A screenshot of the article, which has now been deleted. The Guardian/Screenshot The Guardian released another shocking NSA scoop on Saturday, revealing collusion and mass harvesting of personal communications among the United States and at least six European Union countries — only to delete it from their website hours after publication.

The article, titled "Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America," was written by Jamie Doward, who reported information from Wayne Madsen, a man claiming to be a former Navy Lt. and NSA employee for 12 years.

Doward wrote:

Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.

He went on to say that seven European countries and the U.S. have access to a fiberoptic cable network, intercepting phone calls, emails, and user logs from websites. The article describes Madsen as having "been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues."

That's a light way of putting it.

Some of Madsen's controversial views include the belief that President Obama is secretly a homosexual and that the Boston bombing suspects were government agents. He's also reported on a "former CIA agent" alleging the 2000 USS Cole bombing was perpetrated not by al Qaeda terrorists, but by a missile fired from an Israeli submarine.

Was Obama's mother a secret worshiper of an Indonesian farting dwarf god? Today at http://t.co/jli8T48G — Wayne Madsen (@WMRDC) August 9, 2012

John Schindler, a professor at the Naval War College and intelligence expert, called Madsen "batsh-- crazy, to use the technical term."

The pulled article now bears the message, "this article has been taken down pending an investigation" but appears to still be on tomorrow's front page of the print edition. It was originally published in The Observer, a Sunday newspaper owned by The Guardian and hosted on their website.

Here's a partial screenshot: