that the traffic came from agency computers. I’d like, in any case, to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: the CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there—on that decisive work.”
On August 17, 2007, I published a follow-up article detailing the extent of the CIA’s involvement. Between June 29, 2004, and July 30, 2007, Wikipedia had been edited 297 times by individuals using computers within the CIA’s network.
And the rest is History…
“The strange thing about this story is that this was proven to be true. And there was no denying it. Then later on, a few people started to deny it and claim that it was merely a rumor. Wikipedia has no excuse to hide this.”
Anonymous Wikipedia user
Back to the present
Nearly two decades later, the implications of my discovery feel more urgent than ever. What seemed in 2007 like an isolated act of digital manipulation now reads like the dawn of the disinformation age—a time when intelligence agencies, state actors, and powerful corporations quietly began shaping public knowledge through online platforms.
Wikipedia, once hailed as a radically democratic project, became one of the earliest battlegrounds in a global information war.
Today, as AI-generated content floods the internet and trust in public information erodes, the story of those CIA edits serves as both a warning and a reminder: control over information is power — and that power remains fiercely contested.
Could ChatGPT be manipulated in the same way today?
While ChatGPT and similar AI models strive to provide accurate and balanced information, they are ultimately trained on vast datasets sourced from the internet — including Wikipedia and many other platforms. This means any bias, misinformation, or manipulation in those sources can influence the AI’s responses.
However, unlike Wikipedia’s editable pages, ChatGPT’s outputs are generated dynamically based on patterns in the training data and the prompts it receives — not by directly editing a public, persistent knowledge base. Still, the quality and neutrality of the training data are critical.
OpenAI continually works to reduce biases and misinformation through data curation, model fine-tuning, and human review, but no system is completely immune to manipulation or error.
As AI becomes more deeply woven into how people access information, transparency, critical thinking, and diverse perspectives remain essential to countering potential influence or bias.
Make no mistake: the battle to control AI has begun. Supremacy over AI will mean control over history itself.
“In time of war, the truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Winston Churchill
A short anecdote about Linda Mack
According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Linda Mack was an “excellent Wikipedia administrator.” But not everyone saw her that way.
Dr. Jim Swire and Rev. John Mosey both lost their daughters in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.
In the early days of the UK relatives’ group (UK Families–Flight 103), Linda Mack attempted to infiltrate their organization under false pretenses, claiming to be the girlfriend of one of the Lockerbie victims — a claim that was simply not true.
The CIA has never confirmed any involvement in editing Wikipedia. But Dr. Jim Swire confirmed this story directly to Intel Today:
“I can confirm that the lady then calling herself Linda Mack was a Cambridge graduate and attempted to infiltrate an early meeting between our group (UK Families–Flight 103) and the American families in London.
We had her thrown out when we discovered that she was ‘wired’ with a microphone under her coat.”
Rev. Mosey and Dr. Swire have never accepted the official version of the bombing, which placed blame on Libya.
After decades of research, they believe the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) was in fact responsible.
And so, the story had come full circle — back to the group I was investigating when I first discovered those suspicious Wikipedia edits.
Some call it coincidence. Others might see it as something more. Synchronicity is the way God hides Her interventions.
“Be careful what you put in your head, for you are never getting it out.”
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey
REFERENCES
BBC News 15/08/2007: Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’
CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits | Reuters
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On This Day (July 26, 2007): The Day I Exposed CIA Edits on Wikipedia [Inside the first skirmishes of the disinformation age — and the fight for digital truth.]
“I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency. (…) There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”
Harry Truman
(December 22 1963)
“A nuclear scientist and reporter Ludwig De Braeckeleer suggested that intelligence agents may have been infiltrated Wikipedia to remove undesirable information from Wikipedia articles The design and application of WikiScanner technology proved such suspicions to be well founded”
Internet Brigades in Wikipedia
Intel Today 