“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on…”
Noam Chomsky
The Common Good, 1998
November 2, 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
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“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)
Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s co-founder, later told me he was “really shocked” by that discovery. He summed it up bluntly: “The inmates started running the asylum.”
Jimmy Wales reacted very differently. He quickly rejected my findings, saying an excellent Wikipedia administrator had been “victimized by lunatic conspiracy theorists.”
Unfortunately for Jimbo, I’m very patient — and I finish what I start. 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 was edited 297 times by individuals using computers within the CIA’s network. And the rest is history.
My discovery came from redactions related to the Lockerbie and UTA tragedies. Lockerbie will be the subject of a new trial in 2026, and the UTA affair has already landed Nicolas Sarkozy in jail. Time is very, very patient.
Noam Chomsky — widely considered one of the most influential intellectuals of our time — had a deep influence on me. He advised me to stay focused on Lockerbie and suggested colleagues I could share my work with, including Edward S. Herman (1925–2017), a leading scholar of propaganda in Western media.
“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
In August 2025, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform launched an investigation into “organized efforts, undertaken in violation of Wikipedia platform rules, to influence U.S. public opinion on important and sensitive topics by manipulating Wikipedia articles.”
Whatever the result, Elon Musk decided to launch Grokipedia to address Wikipedia’s known shortcomings. I checked an entry (Lockerbie, naturally) and can state categorically that some of the so-called “facts” are simply false.
Once again, the media — as Belgian newspaper La Libre exemplifies — has narrowed the spectrum of the debate. Is Wikipedia left-leaning? Yes or no? That, my friends, is the wrong question.
Who Watches the Watchers?
The real question was raised long ago by Roman poet Juvenal: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who defines the boundaries of truth, and who benefits from them?
Platforms may change — from Wikipedia to Grokipedia, from old media to new — but as long as the limits of inquiry are set by unseen hands, true knowledge remains captive.
The antidote isn’t blind trust or total cynicism — it’s critical curiosity. Keep asking who’s editing the edits.
Keep following the threads others cut short. Because truth, unlike platforms, does not depend on permission.
Truth doesn’t live on a platform, and it doesn’t bend to consensus. From Chomsky’s warnings to today’s AI algorithms, the lesson remains the same: control the frame and you control the picture.
Whether it was the CIA in 2007 or corporate influence in 2025, the machinery of manipulation hasn’t stopped — it has only evolved.
Stay awake. Follow the evidence. And never let the spectrum define the truth.
“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
George Orwell, 1984
REFERENCES
Noam Chomsky :
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
(Excerpted from The Common Good, 1998)
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From Wikipedia to Grokipedia, From Chomsky to Sarkozy… [Is Wikipedia left-leaning?]
“Be careful what you put in your head, for you are never getting it out.”
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey
Intel Today 