Actually, you are wrong. The article uses the term transgender......which means that he is a man dressing as a woman, with the possibility he underwent the surgery. Transexual means definitely that the surgery took place. The transgender term is not definitive.
Trangender and transsexual are not synonyms, true, but:
Transgender is an umbrella term that includes everything from recreational crossdressers, to drag queens, to transsexuals, to androgynous, to so-called "genderqueer" (don't get me started - they rebel against the gender binary completely)
Transsexuals are one category under that umbrella. The distinguishing characteristic is the conviction that they are mentally and spiritually the opposite gender from their body and they want desperately to bring the two into alignment. They range from merely wanting to (but not yet able to) makes these modifications all the way to those who have finished them. It is NOT necessary to be post-op to be transsexual (in fact, some consider themselves "cured" and no longer trans after the operation).
By contrast, a crossdresser/transvestite does NOT want to alter their body or BE a woman, they are simply "playing"